Diamond Website Conversion’s Comments (group member since Mar 18, 2010)

Diamond Website Conversion’s comments from the Conversations on Website Conversion group.

One of the main messages of this chapter is to emphasize planning. