While I’m enjoying some time off, my mind is never far from marketing. Here’s a selection of some of my previous posts on the subject.

• 5 Tips to Overcoming Your Marketing Blues.
• How to Retain Clients Who Can’t Afford You.
• Ten Tips for Creating a Great Business Card.
• #1 Secret to Getting More Clients.
• The Introvert’s 12 Step Plan for Painless Networking.
• How to Ace Your Next Media Interview.
• Attention Introverts! You Can Market Successfully.
• 25 No Cost or Low Cost Marketing Ideas for Your Personal History Business.
• Are You Doing a Good Job of Conveying the Value of Personal Histories?
• Lousy at Getting Referrals? Here’s Some Help.
• Eight Lessons My Mom Taught Me About Marketing.
• Are You Using Storytelling to Promote Your Personal History Service?

Ever get a “teensy” bit tired of all those gung-ho blogs dedicated to productivity and success? It’s time for some balance. Let’s talk about good old-fashioned failure. For all you personal historians who are  run off your feet with  clients’ demands, here’s your escape plan. Follow these 12 tips and you  can’t help but fail successfully.

Do you have some great failure tips? Let me know.

1. Don’t listen to clients. This is perhaps the most important step. You’re the one with experience, not your clients. Forget what they think they want. You know best. The sooner you turn a deaf ear to their wishes, the quicker you can lose them and fail.
2. Keep clients waiting. You don’t want to look too eager. Leave that e-mail reply and return telephone call until you feel in the mood. It’s less stressful and gives the impression you’re too busy to get back to them. Remember the longer you wait, the better the chance of failure.
3. Stop marketing. It’s not fun anyway. If people don’t know about you, then you won’t be bothered by pesky clients. Failure is guaranteed.
4. Enroll in courses, workshops, and seminars. The trick here is to load up your plate with as many educational opportunities as you can squeeze into a day. This not only makes you terribly busy but leaves absolutely no time for clients.
5. Rate yourself with other more successful business owners. Nothing can make you feel more depressed than comparing your own efforts with successful entrepreneurs. The more despondent about your own business, the quicker you can give up.
6. Watch daytime television. Who says there’s nothing on daytime TV? It’s jam-packed with entertaining shows. Better yet, find a few programs with an educational bent. You know the ones about home makeovers and cooking. That way you can convince yourself that you’re gaining valuable knowledge while glued to the set for hours on end.
7. Fake competence. Assure clients that you’re capable of delivering on any type of personal history format their heart desires.  Never produced a video biography? No problem. Never created a book? Piece of cake. The results  will inevitably disappoint your client and ensure that bad word of mouth will drive others away.
8. Fail to meet deadlines. People are much too obsessed with deadlines. Not to worry. You’ll deliver when you can. No need to add stress to your life. As a bonus client killer, don’t bother returning their calls. They probably just want to find out when their project will be delivered.
9. Spend your day on Facebook and Twitter. It’s so important to keep abreast of your friends’ activities and let them know your latest news. Working on your client’s project really eats into important social networking time.
10. Attend to household chores. Working from home allows you to see what needs to be done. Your office calls out for a major clean-up. The kitchen could use a new paint job. Put your client’s work on hold. After all, your needs are just as important as theirs.
11. Over promise and under deliver. Clients can be far too picky.  When you told clients they could include as many photographs as they wanted in their book, you didn’t literally mean that. Really, it just takes too much time to scan all those images. Select a sample of ten photos. This is sure to disappoint your client.  Bingo! Someone else who’ll help drive people away from your services.
12. Don’t ask for referrals. Why do you want more clients? You need time to work on your hobbies and household chores. There’s no room for more clients. Besides, asking for referrals just seems so needy.

Photo by James Jordan

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For most of the 190,000 years that humans have been alive on this earth, they’ve learned their most important information, including survival skills, culture, religion, etc., through stories. The human brain, in fact, is wired specifically so that stories, and storytelling, have a much stronger emotional impact than information that’s presented quantitatively or according to some other emotionless structure.

~ marketing guru, Michael Bosworth

It’s the right side of our brain that harbors our creativity and emotions. It’s where storytelling has its impact. People are drawn to telling their personal histories by such deep seated desires as  leaving a legacy, capturing fond memories, or finding meaning in their lives.  They’ll ultimately make a decision to engage your services based on emotional not quantitative information. If you’re not making “storytelling” a part of  your presentation, you’re losing clients. In a BNET interview with Michael Bosworth he says,

The emotional brain is where the ‘aha’ moments happen. Where the “I want that” or “I need that” feelings happen. The buyer has “gut reaction” and an image that allows them to make an emotional decision, such as the decision to trust someone or buy something. They can feel it and see it rather than quantifying.

