Building A Website Is Not Building A Business

One of the frequent conversations I had at the domain conferences was about developing websites. Due to the Missouri.me launch and some of my other projects many people had questions about how to develop the sites, tools used, where we get content, etc. I am always happy to share as much as I can but there was something that I would preach to anyone who would listen and it seems to escape many.

There is a huge difference between building a website and building a business. In most cases people can have many great ideas about what they would like to do with their great domain name, they may even have all the technical abilities to create an amazing e-commerce site or content rich geo site but in so many cases there is no plan for what to do once the site is up.

If you put 50K into a wonderful website, do all the hard SEO work, if you do not have a plan on how to generate revenue after the site is up it is really just a website, not much different than a parked page, I can imagine if you spend 50K or even 10K on developing the perfect website you would want to have a plan for something more than Adsense for revenue.

So, when talking about domain development you need to think about taking it past the web development phase and how to get it into the business development phase.

To understand what I mean take a look at what the Castello Brothers have done, they understand business. With sites like Whisky.com and PalmSprings.com they have created businesses. I have really enjoyed my conversations with Michael and David and love the fact that they focus so much on the business rather than just the website. That is the difference between successful domain development compared to someone just building a website.

Now, everyone has different skills, I know many people much smarter than myself that can create amazing web sites but they lack the skills necessary on the sales and marketing side. This is where partnerships come in. If you have a great idea and have all the skills to implement the product and technical side then you may want to look for partners for the sales side. I know I could not of come close to creating everything my development team did on our state geo platform.

So, what is the point of this post?

Well I have heard so much talk of domain development, as we all have heard over the past year or so, I want to see people be successful. In most cases people will not be able to do it on their own, if you plan on building your domains into real businesses and not just websites you need to evaluate what you are good at and determine what pieces to build a business are missing from your skill set. Find people that you can team up with to fill those gaps. You may find that 1+1=3 when you do this.

Focus Focus Focus

Sometimes you just have to go heads down and focus on the task at hand.

The past couple weeks (really month) have been just that way. Blog posts have been few and far between which means my todo list of blog posts is now something like 32 items long.

All that brings me to something, as much as I have always been a bit high energy and enjoyed having 30 things going on at time, which is pretty much everyday after launching a new business (on that note have I mentioned we broke our one year mark...) , there are times that you must shut all other things out and focus on the task at hand.

This goes without saying I know, but sometimes people have a hard time recognizing when they are in the type of situation that require strict prioritization. It comes down to recognizing and then executing on the opportunity at hand.

People like to say they cannot pick which item they are working on is number one, they are all number one.  That is not always true, there are many (I would say most) times that if you really admit it there is a number one. Pick that opportunity and execute.

There are some great things going on lately with Localtek and that means that ancillary items like this blog, side projects, etc tend to take a back seat for a few weeks and the larger business takes the front seat. I have read blog posts by other domain bloggers in the past that blogging is not the most effective use of time, there are many times this is VERY true. Many times the time being spent putting out posts could be spent pushing the real business forward. That does not mean that you should not blog, but it does mean that if you are really focused on growing your business there are times it is no productive to be doing certain things (in other words, does 30 minutes working on the perfect marketing pitch for your new website provide more value to your business than a blog post).

The great thing is the hard work is already starting to pay off and I see light at the end of the tunnel. I cannot wait to blog about it when the time comes.

Thanks to Owen Frager for making me think about this a bit, yesterday when we were chatting he asked when I had time to blog, my answer was right now I don't. Well, ok maybe just this one post : )

Not sure when the last time I went this long without a post was, back to focus focus focus now though....

How To Create The Perfect Powerpoint Presentation

Most people that have ever sat through a long presentation or sales pitch have a love/hate relationship with Powerpoint. Many of the reasons for this can be tied to a few specific things that the presenter may of done wrong in the creation of the presentation. In most cases with a few tweaks the Powerpoint presentation could of been both informative and entertaining while getting the results that the presenter wanted instead of the crowd tuning out.

Over a good portion of my career I have spent quite a bit of time giving presentations, in many cases the marketing team at the company I worked for had created the slide deck, and in others I had to create the material from scratch. What I find is that in almost all cases if a marketing team created the slide deck I would need to modify the presentation quite a bit to make it fit my customers needs. The reason being is people want to try to get as much information as possible on every slide and try to have the presenter remember as little as possible.

