Here’s some complete marketing BS I ran across tonight: “Ranked in the top 99.63% of web development companies world wide.”  I go to the FAQ to find out who they’re ranked by and I get this:

Note to self: under construction pages suck.

Further note to self: if you’re going to claim you’re in the top whatever percent, make it obvious how you justify that claim.

Yesterday, a prospect called to talk about her website. She had questions about search engines, site content and a whole lot more. We talked for about 30 minutes. Part way through the conversation she said “Design? Design is cheap. I’ll call India and they’ll do it for nothing.”

Then I got to ask one of my favorite questions: Why aren’t you calling India right now?

She paused for quite a while and then said, “Because I feel I can trust American companies more.”

IMHO, trust is the most important part of hiring a website maintenance provider. Trust lets you, the customer, describe what you want and turn it over. Trust means that you can talk with your provider freely about budgets and goals. Trust means you can concentrate on your business without having to worry about every little thing.

Trust is, unfortunately, a rare thing today. As a provider, it’s our job to build trust. How does any service provider do that?

First, communicate clearly, often and honestly with the customer about the work. That doesn’t mean always telling them what they want to hear. Sometimes you have to be the one who break the bad news.

Second, give prospects a way to try your services that won’t break the bank. For example, given the reduced rate and the advertising costs, we generally don’t make a profit on our New Customer Special.

Third, never commit to more than you can deliver no matter what the customer says. In fact, promise a little less and then deliver a little more. Your customers will appreciate this.

Building trust is a continuous process. We’re not perfect, but these are the kind of things we try to do every day. Writing them down is just a good way to remind ourselves that they’re important. Being trustworthy is a significant competitive advantage. It’s worth a lot more than saving a couple of bucks on labor by outsourcing to India or some other low wage location.

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet.” – Shakespeare

You’re starting a new company.  Great!  What are you going to name it?  I recommend against using your own name.  Why?

Using your name has some good sides.  Chances are your first customers will be people you know and the brand they’re interested in is you.  That makes a natural connection to the business.  But what comes next?

If you’re successful, you’ll probably hire an assistant or two.  If you start to build a good team, at least one of those assistants will start doing things independently of you.  That’s one issue where the name gets sticky.

Someone who starts as your assistant probably doesn’t want to stay that way.   They want and need to be recognized as an individual contributor.  In a small organization, that’s difficult when the name on the door is yours.  They will always be working for you.  You will always be the higher authority.  And the business name reminds them of this day in and day out, which can stifle your team and lead to premature employee departure.

Of the costs you will face as you grow your business, nothing will be as important or expensive as finding, training and keeping good people.  Although you are necessarily the boss, the one who is taking the risk, it’s not in your own best interest to remind your team of that day in and day out.  Team members will come and go from time to time.  One of your primary responsibilities is making your company a place they feel comfortable staying.

And, yes, I agree that the business name isn’t the secret key to keeping employees. People need to be happy and growing and making money to stay at their job.  Not naming the business after yourself is one way to keep your mindset in check and to help others know that not having your name isn’t a barrier to success.
For more ideas about employee retention, talk to this guy or visit his other site.

ATTENTION FASTWEBUPDATES.COM CUSTOMERS

Greetings!

It’s August and you’re like us: working through the heat. Here’s something designed to make things a little cooler: a free iPod Nano.

You heard right.

Refer your website maintenance needing friends, associates and third cousins to FastWebUpdates.com, and we’ll send you an iPod Nano – free!

Here’s how the program works:

1. Refer your friends to FastWebUpdates.com. Tell them in person, tell them by email, or send them a text message. Just tell them.
2. Your friend calls up and orders our New Customer Special Referral Edition — $300 for 6 hours worth of website maintenance. (You should tell them about this special, too, since it’s not on our prices page. This 28% savings off our regular price is available only through this offer.) IMPORTANT: Make sure your referral tells us you sent them. Otherwise we won’t know where to send the iPod.
3. We send you a brand new 1GB iPod Nano. Free, no strings attached.
4. You rock out. Or maybe you’ll give your new iPod Nano to a lucky someone and they rock out.

There are a couple of rules (see below). This program ends August 31, 2006.

Hurry. Your iPod is waiting.

Best Regards,

FastWebUpdates.com

Promotion Rules:

1. Offer valid for current customers of FastWebUpdates.com ONLY. If you are not a current customer, you cannot participate in this program. Why not become a customer and participate in our next killer referral program?
2. The referral must be completely new and unrelated to the work we do for you. You can’t refer yourself or someone else that we work with in some other capacity. We’re looking for new blood. If you find yourself wanting to ask a bunch of what-if type questions, you can probably assume those situations don’t qualify for the free iPod. Remember: we’re looking for new blood.
3. Your referral must purchase the $300 New Customer Special Referral Edition in order to qualify for this program. Other purchases do not qualify. And this purchase must be made on or before August 31, 2006.
4. Note that FastWebUpdates.com can handle almost all website maintenance tasks, but there are times when we cannot help a customer. In the unlikely event you refer someone and this is the case, we appreciate your efforts, but no iPod will be awarded.
5. The referral must tell us that you referred them.
6. Limit one iPod per referral. If two people make the same referral, you’ll have to split the iPod among yourselves.
7. iPods will be shipped within 7-10 days of the referral’s purchase to your name and address as we have it on file.
8. Each iPod award will be subject to individual approval. Although we don’t anticipate needing to do this, an award may be denied for some reason that’s not listed here.
9. We’ll get the iPod to you, you’re responsible for everything after that. Warranty, technical support, etc., will be directly through Apple. We make no particular claims, promises or warranties about the iPod, including that of coolness or that you will be cooler when you have one.
10. Void where prohibited, taxed or otherwise hated on.

iPod and Apple are registered trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. FastWebUpdates.com is in no way related to Apple. But we do like their iPods.

Someone asked: Hello … I am in the process of starting a new business selling X. I don’t have a website yet, and know I can hire anyone for that, but I am most concerned about maintenance. Can you please tell me about what you offer.

We sent back the regular reply, and the person replied that we were more expensive than she’d hoped–she was hoping to stay in the 20-25 an hour range. My response to her:

What you’ll find is that the professional services in the 20-25 range are all off shore. Updates tend to take a bit longer and require a few more interations to get right. That’s not necessarily a bad thing–just something to keep your eyes open on. On shore professional operators are typically in the 40-80 range.

What you might want to find is a freelancer or student. If you go that route, you usually end up with a lower rate per hour but you run into a few risks there, too. Turnaround time is the usual culprit but you also run the risk of not having access to the original working files.

Even if you never buy time from us, please consider our site a resource. I talk to people about website maintenance a lot — pretty much all day, every day in fact — and I like to share what I learn on the blog.

What are our prices? Pretty much smack dab in the middle, but we also have a way for people to get on the low side. Hit prices up top for details.

Risks of freelancers continued: First, if you hire an individual, make sure you know who their backup is so you still have help when they’re on vacation. Second, make sure they’re using the latest and greatest of all the standard website development tools and not old or obscure stuff. Stick with Photoshop, DreamWeaver and Flash, and you’re fine. Anything else and you’re increasing your costs down the road.