I've been pondering this a lately. A lot of web designers suck at web design. Many suck at marketing. The majority of web designers suck at business. And pretty much all web designers suck at sales, where sales is a virtuous skill defined as the process of figuring out what's important to their clients and then recommending a solution that helps them solve their problems and achieve their goals.

If you run a small business or manage marketing for a mid sized or large business, especially B2B businesses, and you're talking to a website designer... the most important thing to you is usually figuring out how to improve lead generation for your sales team through your website.

Paul Roetzer has published a few questions you should ask any website designer you're planning on hiring:

Q1: What's your Website Grade, Mr Designer?
Q2: How will our Website be optimized for search engines?
Q3: What Website analytics will we have access to?
Q4: Will we have the ability to change our own content?
Q5: How will our website generate leads?

Paul has some good tips in his article. You should read it if you're doing a site redesign. I'd also recommend educating yourself about the website redesign process and developing an internet marketing strategy first. Way too many people relaunch their website and then expect to figure out how to generate business from it. It really needs to be done the other way around, unless you prefer to waste time and money redoing things.

You learned how to drive before you bought your own car, right?

I asked Shari Sultana, an Internet Marketing Virtual Assistant, to write a quick article about why her clients choose to hire her, or someone like her. I have quite a few clients that could generate more leads if they had more time to committ to their content creation, link building, social media activity, etc. Some of them should consider hiring her.

If you're a small business owner you already know that time is a precious commodity. Most, if not all, small business owners wear many hats. They are the CEO, the sales department, the marketing department, the customer service department, the purchasing department and the accounting department. But doing all of these jobs leaves little to no time for building the business and increasing the profits.

Spending all your time working in your business leaves no time left to work on your business. Even if you do have a little extra time to work on your business most small business owners are either too tired or have personal commitments to attend to. Wouldn't it be great if you could just buy yourself more time? But wait, you can!

Ever heard the term "Virtual Assistant"? Virtual Assistants (or VAs) are an industry of small business owners whose business is to provide administrative and/or marketing support to other small business owners, all via the internet. Internet Marketing Virtual Assistants specialize in providing internet marketing support to small business owners who lack the time or skill to do their own internet marketing. Small business owners who hire the services of an internet marketing virtual assistant have the time to work on building their business and increasing their profits. Their VA does everything from helping with on page SEO, link building, press releases, article submissions, blogging, setting up and maintaining their social networking profiles, maintaining their websites, tracking their web analytics, and setting up their PPC campaigns.

VAs are independent contractors which means no employee taxes, benefits or overhead for the small business owners who hire them. VAs also work on an as needed basis which means no long term commitment is necessary. Virtual Assistants can be the answer to many time strapped business owners. In business, time is money. Leveraging the services of a virtual assistant could be the answer to your business success.

Sales training expert and client, Tony Cole, sent me a note today. He pointed to Seth Godin's article about how technology, while sometimes making us more efficient, also gives us excuses to be less personal when serving our clients.

Tony asked, "Why doesn't Seth have comments? How can I leave a comment on Seth's blog?"

It's a valid question. I don't really read Seth Godin's blog (more on that later). If I had to gander why he doesn't have comments set up, it's because he's tired of moderating comments or deleting spam comments. Or it could be because he wants people to link to him and comment on his post in a post on their own blog. Or it could be for another reason. I don't know. Seth has commented on my blog a few other times. So, maybe he'll share.

Personally, I think comments make a blog much more personal by enabling interaction with readers, whether they're prospects, clients, partners or whoever.

However, I'm not Seth. As I posited here, Seth probably has a challenge having personal relationships with the 100s of thousands of fans he has. I have challenges having personal relationships with my 70 or so clients, 700 blog subscribers and 3,000 email subscribers. I can't imagine the deluge of conversation invitations that Seth receives.

And this is why I don't read Seth's blog. I might actually get to meet Seth next month, which'd be cool. He's speaking at the Inbound Marketing Summit and I'll be attending with the marketing conference equivalent of a backstage access. But, in normal life, most of us won't meet bloggers that have 100s of thousands of subscribers. Just like my wife has little chance of meeting Joshua Allen when she goes to the "So You Think You Can Dance" concert in Boston. And I probably won't ever meet Warren Buffet. In the same vein, I will most likely never have a meaningful business or personal relationship with any of these people.