How can you use storytelling to engage prospective clients?

Here are four tips:

1. Start with a story from your own experience. Your story should convey the delight, poignancy, and impact that life stories can have for individuals and their families. For me, the story I previously wrote, When Small Can Be Profound, about a dying mother and her young child is a powerful reminder of the invaluable  nature of our work.
2. Borrow a story. If  you don’t have a personal story  that suits your needs, then find one that does. For example, in  How a Prehistoric Cave Painting Came to My Rescue, I found symbolism that spoke to my suspicion that storytelling is part of our DNA. Another story I want to use some day is  from James Loewen’s book Lies My Teacher Told Me. He writes that in some African societies,

The recently departed whose time overlapped with people still here are the Sasha, the living dead. They are not wholly dead, for they live on in the memories of the living … when the last person knowing an ancestor dies, that ancestor leaves the Sasha for the Zamani, the dead.

One might say that the Zamani are truly dead for no one currently living knew them. What a powerful reason for ensuring that our loved one’s stories are preserved so that they might continue to live in the hearts of those far into the future.

3. Be a good listener. This shouldn’t be difficult for personal historians. That’s what we do! It’s important to listen for the stories that are behind a person’s interest in hiring you. Ask questions that will help draw these stories out. They might be stories that relate to leaving a recorded legacy or perhaps a document that speaks to their beliefs, values, and wisdom learned. Whatever it is, be assured that there are very real emotional reasons for someone wanting to record a life story.

4. Retell your clients’ stories. In retelling your clients’ stories you not only demonstrate that you’re a good listener but you also help reinforce your clients’ “right brain” reasons for wanting to record a life story. As Michael Bosworth says,

Then, and only then, are you ready to sell, because then you can retell the customer story with a different ending or a new sequel, with your offering playing a role in the story. It’s also useful to have a quiver of “here’s how I’ve helped other people” stories, so that you can help the prospect visualize a future that includes you and your offering.

What of your own experience? Have you used stories to promote your personal history service?

Image by Ronda  Del Boccio

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This week marks an important anniversary for me. Drum roll, please!

Two years ago I launched this blog and wrote my first post. Since then I’ve written  310 articles and 41,365 viewers have visited the site. A big thank you to all of you who’ve dropped by. And a special thanks to those who’ve taken the time to leave a comment or two.

From the collection of articles, I’ve selected 15 of my favorites. These are not necessarily the ones that received the most attention from readers but they are the posts that I really like and I think deserve an encore. For those of you who haven’t seen these posts, I invite you to stop awhile and have a read.

• What Do A Cartoonist, School Children and Life Stories Have in Common?

• 6 Lessons My Cat Taught Me About Time Management.

• Are Your Clients Extremely Satisfied With Your Service?

• When Small Can Be Profound.

• How a Prehistoric Cave Painting Came to My Rescue.

• Eight Lessons My Mom Taught Me About Marketing.

• 7 Essential Questions to Consider Before Offering a Personal History Service to the Terminally Ill.

• Our Favorite Things Have Stories to Tell.

• News Flash! Not Everyone Wants A Life Story Told.

• The Introvert’s 12 Step Plan for Painless Networking.

• 100 Free Resources for Personal Historians.

• What I’ve Learned About Getting “Truthful” Interviews.

• Don’t Pass Up This Keepsake.

• The Cluttered of The World Unite!

• 50 Fantastic Life Story Quotations!

Photo by Jule_Berlin

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This Monday’s Link Roundup will warm the hearts of “nappers”. If you’re like me, a nap is quite delicious. In fact, I consider myself an expert napper. Be sure to check out A midday nap markedly boosts the brain’s learning capacity. Apparently,  I’m getting smarter by the minute!

• The Importance of Storytelling in Marketing. “A story can be a really powerful way of illustrating the value of you product and in my experience is often the way that your prospects and customers will explain what you do to others.”

• A midday nap markedly boosts the brain’s learning capacity. “New research from the University of California, Berkeley, shows that an hour’s nap can dramatically boost and restore your brain power. Indeed, the findings suggest that a biphasic sleep schedule not only refreshes the mind, but can make you smarter.”

• YourNextRead Tells You What Book You Should Read Next. “Tell YourNextRead what book you just finished—and enjoyed!—and it will generate a web of eight related books. You can click on any of the books to learn more about it which will, in turn, generate a new web that’s based on that book. Alternatively you can use the thumbs up/down buttons to agree or disagree with the suggestions that YourNextRead gives you.”

• Thomas Edison – In His Own Words. “On October 21, 1929, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and President Herbert Hoover shared a stage in Schenectady, New York. Earlier in the evening, Albert Einstein had joined them via a recording made in Berlin, Germany and then sent to Schenectady for the occasion. The evening’s words were recorded on a device called a pallophotophone. Edison died two years later. The recordings were one of the few occasions in which Edison’s voice was ever recorded and possibly the last such recording every made of his voice.”

• Truth or Lie: How Memoir Writers Can Approach Truth and Healing. “The flurry about James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces and other memoirs that admittedly were made up hit the media with a big bang, bringing the age-old debate about what is acceptable when writing memoir—a “true” story.”

• Top Ten Most Popular Online Genealogy Magazines. “This list was prepared by Alexa. Alexa is the world’s leading company for measuring internet traffic. The company monitors the web traffic of millions of Internet sources, including thousands of genealogy sites. Web traffic is objectively categorized based on the actual number of visitors to each web site. From these Internet traffic statistics, Alexa maintains a list of the most popular online genealogy magazines.”

• Resources for Writing Memoir.“Last week I tweeted this advice on writing memoir: “Please don’t submit your memoir until you’ve read 20 good memoirs and 5 books on writing memoir – and learned from them…After my tweet, many people asked me for recommendations, so here they are.”

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Here then is an elaboration on my earlier post on referral partners that I hope addresses my colleague’s questions.

• This is a long term process. You’re involved in developing mutually supportive business relationships. It will take time, trust, and patience and  not all your efforts will bear fruit. If you’re looking for a quick fix, this isn’t the route to go.

• Create  your “ideal client” referral document. It’s helpful to compose a sketch of your perfect client and the follow-up approach you’ll use with each referred client. For example, will you contact your referral by telephone, letter, or by e-mail? How will you introduce yourself? How will you describe your referral partner’s role? Will you send promotional materials or wait until you have a positive response? Will you meet with referrals in their home or in some neutral location like a coffee shop? This document will clarify who you’re looking for and it will provide  your referral partners with a good overview of your referral strategy.  Don’t forget to add a few testimonials to your paper.

• Identify a referral partner. Start by choosing a business that likely serves similar clients as personal historians. Make it easy for yourself by identifying a professional you  already use and like. Perhaps you know a financial adviser, accountant, or chiropractor that would be willing to be a referral partner. Once you’ve established this professional as a willing partner, you can ask for names of others he or she would let you contact.

• Try the ” reverse introduction”. Over at the Duct Tape Marketing Blog, John Jantsch has a clever approach to starting a referral partnership. He calls it the Perfect Introduction in Reverse. You can watch John explain it in a short video here.  Basically the idea is to start by contacting a potential partner, explaining that you have clients that could benefit from her service or product.  It’s easier to start be offering something of value. For example, I’ve been in touch with a company that provides a complete package of services to assist seniors with moving.  It’s still early but with time the potential for referrals is there. Listen to John Jantsch here for a full explanation of the reversed introduction.

• Build a trusting relationship. Keeping referral partners is a matter of building professional trust. You want to be certain that clients you send to your partner are going to have a positive experience. Similar concerns exist for your partner.There are several ways you can go about developing trust. For instance:

• Offer a free seminar for your partner’s clients. Invite your referral partner to do the same for you.

• Write an article for their newsletter or website and ask for your partner to write something for your clients.

• Keep in touch. It’s important to nurture and care for the professional relationship you develop with your referral partners. Here are some things you can do:

• send a card or gift for every referral you receive.

• participate in their charity events.

• make regular phone calls.

• send an article that’s relevant to their work.

In a nutshell then, getting referral partners  is not about asking people to give you something for free. It’s about a mutually supportive relationship where each partner wins. And to make certain that the partnership is maintained, you have to find ways to keep in touch.

