VOLUME 18, ISSUE 4 – APRIL 2019
THIS MONTH’S MENU:
I. APPETIZER: PROFESSIONALISM + RELIABILITY = POWER & PROFITS
Yours Truly Serves Up THE Easiest Way to Have Clients Justify Paying You Well!
II. “FIELD” GREENS: WHEN “CRYSTAL CLEAR” IS ANYTHING BUT!
Copywriting Pro Reminds: Always Look at Your Offerings Through Viewers’ Eyes!
III. MAIN “MEAT” COURSE: FINDING THE “WRITE” HOME-SIT!
CA FLCW Shares Why Home-Sitting Can Be a Writing Goldmine
IV. DESSERT: SWEET SUCCESS STORIES & TIPS
Overseas FLCW Keeps Eyes on the Prize; Lands Big Web-Site Overhaul!
TIP:FREE Grammar-Correcting Tool Ensures Your Best Writing
I. APPETIZER: PROFESSIONALISM + RELIABILITY = POWER & PROFITS
Yours Truly Serves Up THE Easiest Way to Have Clients Justify Paying You Well!
Had a first call with a prospect recently. We’d connected initially by email (he found me via Google), and within 10 seconds of the clock hitting the agreed-upon time for the call, his phone rang and I was on the other end.
Okay, I’ve beat this drum before, and I’m beating it again. But only because I believe it’s so important, AND so easy to do. And that’s a potent combination.
After my call, it occurred to me how much more power and value you have, in the mind of a prospect, when you start out by doing exactly what you said you were going to do.
Okay, so say you’ve set up an initial phone call with a prospect, and you’ll be calling them at an agreed-upon time. Now, think about it from their point of view: They’ve set up a time to talk with an alleged professional (they don’t know for sure yet whether you actually are one).
At that agreed-upon time—I mean, at that precise minute—their phone rings, and there you are. How many times have you set up calls with people who were to call you, and they were late (or blew it off completely)? Probably plenty.
You probably didn’t think too much about it if it was 3-4 minutes, but I’d wager good money you definitely noticed if they were Right on Time. AND, your respect level went up (maybe even unconsciously), right?
So, when YOU’RE on time, it immediately puts a prospect on notice that they are, in fact, dealing with a professional, and everything you do from that point forward will be “framed” by that initial experience (unless you slip up after that, so don’t!).
If that prospect arranges to receive a call from a vendor at, say, 11 a.m., and it’s 11:04 when their phone finally rings, it likely won’t kill the deal, but regardless of the excuse/apology he or she offers up for their tardiness, I say there’s a subtle shift in power at that point.
That prospect is more likely to feel they have the upper hand over this person who’s just shown they’re not totally buttoned-up. Wouldn’t you? I say it gives them (again, even unconsciously) a little more bargaining power—sort of a “Strike One!” vibe.
Bargaining power they wouldn’t have if the caller lived up to their initial promise. Bargaining power that could make it tougher for that vendor to get their desired price.
Perhaps I’m over-analyzing (goes with my territory). Yet we’d all agree there’s serious value in demonstrating professionalism upfront to set the tone for a working relationship.
Here’s the clincher: Given how unbelievably easy it is to get this piece right, why in the world would anyone miss that opportunity?
It takes no experience, big portfolio, or long track record to be reliable, but when you have few of those things, reliability can go a long way to make up for them. On that “no-brainer-success-shortcut” note, let’s eat!
“FIELD” GREENS: WHEN “CRYSTAL CLEAR” IS ANYTHING BUT!
Copywriting Pro Reminds: Always Look at Your Offerings Through Viewers’ Eyes!
Great piece from veteran marketing/copywriting pro Marcia Yudkin (from her 1/9/19 “Marketing Minute”).
Below, she’s talking about that fundamental marketing principle, “The Curse of Knowledge”—the tendency of people and companies—who eternally marinate in their own products, services and processes—to assume that newcomers to their offerings have the same level of understanding.
A totally NON-intuitive conclusion, for sure, but exceedingly and inexplicably common nonetheless.
And no matter how vigilant we are as marketers, we can still fall prey to it. I absolutely have invoked her opening line below, when confronted with someone not understanding something on one of my sites. A powerful reminder to step back and try (it ain’t easy) to view things with “fresh eyes.”
“How can anyone be that dumb?”
“How could they miss that, staring them in the face?”
If you find yourself sounding off in this vein about a customer who didn’t understand or notice something you feel is ultra-obvious, stop and look in the mirror. Chances are, you didn’t explain it clearly enough. You made an overly optimistic assumption. You buried an important instruction.
For example, you created a one-minute “steps to get started” video for new clients. But one person missed the link you provided. Another couldn’t get the video to play and never mentioned the problem. Another watched the video, but misunderstood a key word you used in it. Someone else understood the video completely but didn’t get going until a week later, when he’d forgotten it all.
They were not stupid.
It’s hard to be clear. It’s tough to get people to pay attention and absorb even a message that’s clear as air. Even so, it’s on you to try this and that, tinkering with your process until all goes smoothly. In my own business, this refinement process never ends!
III. MAIN “MEAT” COURSE: FINDING THE “WRITE” HOME-SIT!
CA FLCW Shares Why Home-Sitting Can Be a Writing Goldmine
Got the intriguing piece below from Watsonville, CA FLCW/travel writer Tom Bentley. While Tom’s turned his house-sitting experiences into myriad travel-writing opportunities, a free-spirited FLCW could just as easily focus on their commercial-writing work while traveling and dispense with the travel writing altogether. But, if the TW calls to you as well, Tom serves up the how-to!
Staying for extended stretches in beautiful, exotic and culturally rich places—for free? And being paid for travel pieces you write about your stay? Oh, yeah. In recent years I’ve spent one- to two-month periods in Hawaii, Mexico, Panama, the Bahamas and the Grenadine islands, without paying a cent for lodging.
Besides having the time to be less the tourist and more the traveler on such trips, I’ve also published many paid pieces in online and print publications from those journeys, and have the notes and photos for many more I’m pitching now.
With some careful planning and travel prep, and an open eye and mind for stories when you get there, you can set yourself up for exciting travel—and the potential to pull in some green from writing about it.
Finding the Opportunities: All of those house-sits I mentioned were taken with my longtime sweetheart, Alice. At first, we used caretaker.org to find our listings, but recently, mindmyhouse.com (MMH) has been our site of choice.
The sites provide descriptions and photos of the properties, dates/length of stays, what the owner expects of a home-sitter, and often short owner bios.
You can look for free, but you only get homeowner contact info if you pay the modest fees. MMH will email you listings almost daily, and
from across the glo e.
Some want you to manage multiple Airbnbs or groom their herd of buffalo, but most of ours just wanted us to take care of pets and plants, and keep the house secure. Given that you’ll be working, get ironclad confirmation that the Internet is strong and reliable (we learned the hard way).
Cast the Net Wide: If your work allows you leave home for long stretches of time, our wired world has opened the floodgates for “solopreneurs.” I’ve freelanced for years from home as a marketing writer, magazine and newspaper writer, essayist and fiction writer. Ditto for Alice.
Of course, someone has to take care of our home, cat and garden, and house-sitters on MMH have done fine jobs. We wrote a small manual for our house to eliminate surprises. Pay bills in advance or set up alerts to pay when due. Once booked (on both ends), think travel writing.
Look for Angles—Before/During/After Travel: Look for story angles before your trip, to identify any editor interest. I pitched stories about biking to the lava flow on Hawaii’s Big Island, and on things to do in Hilo before heading there, later getting pieces published in The Los Angeles Times and The San Jose Mercury News.
While it’s great to plan stories in advance, be open to ideas that crop up. When in the Grenadines, we discovered, and took a tour of, a rum distillery on St. Vincent (great photos!). Haven’t placed that story yet, but I did place a fun one on a whiskey site about looking for whiskey on an island of rum.
Always have your camera ready when out and about. The longer home-sit stays just boost the odds that you’ll find sights most people wouldn’t. I never travel without a notepad, turning my scrawled fresh-impression notes about people, places and things into copy within a day or two.
Your Office Is the World: Even if you have to care for an ill or psychologically damaged pet (several times for us), or a psychologically damaged owner (once was enough), the opportunities for travel writing as a house-sitter are deep. Sometimes travel clichés are anything but: The Panama Canal was a marvel.
But, big dynamic canal or tiny exotic butterfly, house-sitting puts you in a great position to see splendid sights and then set them to the paying page.
IV. DESSERT: SWEET SUCCESS STORIES & TIPS
Overseas FLCW Keeps Eyes on the Prize; Lands Big Web-Site Overhaul!
TIP:FREE Grammar-Correcting Tool Ensures Your Best Writing
Got this cool success story (from a foreign FLCW who wishes to remain anonymous) underscoring the power of persistence. After that, a great tip from former FLCW Pat Cole (now doing important work with her nonprofit, www.africahopefund.org) for a tool to effortlessly improve the grammatical integrity of your writing.
I crossed paths with a huge energy distributor—the leading company in the E/SE part of my country and a Top 1000 company (according to our national newspaper). They had two previous websites, both of which looked anemic and ugly, and read horribly.
I relentlessly pursued them for months, and finally convinced them to take me on. New website went live some months back with 60 pages in place and counting. Wrote all the text myself. Some deals are worth sticking with!
Grammarly is great software for editing my own writing. I still need another human to review it, but in addition to catching typos (or incorrect word use, when the wrong word IS a word), the software helps me reduce passive phrases, catches redundancy and suggests better word choices.
In an era where accuracy and clear, concise writing is needed more than ever (and is rarer than ever!), it makes my emails and other written communications more professional. They offer a free version as a browser extension for those using Chrome, Safari, Edge or Firefox, as well as a premium (paid) edition with expanded functionality.