That is a big mistake, the more information you put on the slide the less likely the crowd is to pay attention to the content.

More recently I have had to create several Powerpoint presentations from scratch, and in the past month and a half I have been working heads down on one that has really made me spend a lot of time thinking about the best way to create something that is both pointed but full of information at the same time.

So, all that said, here are several tips to help you create a presentation that will keep your crowd interested until the very last slide:

• No more than 5 bullet points per slide. Period....
• A related graphic per slide helps draw attention to the slide from the crowd, do not use clip-art.
• Do not clutter the slides with to many graphics, typically I only have one graphic strategically placed to draw attention to something.
• Numbers and percentages are great, but do not over do it.
• DO NOT EVER be the person turning around staring at the screen to read the slides, know your material, the slides are talking points only. The crowd can read the slides, you are there to tell the story.
• What ever template you use it should NOT look like it came from the mid-90's. Clean and not to flashy should be what you shoot for. Colors that do not over power the message are important.
• In most cases you should shoot for less than 20 slides (including summary and intro slide). At one point in my career I had set a rule for when ever I start my own company the sales deck could never be more than 15 slides, I have broke that slightly but in most cases I can keep it right around there.
• As little slide animation as possible, marketing folks like to go crazy with slide animations and build outs, when done right they can have a great impact, when over done it just shows that someone read the latest book on Powerpoint tweaks.

Now for the flow of the presentation, and this works for both sales decks and seminar slide decks:

• Intro slide - This is the front slide, simple, it should contain your company name, presenters name, and title of the presentation or company tag line, that is it.
• Company slide - No more than 5 points, should include things like company vision and history.
• If needed, and it is NOT always needed, a media and partner slide could be put after this. If you have had success winning awards that the audience may be familiar with it is ok to show that off. As far as partners, if it is an audience that will be familiar with the partners you have then this is a great place to outline who they are and what they bring to the table.
• Create a problem - By create a problem I do not mean make something up, I am saying show market data of what is happening that you will be providing a solution too. You are setting the table for a solution to the problem...
• It may be useful to show some independent market data after that slide showing trends, graphs, etc. Not to many numbers but a few that make the point.
• Now is the time to setup for showing the solution to the problem, 5 points, generic ideas on how to create a solution.
• Now you get to show your greatness, now that you have shown generic solutions to the problem, show what you have to hit EACH of the points that you laid out. It is important that if you laid out a problem you show a solution.
• Examples, this is where many people fall apart, they either have no real successes to show, OR, they try to show too many. Done right you should be able to get the customers heads nodding with only one, maybe two, examples. If I had to pick only two slides from my whole presentation it would be my example slides.
• Products - after you have shown your examples show what products relate to those examples.
• Time for the summary, your summary slide should be the WOW slide. Show no more than 5 points that bring it all home.

Now, the one thing that should go without saying, when I keep hitting on 5 points, DO NOT try to fit a paragraph into each one. My goal is typically they should never line wrap around to be two lines. Sometimes that is necessary. Remember, the presenter should tell the story, the presentation is simply talking points.

Also, only if it is absolutely necessary should you use a slide for each and everyone of your products (unless you only have one product).

OK, now none of the above matters if you come in with a dry, no personality, pitch. You have to get there attention. When you first stand up it is ok to make some lighthearted comment to get a laugh or really anything to catch their attention. It is very important to do this. If you do not get their attention in the first 30 seconds it is very likely you will not get it the rest of the presentation either.

Every 15 minutes break it up, do something interactive, ask a question, do something not related directly to the slide. People will drift, it is built into the human brain (read the book Brain Rules by John Medina...).

Anyway, I hope some of these tips help. I have been trying to live by these for years and sometimes some of the rules have to be broke, but I always try to use these as my guidelines.

Missouri.me and Localtek Keep On Rollin

I know the blog has been a bit quiet this week but sometimes the focus has to be on the real business and this past week was one of those. Between seminars, server growth, and customer meetings there was not much time to do much else which is just fine with me.

Although I always tell people not to confuse activity with productivity this was a week full of productive things. One of the more productive things was something I could not of imagined a week ago.

During one of our recent seminars one of our regional competitors was in the first row, now let me say that I knew of the company and had heard good things and everyone always had nice things to say about the owner of the company. The company provides various online services and technical services to small businesses throughout the area, helping them get online, promote themselves and also keep their technology running smoothly.