Photo by Search Engine People Blog

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Mom at 23 in 1941

My mom is ninety-two and a wise woman. She never had much schooling but she earned her doctorate at the university of life. She has a homespun wisdom that on reflection has taught me some vital marketing lessons. Here they are:

1. Never leave home without being carefully groomed. My mom always leaves her home neatly dressed and with her hair carefully coiffed. When I’m out in my community, I occasionally encounter former clients or workshop participants. Sometimes I find myself talking to a stranger about my work. I’m aware that I’m a walking billboard for personal history.  This means I need to look appropriately professional. No need for a suit and tie. But slouching around in sweat pants and ratty sneakers won’t do when you’re in the public eye.
2. Don’t forget to say thank you. It’s a small word that goes a long way to creating a good impression. My mom never fails to says thank you for a kindness shown her. She always sends a thank you card after receiving a gift. Make it a point in your marketing to thank clients. I send a note thanking a potential client even if we don’t end up working together. I also send birthday and holiday cards to former clients. It’s a special touch that people appreciate and remember.
3. Don’t waste time on ungrateful people. Mom is sweet but she’s also strong. If people don’t show some reciprocal kindness or interest, she drops them. There’s a good marketing lesson here. There’s no point trying to promote your personal history services to people who aren’t interested or don’t care. It’s better to concentrate your energy where you’re likely to get the best response.
4. Answer letters immediately. Mom  is a dying breed of letter writers. She still pens several letters a week to friends and family. And what’s crucial is that she never lets a week pass before she answers a letter. People appreciate her promptness. In marketing our services it’s vital to  respond to queries in a timely manner. It creates an aura of efficiency, eagerness, and professionalism.
5. Be meticulous. Mom never let a speck of dust settle on her furniture. Her home was always immaculate. Even today she prides herself in doing the very best she can even though she is quite frail. The marketing lesson is that all your print, audio-video, and website materials must be carefully designed and first class.
6. Monday is laundry day. Mom never multitasked. Each day of the week was set aside for specific chores whether it was laundry, baking, cleaning, or gardening. It’s easy to become hit-and-miss with our marketing.  Make sure you schedule marketing time each week and stick to it. Better yet, why not make Monday your marketing day?
7. Be frugal and avoid debt. Mom was a child of the Great Depression. She never spent money she didn’t have and always looked for bargains and sales. She’s passed that fiscal conservatism on to me. I look for the most cost efficient ways to market my services. For example, this website/blog cost me all of twenty bucks a year. I avoid “gadgets” and constant upgrading and use my equipment and software as long as it still does the job.
8. Don’t put on airs. Mom can’t abide pretentiousness or arrogance. There’s a good marketing lesson here. Avoid overselling or hyping your services. People can smell phoniness a mile off.

Thanks, Mom. You’ve taught me well.

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**Don’t forget to vote on my poll: How long have you been a personal historian? Click here to vote.**

I’ve a confession to make. I’m not great at asking for referrals. I usually end up mumbling something lame to my clients  like, “If you know of anyone who might like to use my services, please let them know about me.” That’s it. Then I’m out the door.

I decided it was time to get my act together and do a better job. I’ve been doing some research on referral strategies and here’s what I’ve learned.  I hope you’ll find it helps you as well.

• Don’t forget to ask. The best time to ask for a referral is when you’ve delivered your book or video to your clients and they’re thrilled with your work.

• Develop a large network of referral partners. In addition to your own clients, think of  five to ten occupations that deal with the same clients as  personal historians such as:  financial planners, home care services for seniors, accountants, funeral directors, professional genealogists, naturopaths, and so on. Now select ten people from each category and arrange to meet them so that you can describe your services and learn more about what they offer. When you find people who are prepared to refer clients to you, add them to your referral partners list. In time you can build a referral list with fifty or more names. Make sure to follow up with your network every three months or so.

• Be active in your community. Make a point of joining business associations and community groups. Your participation will in time lead to referrals.

• Provide referrals. Giving referrals for others is likely to generate in-kind referrals from those you’ve helped.

• Make yourself a low risk referral. Let’s face it. People don’t want to take a chance on referring someone they don’t know very well. They stand to lose  if you screw up. People want  assurances. Here’s what you need to do.

0 Be likable.  No one wants to refer someone who’s rude or patronizing.
0 Be extremely reliable. Show up for meetings on time, complete work as scheduled, and answer e-mails  and telephone calls promptly.
0 Provide free consultations.
0 Provide money back guarantees.

• Give your referrers the resources they need. Make it easy for them by leaving behind some business cards and brochures.

• Don’t be vague about the type of client you want. It will help if you give them an accurate picture of your ideal client. You might say something like, “I’m looking for clients who are professional women in their 50′s who have one or both parents still living.”

