In the last few weeks, I talked to a handful of consultants. There's two memorable ones. One for good reasons. One for bad reasons.

Names have been changed.

Joe Braggert: Joe thinks he knows everything there is to know. Joe's first words to me were, "Why do I need to talk to a sales person before I can sign up?" I had a total of 5 calls with Joe, which was 5 too many. We also exchanged a few emails. I did my best to help Joe.

Joe wanted to buy based on following the company from "the beginning". He thought he knew how we worked better than I do. Joe had no interest in discussing how he was going to use our tools with me. Joe asked only one question. He asked it approximately 20 times. I gave him the same answer each time and it wasn't to his likeing. The last 15 times he asked it, I suggested that we weren't a good fit for his needs. Each time I suggested that, he suggested we were making a very fatal mistake in our business strategy. He lectured me. I told him that I understood his point of view, but the strategic decision was made for a variety of reasons and that the Company is signing on many customers each month that are ok with this decision.

The second call ended with "I'll discuss this with your management." A threat which he had no ability to execute. So, I summarized our call and forwarded it to our management and cc'd Joe. They reiterated the same message that I did.

In response, Joe provided a large amount of unsolicited advice and insisted we were making poor decisions about our business that would ultimately stunt the company growth.

All the while, there was a relatively simple way around his issue. I had suggested it and he ignored me the first few times and continued to lecture me. He also insulted me several times. The solution involved him investing another few thousand dollars in his business. The third time I suggested it, he told me that did not have the money to invest. In his mind, this was our fault.

John Partner: John and I discussed several of his current clients and prospective clients. We discussed, in detail, how we could help one of his prospective clients. Most of his current clients weren't a great fit or already had most of what we did covered. Unfortunately, the deal with the prospective client fell through. During the process of figuring out whether this company was a fit, I realized that John was a sharp guy. He not only knew internet marketing, he had done it successfully for his clients. He also understood his client's businesses and business in general.

After his deal fell through, I suggested that he and I should talk about his business and whether I could help him in any way. We scheduled a call. During the call, I suggested that occasionally we have clients who need extra hands-on assistance or someone to do the work for them. He asked me a string of questions about how we were structured internally. Through a series of questions, without asking it straight, he discovered that we are mostly interested in building a software as a service business, as opposed to a "consulting" or "services" business, as SaaS scales much quicker and more profitably. In the beginning of the call, he didn't think we'd be interested in working with people like him because we do provide consulting. By the end of the call, through a series of smart questions, he understood our business model and the opportunity for him to get involved with us.

John and I will talk again. I am sure we will do business.

Joe doesn't have a website for his own business yet. He probably blames a long list of other people for this, mostly me.

The Lesson: Do you ask questions in order to identify what's important to people? Or do you just make statements based on what you think is important? Do you take responsibility for situations and make decisions based on what's available to you? Do you wait around for the situation to be perfectly aligned to your vision? And blame others and external factors for your failures?

Do you seek out opportunities to collaborate that fill holes where you're not strong? Or do you pretend to be an expert at everything?

Do you do what you do because you love it OR because you're trying to prove how smart you are?

Oh. And if you're a consultant, remember that your first job is sales or selling yourself. The stories above should demonstrate that you're always selling, even when you're buying, whether you're good at it like John or really bad at it like Joe. Coincidentally, Dave recently published a post called the "Tale of Two Salespeople" which you should also read.

Although I don't mind receiving the $1500 check, I think the government could do better things with this refund money.

Quizzes by Quibblo.com

I called a person who downloaded our internet marketing kit today.

Here's an excerpt of the call.

Him: I understand you can't really tell me how your service can help me unless I tell you what I'm doing now and what I need. But, unless I know how your service is different from what I'm doing now, I don't really want to spend that time telling you what I'm doing now.

Me: Would you like me to call at another time?

Him: Can you send me an email with what it is you do differently?

Me: Are you interested? I don't want to go through that effort unless you have a need.  

Him: Yes. We're interested in traffic. We're ultimately interested in new customers.

Me: I will send you a few links to things you can read. You'll learn how we are different and how we have helped other clients.

Him: Sounds great.

In between there, I told him that it was the best "blow off" ever. Most people will just lie or get belligerent. He was actually "busy" and I believed him.

I'm going to send him to read our internet marketing case studies, about our internet marketing software and training. And then, I think he should read this article I wrote about how to use a blog to improve your sales process and this one about time being the most important part of anyone's internet marketing strategy.

Actually, I'll just send him to this post.

I find that clients who are most successful allow me to be the expert and help them solve their problems. Some people want to figure it on their own through reading. I'm not sure that works as effectively as talking to someone who has years of experience helping hundreds of clients. But, who am I to challenge it?

Great post from Frank Belzer:

I had a chance to meet with an executive last week and we discussed some ways that we could help him get better results out of his sales people. After the meeting I was reflecting on why the meeting had went so well, why we had made such progress in such a short time, why we had got along so well and the answer to all of these questions has to do with this executive having the oh so rare quality of Humility!

his gentleman was very savy, very smart and obvioulsy had some excellent leadership skills. His business had grown very progressively over the years and yet rather than getting overly confident or even pompus about his success, he still had an "I don't have all the answers" demeanor. Oddly enough those who follow this mantra usually find themselves having all the answers.

The best lesson to take away from this is that a big reason that this CEO is probably successful is because he is very willing to admit that he doesn't have all of the answers. He doesn't know everything. He knows that he doesn't know what he doesn't know.

I speak to a few people every week that want to try to battle me like it's the internet marketing knowledge showdown. First of all, who gives a crap? There are plenty of people who know more than me about internet marketing. And there are many more people with more and better experience too. I'll admit it. But, I've never had an open conversation about internet marketing with someone where I wasn't able to find something I could help them with. I advised a leading social networking site the other day with a strategy that will probably triple their traffic from search engines. I have clients that are generating 4-6x leads now than they were just a few months ago.

But, guess what, if you don't want to admit there's something you could do better and the possibility that I could help, than you'll never know. Why are you even talking to me? (Actually, why am I even talking to you?)

These people are usually just trying to make themselves feel good about the job they're doing. And most of them are probably doing fine. The problem is that they're making themselves feel good about themselves to the detriment of finding out how they could actually do their job even better.

They should take a lesson from the CEO above.

This whole Microsoft going after Yahoo for market share really pisses me off. I've drafted a few blog posts that will most likely remain unpublished as they used a lot of explitives.

Microsoft has tried to dominate the internet before. They've obviously failed. Not because of Google. But, because the internet is quite difficult to dominate. People figured out that they could go to other websites after they opened Internet Explorer, even though the browser set their page to MSN.

That doesn't mean we can sit back and pretend like the internet can't be dominated. Or that short term consolidation isn't bad for the internet. It could be dominated if we let it.

A handful of big companies are trying their damndest to keep eyeballs coming back to them. And competition and serving people's information and entertainment appetite is cool. But, having one less of these companies competing is not cool. Having one less place to efficiently advertise online is not cool either. Which is what MS hopes to accomplish by merging their online advertising inventory and systems with Yahoo's.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, I had a few beers on Thursday night and felt compelled to weigh in over at the Silicon Valley Insider. Here's my comment:

You guys are all a bunch of aholes. Microsoft buying Yahoo would be a huge blow to innovation and competitiveness in the internet industry.

There's a really simple solution. It's called a FAPI. That's Freaking Application Programming Interface.

Let your damn ppc interfaces bid on each other's platforms, Yahoo and Microsoft. It accomplishes the same damn thing: building critical mass of advertisers and inventory to compete with google adwords for domination of the internet ppc advertising business.

Mergers and acquisitions are so old school. If Ballmer new his ass from web 2.0, he'd have figured this out.

Yet, you money grubbing internet-clueless investors are going to fubar the whole internet if this acquisition occurs.

Now that might be a little dramatic. But, it's certainly not too far off. If MS combined with Yahoo, we'd have only two places to buy pay per click ads, the most efficient advertising vehicle on the planet, until we figure out how to arrange stars into clickable logos.

Fortunately, for us, Yahoo understands this. From an article this morning:

As envisioned, the system would employ a real-time auction that would draw ads from Yahoo, Google, and potentially other companies including Microsoft. The ads would be selected on the basis of maximum revenue, which would be shared between Yahoo and the other search partner, the Journal said.

It's called coopetition. And it'd be best for Yahoo's Google's and Microsoft's share price. It'd also be good for upstarts that found a way to differentiate their ad systems or sell them more effectively than the majors. Think Clickable, Quiqo, Adbrite, Tacoda, etc. It'd also, and probably most importantly, be good for advertisers looking for the most efficient vehicles to advertise their products and consumers trying to find the best products and services.

Unfortunately for us, Yahoo isn't exactly in control over its own destiny right now. It's the mouse. Microsoft is the cat chasing it. We need to step in with a broom and swat the cat. It's up to the investors in both companies, current and potentially future board members installed through Microsoft's potential hostile takeover bid - to thwart this thing from happening.

But, it's also to a certain degree, in our hands. I can't imagine that investors really think Microsoft's and Yahoo's cultures and initiatives will really mesh well together and outproduce google. But, it seems like they're a bit too focused on making a few bucks in the short term.

Maybe they need a bit of education about the internets and what's possible through an API and a bit of coopetition.

If you agree and you'd like to make a difference, please spread the word, so that investors see how bad a deal this is for the longer term prospects of the internet and these respective businesses.

