Alan’s Kiloblog

About to call someone who has expressed interest in a weblog. I don’t have a procedure for selling this service that is supposed to be my main source of income. I know that in sales there is the concept of the pipeline.

I will not quibble about words. Enemy of the good. I can’t help it if it sounds salesey to use the word qualifying. I am not going to struggle to find enlighted, customer oriented mumbo jumbo.

That is the a first step. Do they want a weblog? Does it make sense to have a weblog? Are they willing to spend the money?

Recently, someone who’s been flirting with me about web work, called and asked if I knew about computers. Oh, sounds like free tech support. I said yes. Could you backup my computer and remove all the junk?

These are tricky, because when I say that I don’t know how to do something, people look at me and are taken aback. They assume that computing still involves swapping floppy disks. I say that I can do it, but I don’t want to.

I stopped by French Quarter Computer Services and got an estimate. I was impressed that they were so confident that it would only take two or three hours. I forwarded the information, with the price, and it was obvious that it was more than the customer was willing to spend.

This is not my customer. I know this now. There was no haggling, because it was not my price. I didn’t have to have that sinking feeling of telling someone something they didn’t want to hear. It was a pleasant way to know that this is not going anywhere.

Somethings to think about as I follow up on some leads.

First, have an answer if they do not want what I have to offer. That is the reasoning behind creating local properties, where someone can list themselves for a fee. Otherwise, there may be some sort of web development firm online that has an affiliate program.

Second, qualification before the fact is easy enough. Do they already run advertisements in the Gambit Weekly or Times-Picayune? If so, they have the budget for a real Internet presence. Why not ask them how they currently advertise? I could also ask them about their existing software applications and their telephone systems.

Choosing the wrong customers is fatal for a small business. It can send you down a low margin path, doing fiddly work for small but quick sums. Large businesses pay for bad customers with the profits from good customers. Small businesses don’t have that kind of scale.

We the solo, need to ignore the pap about customer service and realize that for us, we are going into these things one on one. We need relationships that are reciprical, not servile.