• Be clear about what you expect. Do you want them to set up a meeting with just you and the prospective client? Or would you like them to be there as well? Is it OK to use their names when calling referred clients?

What referral approaches work for you? Let me know. I’d love to hear from you.

Photo by Zach  Klein

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“You know a design is good when you want to lick it.”~ Steve Jobs

________________________

We all love good design. That’s why the iPod and Ikea have been so successful. Design is the difference between something that is OK and something that is memorable. If you hope to have a successful personal history business producing books, you’ll want to include a designer on your team. Here  are four important benefits of good design.

1. Good design affects people emotionally. You’ll lose clients if your books have great content but look homemade. When prospective clients see your work, they don’t have time to read the content. They’ll be primarily influenced by how attractive the books look. Advances in neuroscience have shown that people tend to act first on emotion, then follow it with reasoning to support their choice. The more people are  emotionally drawn to your work, the more likely they’ll hire you.
2. Good design conveys credibility. Don Norman, a former Apple design guru, sees the value of producing good design. He says,“We all have the feeling that attractive things work better.” If you produce  first class books, your company projects quality, care, and professionalism.
3. Good  design supports and enhances the content. It’s true that content is vital. But if you have to struggle to read a book, you’re not likely to enjoy it. We can all recall coping with a poorly designed book with type that’s too small or inappropriate for the subject, no white space for the text to breath, lack of headings to provide guidance, and photos placed without any seeming logic. Remember that in addition to your client, your book will be read by others. Your books are your calling card. They speak in your absence. Will your books speak of quality and great design?
4. Good design differentiates you from the others. It’s becoming a crowded field in the world of self publishing. What will set you apart from all the others  is  design that is compelling.

Image by Juhan  Sonin

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**Don’t forget to vote on my poll: How long have you been a personal historian? Click here to vote.**

There are some entertaining items in this Monday’s Link Roundup. One of my favorites is Vintage Tech Ads: The 15 Funniest Videos. How times have changed! And if you want to check out the popularity of your surname take a look at Find the Popularity of Your Surname. My surname, Curtis, is most popular in Australia. It surprised me. I would have said England.

• The Rise of Self-Publishing. “Last year, according to the Bowker bibliographic company, 764,448 titles were produced by self-publishers and so-called microniche publishers. (A microniche, I imagine, is a shade bigger than a self.) This is up an astonishing 181 percent from the previous year.”[Thanks to Mary M. Harrison at Morning Glory Memoirs for alerting me to this item.]

• a brief history of book printing and binding. “Youtube is an invaluable source to help us visualize a process. Here is a curated overview of book printing, from letterpress, the same process that produced the Gutenberg Bible, to the Expresso Bookmaker, and back to contemporary letterpress and hand binding.”

• The Practical Archivist. “Hi there! I’m delighted that you found my corner of cyberspace. There are oodles of Practical Archivist articles for you to enjoy, with information and advice that will help you become a better family archivist.      The only question remaining is…Where would you like to start?” [ Thanks to Sarah White for alerting me to this item.]

• Vintage Tech Ads: The 15 Funniest Videos. “IT World has a humorous look back at hi-tech advertising videos of only a few years ago. Remember these ads with robot phone wars and naked spokeswomen in bathtubs? But looking back on them now, it’s hard not to find them amusing. And, yes, a little embarrassing. Cassette tape players, the Magnavox Video Writer, MS-DOS 5.0, and a young William Shatner all await you.”

• Singing Out. Written by Molly Beer and David King Dunaway, the book “is culled from more than 150 interviews and the story it tells spans seven decades and cuts across a wide swath of generations and perspectives, shedding light on the musical, political, and social aspects of the folk revival movement.  In the original article below Beer looks at the experience of writing a book with another author.”

• Find the Popularity of Your Surname on PublicProfiler.org.  “Just how popular is your surname? Is it popular in other countries? This web site will tell you. It won’t find your ancestors but, with less-popular surnames, it may give clues as to the emigration patterns of extended family members. Don’t try this on Smith or Jones, but with less-common surnames, it may provide clues.”

• What Makes Great Marketing… Great? “Marketing has always been about telling great stories. The problem is that telling great stories is not an easy thing to do. The reason most Marketers struggle with telling great stories is because they have not spent enough time deconstructing what makes a great story. Ira Glass is here to help. Glass is a well-known radio personality with NPR. He is the producer and host of This American Life, and there is probably nobody more suited to explain the schematics behind brilliant storytelling than he is.”

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