The blogosphere isn't that different. The bloggers that have huge followings aren't going to interact with you in a meaningful way, unless you're very persistent and have something that they know they need. Or you agree to be their intern or something pretty silly like that.

So to answer Tony's question, if you really want to leave a comment for Seth, write a post and link to his post. However, I'd recommend initiating blog conversations with people who might be more receptive to mutually beneficial relationships.

Seth has great stuff to say. But, so do a few other thousand bloggers that write about similar stuff.

It's not really Seth's fault that he can't interact with everyone. I never really met Britney Spears either.

Brook Group is a client of mine. (Advice from Kara Brook.) They are also a great partner and we have a bunch of mutual clients. One of them is HaloPets. I've been advising Kara all along about how to help her clients generate more traffic, leads and sales from their online marketing.

We were talking about the Halo Pets Organic Pet Food blog the other day. Specifically, we were talking about the style of writing, as well as how to use the blog strategically to increase traffic from search engines.

A blog is a great SEO tool. Many people blog and just stuff their keywords in it. That doesn't quite do it, although as Rick Barnes mentions, traffic to a blog from SEO should justify the time spent on blogging. A successful blogger also engages with their audience. They spend as much time reading other blogs, leaving comments on other blogs, linking to other blogs, etc. This helps them grow their own readership faster, generate more comments from others on their own blog and get more links pointing to their site. All of these activities will help drive direct traffic, as well as increase the amount of traffic from search engines (because of the new inbound links).

Humans have this strange interest in connecting with humans through common interests. Yeah. I know. It's not that strange. I'm being sarcastic. But, most new business bloggers don't realize that blogging is about a conversation.

Not every blogger is great at this. It takes a knack for storytelling, relating and listening that few souls have. One of those souls who has it, is one of my best friends, Amy Breton. I've blogged about her before. But, I also connected Amy and Kara and Kara recruited her to write for the HaloPets blog. Amy has a great knack for storytelling and an amazing knack for connecting to animals and humans, alike.

Here's a video that the Boston Globe recently produced about Amy and her husband owning the oldest living rabbit, Guinness approved.

Here's Amy bio on the HaloPets blog. And here's an article that Amy wrote about why dogs eat poop. If you don't plan to read the whole article, you should know that it's generally ok that dogs eat their own poop. You shouldn't though.

Read Amy's writing. You'll see the passion. Take a bit deeper look and you'll realize that Amy's articles get more Digg mentions, as well as a few more comments than the average post on HaloPets. I expect that to increase in time, since HaloPets is now a group blog with a lot of interesting writers, and Kara's team is smart about networking online.

I'm thinking about launching a free job job board that my clients and partners can use to post gigs on my site. The volume seems to come and go. This week, there seems to be a lot of people looking to hire...

Goodfellas for a construction project sales person.

Wakefly for a .NET developer.

Assembla for an online direct marketer. (This one looks tantalizing to me.)

HubSpot is always looking for developers, salespeople and strong internet marketers to join the team. (Contact me if you're interested. I'll give you the inside track.)  

If you'd use the board, let me know. I'd only want legit opps to be posted, but it'd also be a good way to help clients generate some links back to their site. I'd probably make it easy for clients to post jobs to other blogs too.

Tony and Jeni at Anthony Cole Sales Training Group have shared some funny sales stories.

I'm racking my brain for a good one to share as a salesguy.

I have a crazy one to share as a buyer.

When my wife and I bought our house, we needed to buy a mattress for our spare room. Since the most use it would get would be when family is visiting on the weekend, we didn't want to spend a lot on it. We also didn't want one that was going to disintegrate in a year. But, price was certainly the most important factor.

So, we went to Mattress Giant. Here's the conversation as I can recall it:

Me: Could you point us to your cheapest mattresses?
Salesguy: We have a mattress over here that is $550. Try this one. [Amy lays down.]
Amy: This isn't bad.
Other Salesguy with other customers to Our Salesguy [from a few feet away]: Are you selling that one? Do we have more than one of those left in stock?
Our Salesguy to other Salesguy: I think this is the last one.
Salesguy to us: Do you guys want this one? This is the last one. I can give you a good deal on it. Probably knock $50 off of it.
Me: This is the cheapest mattress you have?
Salesguy: No. We have cheaper ones.
Me: Could you point us to the least expensive one?
Salesguy: It's over there. [He points and walks away.] [We go over and lay down. Amy and I agree that it's fine.]
Me: [Had to go interrupt him from doodling on his computer twenty feet away.] How much is the cheapest one?
Salesguy: It's $300, but I don't know why you'd buy that one. The $500 one is going to last a lot longer. The cheap one isn't going to hold up.
Me: I'm looking for a mattress for a spare room. It'll rarely be used.
Salesguy: Well, I guess if you don't care about the people sleeping on it, it's fine. [I give him ridiculous look. Can't believe I'm actually still talking to him.]
Me: Can you give us a minute to talk about it?
Amy: Are you sure the cheap one is ok? [My wife is falling for this asshole's sales moves.]
Me [to Amy]: It's fine. This guy just doesn't make as much commission if he sells this one. So, he wants us to buy the more expensive one. They wouldn't have it in the store if it wasn't going to last.
Salesguy: [Walks back over interrupting our conversation.] You know you can go on craigslist if you want to find a cheap mattress?
Me: I don't want a used mattress. I want a cheap one. We'll take the $300 one. Can you write us up?
Salesguy: Sure. [Walks over to his computer.] [I presume I have to follow him and do.] [Amy and I sit down.] You want the $550 one right?
Me: No. We want the $300 one.
Salesguy: Ok.
Me: When can we have this delivered? [My parents are visiting the following weekend.]
Salesguy: I have to look that up. But, we do deliveries every day. Do you guys want to add the stainguard cover? It's an extra $120.
Me: No.
Salesguy: Do you need a base for the bed?
Me: Yes.
[There was one other add on thing he tried to upsell us.]
Salesguy: Are you sure you don't want the slightly more expensive better one?
Me: Yes, I'm sure [insert his first name].

To top it all off, the guy checked off that we didn't need a base for the bed. The guys that delivered it, had to go back and get us one.

And for the record, the mattress is just fine. When Peter was born and Amy was nursing him in our bed, I slept in it a few times. And my parents, Amy's parents and my sisters and brother in laws have slept in it. They get good night sleeps. They know we care about them.

Do you have a funny sales story?

Chris Johnson is a colleauge of mine at HubSpot.

Here's a rough transcript of a recent call:

CJ: Hello Mr. X. You recently did a search at Google for "The Best Search Engine Marketing Program Available 2008". It looks like you found us. Are you trying to optimize something?
Prospect: blah blah blah.

Two things that made this blogworthy, atleast in my opinion.

1. That's Long Tail. We certainly didn't set out to rank for that "search phrase". It happened, though. I'd imagine that noone will ever type that phrase again. But, when we add up all of the 1 time relevant phrases that people type, it starts to add up to a lot of visitors and leads.
   
2. Google Delivers "the Best". It's interesting how people ask Google, a computer that crunches our links to determine quality, for the "best" solutions. During Mark Roberge's presentation on SEO yesterday at the WBJ Sales Summit (his slides), he used the example of searching for "best plumber". Sam Wildt raised his hand and made the point that the person that ranks at the top isn't necessarily the "best". Mark agreed and explained that Google makes their best estimation. The crazy apart about it... is that many people start their search with "best" in front of their search term. They must believe that Google brings back "the best" or atleast some approximation of it that helps them start their buying process.

How recursive is this?

As this gets published, I'm speaking on a panel at the WBJ Sales Summit w/ Mark Roberge and Dave Hurlbrink. Mark is speaking about SEO. Dave is speaking about sales workstyle management. Together, we're doing our best to spell out important pieces of an inbound marketing strategy that will help the attendees improve online lead generation and lead nurturing activities within their organizations.

Here's my presentation on why blogging is an important component of that.

I'll also be referencing a few links during the presentation.

Blogging as SEO Machine.
Check the results on google for "a search for Central New England Sales Summit". Also, take a look at how well my article about blogging and sales ranks for a keyword search of "improve your sales process".

Blogging as the Host of the Conversation
Take a look at Dave Kurlan's article where he asked people what their best sales advice is. Take a look at this article and how my clients endorse us in public in our comments, where our prospects read it. Noel Huelsenbeck:

"John is right on one account when he says "learn how to market your business on the web yourself" I would add, and do it using a proven methodology and experts, then add the hard work. Why John is out searching the web trying to find the short cuts and getting "free" info I've already designed my site, ranked my keywords, gotten leads, made sales and taken my $250 investment and made thousands."

Blogging as Networking Central
This blog post about the best internet marketing blogs led to many new relationships for me and HubSpot. I also make a habit of answering questions on LinkedIn where I can leave links to relevant blog posts. After the sale, I also frequently highlight my clients as I've done in this series of posts where I asked individual clients to share their internet marketing advice.

Blogging as Lead Nurturer and Lead Capture Tool
I'll be referencing this quote from Rick Roberge's blog (who's speaking now in the other room, btw):

I've had conversations with peers about whether salespeople should generate their own leads.

I've even gone so far as to say that the stronger your lead generation program(s), the weaker you are encouraging your salespeople to be and vice versa. The weaker your lead generation is, the stronger your salespeople need to be.

I'm constantly getting pushback. Salespeople want fancy websites, big advertising, more mailings, marketing support, yada, yada, yada. Anything for more leads so they don't have to work so hard.

In summary, blogging is an extension of what I do as a salesperson. It helps me generate leads, nurture prospects and sometimes it's the thing that seals the deal.

I've been talking to Alex West from RR Donnelly recently. She sent me examples of lenticular printing so I could see what she does.

See the animiated gif above. Lenticular printing actually makes that happen on paper. It requires 3D Photography to make it happen.

I'm more of an internet marketing guy. I don't usually blog about this kind of stuff. I've had slight departures - talking about trade show marketing and direct mail. However, I'm fairly immune to being "marketed to". I usually find what I need and discover new stuff online.

But, this was a little too cool not to share. (My 20 something coworkers were fighting over the martini glass print.) If I received something like this in the mail, I'd probably actually read it. Apparently, based on Alex's lenticular printing marketing case studies, I'm not the only one.

Fabrice Grinda, founder of classifieds site, OLX, answered my business advice interview questions. There's some great advice for any business owner, especially if you're an internet marketing startup or trying to figure out internet marketing for any type of business.  

When & why did you start your current business?

I left the last company I had created in November 2005. Once again, I went back to 9 business selection criteria and started looking for new opportunities.

It struck me that there were 5 big trends in the world:

• 1. There is a transition from offline media consumption to online media consumption
• 2. There is a transition from offline advertising, especially print advertising, to online advertising
• 3. There is a transition online from paid business models to free advertising business models
• 4. There is emerging market growth with GDP per capita and Internet usage growing faster in the emerging markets than in the developed world
• 5. There is a massive transition underway in the $100 billion a year classifieds market from paid print classifieds to online print classifieds. This transition is already well underway in the US and Western Europe, but is only in its infancy in the developing world where newspapers continue to dominate classifieds online and offline.

Given those trends, I created OLX free classifieds in March of 2006 with the objective of building the largest free classifieds site in the world. OLX is essentially Craigslist 2.0 for the world!

What is your unique selling proposition?

OLX is the next generation of free online classifieds.

OLX provides a simple solution to the complications involved in selling, buying, trading, discussing, organizing, and meeting people near you, wherever you may reside.

First and foremost, while Craigslist is essentially in English all around the world and only covering the main cities in each country, OLX is in the local language with all the major cities of the country covered. OLX is already in 25 languages. We aim to end the year in over 40 languages!

The second fundamental difference is with regards to the business model. Almost all classified sites charge for jobs and real estate and are only temporarily free with the objective of eventually charging to post a classified. OLX intends to remain free to post forever. We use an advertising business model which we will supplement with featured listings in the future.

The product is very different as well. OLX has taken all of the major Web 2.0 elements and brought them to classifieds:

• We have a fantastic mobile classifieds version of our site that lets you do anything you can do on the web on your mobile phone!
• You can easily design rich colorful listings with pictures and videos
• You can display your listings on your social networking profile (Facebook, MySpace, ...)

What do you like most about internet marketing?

Over the years, I have tried all forms of advertising: TV ads, radio ads, print ads, flyers, banner ads, etc. When promoting online products, search advertising is by far the most cost effective marketing method other than SEO and viral marketing (if your site lends itself to those).

The users are already online so you don't lose a large percentage of the audience. Moreover, search users are looking for something hence any click is likely to lead to a high conversion rate. Best of all, you can track everything the search users do and can optimize your campaigns to meet your ROI goals.

We use a fantastic SEM shop called Keyade for all of our keyword buying globally in all languages on all search engines (including Baidu in China).