Well, when you have a competitor directly in front of you when you are giving your whole story that can be a bit interesting, you better have your game face on and feel confident that what you have to offer is unique and valuable. Our customers tell us that everyday so I felt real good....

During the presentation I even pointed to the individual and had direct conversation with him about their company probably witnessing some of the same things we do. It was really quite  fun and enlightening.

After the seminar I was headed to the back of the room (another story there, one of the best things ever happened, customer walks up and says ok I am ready, what do I do and how much? Keep in mind I never even talked about what our products are, now that is fun...).

The competitor stopped me after the first customer and said that he would like to look at partnering rather than competing, WOW, did not see that coming. We discussed a bit longer and decided that further meetings were in order rather quickly.

We sat down the next day and in short order were able to work out how we would do business together and I quickly learned this person had been looking for a partner he could pass over his online services business too. He had been looking for a company that understood more than just web development but had a full solution that could help these customers. Luckily my seminar came at just the right time, based on some research he had done on us before the seminar he felt comfortable.

What is great is that it turned into a very symbiotic relationship, we get a lot of requests for tech services since many times the customer see the technical side of what we do and ask if we can support their various needs, now we have someone in a region of the state that can take that on.

On a separate note we also had our first meetings with initial customers for a niche geo domain that covers a statewide industry, the site will be a business in and of itself but ties nicely into Missouri.me advertising packages as well. Keeping a common thread through product sets is always good, it benefits the customer and keeps you close to your core business, if you cannot find away that makes sense to tie two products together then it means you have moved away from your core too far. Re think if you want that business.

Anyway, just a few notes and info on why the blog may of been a bit quiet.

Sometimes It’s Just For Fun

I tend to try to spend most of my behind the keyboard time focused either on growing Localtek or my blog and most any other time is spent with the family, as anyone who has ever started a business can tell you, free time is not something you get much of. Even if you are a good time manager and are able to delegate there is always much to do. But at the same time anyone who starts a business is looking forward to that, if you ask me that is half the fun of it.

That all said, I think it is very important to not forget why you started the business in the first place (money aside on this one), in many cases, and mine I know for sure, much of it was for the love of what you knew you could accomplish by using the technology or marketing knowledge that you had wrapped up into a business model that scales and can be profitable (important to note those, write those down).

For the past couple months I had really gotten away from doing things online just for fun, whether it be interacting with people on Twitter, coming up with little web development ideas just to see what happens. In other words I was getting away from the purely fun and adventurous  side of what we all do online.

Well, what is important to note there, and I am sure it is the same with many of you, which is the whole reason this post is being put together is that in many cases it was the sense of adventure and fun that led to the main thrust of whatever business idea you are currently working on. This could of been playing around with domain name searches while wanting to start a business and realizing the good real estate is gone and then making domaining a business for you. Or in my case the love of geo names leading to the Missouri.me concept which led to the larger corporate goal of Localtek.

So, do not forget to have some fun, sometimes spending a bit of time on simply playing around can lead to your most creative ideas yet, and as you can see sometimes that leads to something even greater, all because it was fun.

I hope to within the next week do a post announcing what one of the this fun ideas turned into. You will get my point on why I think spending some creative fun time can be good.

The Best Thing An Online Marketing Company Can Hear

Today while in our sales meeting I heard on of the frequent comments I hear from people that have spoke to small businesses about online marketing, websites, etc. That comment is "I do not get any business from my website" or  "I do not remember ever getting a call from my website" or something similar.

To me this basically means I am walking out with an order or going to be getting one sometime soon. If you are someone that focuses on online advertising or web development or anything related to that field those words should be music to your ears. If you get worried when you hear that because now the customer has a negative perception about doing business on the web this is your time to turn it around and show them that you are the help they needed to make the web work for them.

Keep in mind when many small business buy or bought their websites it was done on a purely technical basis, no one actually explained to them that it was for gaining business or promoting their business online.

Their "web development partner" could of cared less in many cases if the customer ever received a visitor, they took their check and ran. Website was built, their work here was done.

Well, if these same small businesses who have the concern about business on the web based on their lack of success with it can be shown a plan to success suddenly it opens up a whole new world for them. Suddenly they can compete better with their competitors who may not have a presence online, or maybe grow their business through contacts online they did not even know had been looking for them (I have a great story about this if you want to contact me).

Either way, "I have never had any business from my website" should be music to any online advertising or marketing companies ears, listen for it and do not run away scared when you hear it, walk away with an order.

Overcoming Objections

DISCLAIMER: I wrote this at 4 this morning, probably not my best work but thought I would leave as is, it could be humorous.

As I prepare for our sales meeting today I was thinking about the one piece of the agenda that seems to be on every sales meeting agenda I have ever attended and it will be part of ours as well. That section is overcoming objections, or Challenge/Response.

No matter where I have been one of the ways I can tell the people who are going to have the fastest path to success are the ones that do not start every conversation with their sales management team with "But the customer asked INSERT OBJECTION HERE.." The people that never have to ask how to get around those questions have the easiest path in the sales world. They just naturally have a knack to know what to say ahead of time.

For the past 10 years I have noticed this same thing, it just is.

For those that do start with that question and focus on the challenges they will always have a harder time, typically this means they need more training on the sales process from those that have been through it successfully. It means they need to make sure they answer the questions before they get asked and need to be told what to expect.

Now, I will say, if you are at a company that just has poor products or solutions then overcoming objections may be tough. But if you are at a company where you believe in the solution then usually it is just a matter of training to get the person to never have to hear the objection again.

The way I have always approached sales, and I try to help anyone that is on my team approach sales, is to think ahead of time to what the potential objections may be. Depending on the type of company you are at it could be any one of a million things, but the trick is to recognize and morph your presentation to answer the questions before they even get asked.

This is very important, if there is a valid objection then maybe you cannot hit that one, but the way most successful sales people never get asked the tough questions is because they answer them before they even come up. If you can establish your product and your company and focus on talking about the key points that many customers have asked that you know you have a positive answer too then there is never a negative perception.

That is one thing that many people miss, once the customer asks a question there is always a chance that there will be a slight negative perception even if the answer is solid. But if you lead with the answers and establish yourself then that negative vibe never comes into play.

Many people just naturally approach sales this way, they focus on the positive and come in with a passion for their company or product that tells the customer that there is something good here, I should be interested. And that right there is what it is all about, passion. Whether it be a domain name, a dog house, a cellphone. It does not matter, if you can be passionate about it and they recognize that it is real, then most objections have been overcome automatically.

Top 5 Small Business Website Mistakes

As we work with small business owners daily to develop their plan for their online presence we hear a lot of the same questions and at the end of the day the customer is always right but there are things we try to help people keep away from or things that we find that maybe they did not do the first time they built their site that they should do this time. Here are 5 things small businesses either need to avoid or need to think about when they have their websites built:

Music playing on site- This is a major thing to avoid, when websites were being bought and deployed because they were "neat" and new this was something a lot of people did. Also I have witnessed this a lot on customer sites that were built by non-professionals. Without fail the majority of people visiting your website will be turned off by the auto-playing music as soon as they hit your site. This is an absolute avoid. Please please do not do this.

Using templates based on framesets - This is something else I see weekly by customers who have bought websites from people that focus on vertical markets, many of these niche market template websites are based on frames and you lose the ability to link to individual pages of the site. This is very late 1990's. If you bought your website from a niche market provider or you had your website built in the late 90s or early 2000's and your site is built with frames it is time for an update.

Working with developers that do not understand SEO - This is also very common, in my mind if you are having a website built and basic SEO is not part of what they do by default what is the point, if you spend 5K for a website and no one ever goes there does it matter? No. This is a very common issue with older technology companies in an area that have never upgraded past the "tech" part of websites. This is also very common when people focus on the flashy/pretty part of the site and not on attracting customers. If you ever hear someone say "Oh yeah my sister was gonna build my website" this is probably going to be a problem as well. For the small business customer that may read this and needs to understand what I mean please feel free to use my contact me form.

Using Flash and only Flash to build a site - Last week I sat down with a potentially large Missouri.me advertising customer who also wants a custom website developed. Although we do not focus on custom websites in this case it makes sense for us to do it. But what was interesting is they brought up the site of their would be competitor and it was done almost 100 percent in Flash. Sure it looked great and did some cool stuff but it ranked no where in the search engines, all their traffic was from PPC. They focused on pretty and not getting customers. Flash is another item that decreases the ability of the small business owner to optimize their site for the search engines. Avoid making it the focus of your site.

Clip Art Animated GIF's - Just like the music reference above, this is very late 90s early 2000's. Having clip art based graphics on your site will turn users off. The little guy walking across the screen that is on a graphic is not something that is neat anymore. Please avoid this, clean nice looking graphics will be more interesting to your visitors.

Thanks to @DanSanchez for inspiring this post.

If you have questions about the right steps for your small business website please use the contact me link above to contact me. If you have more suggestions for small businesses to avoid feel free to put them in the comments section below.

Why I Am Not Afraid To Think Different

I have had people tell me I am a bit of a goof ball because I approach things a little different. I do not post the same thing all the other domain bloggers post or people say that I am nuts for saying invest in .COMs, .NETs, and .ORGs but then I go and build a business on .MEs.

Well, it is all about thinking different, most of the very successful people I know have always thought differently, they tend to have quirks and they tend to say or do things that people think are just a bit odd because, in the end, they did not think of it themselves first.

Most startup companies that do great things are successful because they were different, their founders were different, their idea took an old idea and made it something new. People said no way but by looking past that and seeing what could be (having vision) they succeeded in showing people that they need to quit looking back and start looking forward, or thinking different.

Well, I have a long history of being just a bit different and people telling me so at the time but I always felt my direction was going the right way even if I had headed down a different fork in the road than the person that went long before me.

A few examples of where I was a little "different":

I road Freestyle BMX (back in the day, mid to late 80s) before it was part of the multibillion dollar alternative sports industry. On a domaining note, I own BmxFreestyleBikes.com:)

When my mentor at AT&T told me to focus on something other than the Internet because it was a fad like the CB radio, well I did not listen. Good thing huh...

While at ATT I was asked to work on the first VoIP network team, all the 30 year Bellhead guys said get away, it is not going to work, you are wasting your time. Well I made it through the several years of telecom layoffs without ever losing a job because VoIP took off and grew. Heard of Skype or Google Voice, yep VoIP services.

In other words, I am ok with people questioning why I choose to do things a certain way that may not be the same path they took because in time a different approach may be needed for people just entering a certain area.

The point here is at times a different fork in the road may be needed to find success. In many cases the people that came before had a different set of circumstances that led to their success. But in most cases it took someone thinking differently, its ok, be different. Build that .TV or that .ME. If you cannot afford that 100K .COM find a new way to build your business.

Focus On What Could Be And Not What Is

It still amazes me (ok, probably not actually) that people ask me why I took the time to start a business on a dot me domain name. Why waste the time???

Well, as I have mentioned in past posts, the first thing domain investors need to do when they start to think about building a business is step outside of the inward focused thinking we all do since we are so close to our domain investments. We need to quit thinking about the NAME and more about a business model.

Much like buying the right domain names to resell is about building the correct domain investment model, the same goes when you have an idea for a business based on one of your domain names. No less than three times I have had people say why not just buy the .COM for X amount of dollars.

Come on, seriously, if you are going to start a business and you are not already starting with 10 million bucks in the bank of someone elses money before you have a dime in revenue how smart is it to actually spend hundreds of thousands on a domain name?

I know there are plenty of "dot anything other than .COM haters" out there that are disagreeing, probably never will read this blog again, but oh well. It is the truth. There is a reason you see many companies that have started up not get their .COM domain that they end up spending 100K on until after the fact. That reason is that they would of never even got off the ground if they would of spent that money on the name rather than focusing on their business first.

Do not get me wrong, most people miss the point with the conversation above, the point is not that the name is not valuable, but it is not so valuable that the business should never start just because you do not have the name. It cracks me up when people act like that, and I see it virtually anytime I head to the message boards or make a post about alternative extensions.

I know you are thinking what the heck, why would you say this when you want to sell domain names at a profit. Once again, you miss the point, the point is the name is valuable, they should buy the name at some point. In many cases these whiz bang new companies end up on TechCrunch in a story that XYZ company buys ABC name after getting their B round of funding. How many times have you read stories like that? It has been more than a few times. But if the company had 250K of seed funding does it make sense to spend 100K on a name? NOPE NOT AT ALL.

So, if you are a domain investor and you have a great idea for a business but since you are so close to the domain industry you cannot see what could be but instead are only focused on having to have the .COM before starting you need to step out of the industry for a second and think like so many other people who HAVE started successful businesses without their keyword .COM and get moving.

I will say it one more time, focus on what could be not what is!

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