This could be a turning point in the internet, where closed networks supercede one giant open equal opportunity system.

The Corridor Nine Chamber of Commerce has invited me to speak to the HYPE9 group, Helping Young Professionals Engage in Corridor 9. It's a great group designed to help younger (21-40 year old) professionals develop their networking skills.

I'm looking forward to doing my "online networking presentation" to this group as many are web natives. Most of the time I'm giving this presentation, I'm talking to people that grew up with a typewriter and rolodexes that sit on their [real] desktop, not online. Many in this group grew up with their "contact list" on facebook and AIM. 

My focus will be less on how to use the tools. More about leveraging the these tools to initiate new business.

If you fit in the demographics and are local enough, here's the registration page. If you're coming, make sure you do the homework listed on the registration page, assuming you want to walk out with referrals. 

When I am qualifying whether someone is qualified to do business with HubSpot, I ask them how much time they will have to dedicate to their online marketing, specifically to creating content.

They are usually the same people that think SEO stops when you tweak your title tags. Actually, they usually think it's about tweaking "meta tags", which we all know is not that critical anymore.

They usually ask what would I need time to do? So, I say, "To really succeed at online marketing, especially SEO, you need to create content. The more pages you have on your site, the more keywords you can target. The more keywords you can target, the more traffic you can get from search engines. Also, when you create great content, people are compelled to link to it. Links increase your search rankings and send direct traffic."

Then, I ask, depending on how difficult it is to rank for their keywords and how much traffic they need to generate to hit their lead and sales generation goals, "Do you have x hours/week to dedicate to writing content?" where x is usually 2-10 hours.

About 1/3rd of the people I speak with, say something like, "I Don't Have Time To Do That. I Need to Run My Business."

To which I respond, "Ok. Is there anything else I can help you with today?"

One guy said to me today, "Is that the end of your pitch?".

To which I responded, "Do you want me to blow smoke up your butt about how I can get your website out of invisible-land for $3500 and a wave of my magic wand?"

He laughed and said, "I appreciate the honesty. I guess I'll call you when I have more time to spend."

I said, "I'm here when this is important for you to do right."

Here's some blog posts I plan to write sometime in the near future.

1. How to Do a Website Redesign w/ Business Goals in Mind.
2. How to Do a Website Redesign w/ Search Engine Optimization in Mind
3. How to Transition Your Cash Flow Struggling Web Design Business into a Cash Flow Consistent Internet Marketing Business.
4. Why Cold Calling Prepares SalesPeople for Warm Calls.
5. Link Building: Exchanging Content for Links
6. Building an Online Network of Clients and Prospects

If you have thoughts or experiences with any of these, please share them in the comments or on your own blog. If you have other topics you'd like me to cover, let me know that too.

Content & links are critical to internet marketing success.

Just so you guys know I'm not making this up, here's some very smart and successful people saying the same thing. 

• I just posted - at the HubSpot blog - an interview I did of internet marketing phenom, Courtney Tuttle of Court's Internet Marketing School. He reiterates that business owners and marketing professionals who want to succeed online must improve their SEO copywriting and link building skills.
• Here's a great post from CopyBlogger that talks about how content creation and link building are intertwined.
  
• I've been helping Kara Brook of the Brook Group place content for some of her clients on 3rd party sites with links pointing back to her clients' sites in the article.
  
• I just got off the phone with Greg from TrafficWorx discussing his content creation and link building strategy for his Directory of Boutique Hotels website. 

This is the most important stuff if you want to increase your organic search rankings.  And if you're doing it right, compelling content creates links. 

Although I'm an internet marketing guy at heart, if I had to choose another effective way to reach my market, I'd choose trade shows and direct mail. If it works for you, I wouldn't recommend stopping outbound marketing techniques. If they're done right, trade shows and direct mail alllow a marketer to target a market and measure results and ROI. If you can afford the investments, need to grow faster and your competitors are doing it, I don't think you can afford not to leverage these methods.

Doug is a life long direct marketing man and one of the shining online marketing stars in my growing online business network. He wrote a great post on his blog about how to generate leads from direct mail. There's a lot more detail on his post. Here are the highlights.

• Carefully target your audience.
• Buy Mailing Lists
• Focus on your Customer's Needs and solve their most irritating issue. Don't focus on your product.
• Always stress Benefits.
• Immediately Seize the reader's attention! Use an Impactful headline or first sentence.
• Never end a sentence at the bottom of a page in a sales letter.
• Share some "inside" information.
• Feature the offer.
• Give something away for FREE or Run a contest.
• Use a special "before the price increases" offer.
• Make a time-limited offer.
• Base your offer on a limited supply.
• Offer a special deal to the first 100 people who order.
• Make a "last chance" offer.
• "Buy 1 get 1 FREE" always out pulls "2 for the price of 1."

Read his full post.