News To Use

Welcome to the April 2007 edition of ChamberExpress™ News to Use. Our goal:  provide ideas, information and news to help chambers of commerce succeed online.

In This Edition

1. Best Practice: C'mon In!
2. Tools of the Trade: Put Your Homepage To Work 
3. News from ChamberExpress™: Better Business Development? Informational Interviewing Is The Key

1. Best Practices: C'mon In!

So how do you help your visitors have a positive experience on your website?  Create a concise homepage that allows them to find desired information quickly.  Here are some ideas for developing an appealing home page:

• For many people, websites are difficult to navigate – no two sites are exactly the same so, with every new site, the visitor has to learn how it works.  Recognize this moment of difficulty and you'll see that the text on your homepage has to be very clear and help direct the visitor forward to the information he or she is looking for.
• Understand what your visitors are looking for.  Many times, homepages primarily serve the needs of the organization, not the visitor.  To write a homepage for the visitor, write headings and links with an understanding of what visitors want, and what they need to know in order to move forward from the homepage.
• Realize that visitors scan your headings and links so, if you want to help your visitors, reduce the number of headings and links on the homepage, and make the text for links as clear and unambiguous as possible.
• Be relevant in the words and phrases you use.  At its simplest, this means avoiding corporate-speak and industry jargon.  It also means finding out which words and terms your visitors use when thinking about your programs and services.  The easiest way to do this is to research your log files and see which words and phrases visitors use most often in their searches.

* Excerpted from a online article by Nick Usborne.

 2. Tools of the Trade:  Put Your Homepage To Work

A chamber's homepage is not only the starting point for most visitors; it is also your “face to the world.”  Improving your homepage's usability multiplies the entire site's value, so make sure you follow these key guidelines:

1. Include a one-sentence tagline that summarizes the chamber's purpose.
2. Write a window title with good visibility in search engines and bookmark lists. Note:  Don’t start with words like “The” or “Welcome” unless you want to be alphabetized under “T” or “W.”
3. Include a “Search” box, an important part of any website. When users want to search, they typically scan the homepage looking for “the little box where I can type.”
4. Begin link names with the most important keyword. Links are the action items on a homepage and, when each link starts a relevant word, it’s easier for scanning eyes to differentiate it from other links on the page.
5. Offer easy access to recent homepage features.  Visitors often will remember articles, products or promotions that were featured on the homepage, but they won't know how to find them once the features move inside the site. To help users locate key items, keep a short list of recent features on the homepage and supplement it with a link to a permanent archive of all other homepage features.
6. Don't over-format. Homepages don’t require elaborate illustrations, boxes and colors. Simple formatting is usually easier to read and, thus, more useful.
7. Use meaningful graphics. Images are powerful communicators, but can turn off visitors if they seem frivolous or irrelevant. For example, it's almost always best to show photos of real people connected to the company/topic than photos of models.

  *Excerpted from an online article by Jakob Nielsen.

3. News from ChamberExpress™:  Better Business Development? Informational Interviewing Is The Key

At ChamberExpress, we're out to help you solve tough business problems. What could be harder than "sales" - bringing in new members, finding sponsors or selling chamber products/services to generate revenue? That's why when we read this piece by leadership and business expert Jack Schreitmueller (www.resoluteconsultingroup.com), we knew we had to pass it along!

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How many “networking” events have you attended over the last year? 2? 10?  I’ll bet the events consisted of a room full of business types with high expectations, a speaker or presentation of some sort, lots of business card trading and lots of “lets-have-lunch” commitments.  Sound familiar?  Looking back on these events, how much business did you actually realize as a result of attending? Too often, the answer is “none.”

That is because the traditional networking model Americans use for business development is bankrupt.  Somehow, we feel we can ask others for money without having established relationships with them. Then, we resort to an even more dubious methodology: “cold calling.”  A better process exists.  But it takes what most Americans feel they lack: time, discipline and a willingness to listen first and talk second.

MAKING THE LEAP TO EXTRAORDINARY PERFORMANCE

What if we took charge of our business development model by creating lasting, meaningful relationships instead of short-term transactional events that always go away when we need them most?

It’s possible but it takes a major shift in leadership, and leadership’s perception of how we really develop business.  This means creating a new priority: instead of quarterly number-generating as the key indicator of success, a focus on annual relationship management takes its place.

The cornerstone of advanced relationship management is mastering the process of informational interviewing -- meeting and learning about people, their businesses and their specific needs… without any expectations outside of making a new set of friends.  Now this takes discipline, since most compensation and P&L models are based strictly upon pure numbers and not the relationships that create those numbers.

THE ANATOMY OF AN INFORMATIONAL INTERVIEW

Informational interviewing takes all the risk we perceive in “cold calling” and flushes it right down the drain.  In informational interviewing, we make it “safe” for the people we are calling upon.  We promise them, in no uncertain terms, that the purpose of our outreach is to build a new relationship, regardless of whether or not it results in business today, tomorrow, next year… or never.  How’s that for a low-risk proposition?  It takes a real jerk to turn down someone who comes across as honest, sincere and holding no separate agendas.  And, when the real jerks of the world do rear their ugly heads in informational interviewing, we simply de-select going forward with them.  This places the party initiating the outreach in control instead of the old hat-in-hand dance we see in business every day.

It sounds something like this:

“John, my name is Bob Bartlett.  I’m a Partner with Flipp, Flopp and Bopp, and I met you last week at the Petunia County Chamber meeting.  Our firm realizes all of its revenue through referrals, and without creating and earning meaningful relationships, there are no referrals.  The purpose of my call to you is to hopefully initiate a relationship with you, John.  Please understand that in reaching out to you, I expect nothing in return except the opportunity to learn more about you and your company, so that I can speak usefully about you to others who may need your services.  Should you see my firm as a resource down the road, great.  But that is not my expectation.  Might we meet over coffee next Tuesday morning, or would Thursday afternoon work better for you?”

This can be done via e-mail, voice mail or in person.  No matter.  Done frequently, the results can be huge.

NOW, YOU’RE IN CHARGE

Place informational interviewing into action for your organization, and watch what happens.  Instead of waiting for the world to come to you, you take your story to the world, and the world will remember your honesty and what you have to offer.  Keep all those new relationships in the loop, and, inevitably, you will be called upon to assist.  And now you are in the Big Leagues of business development.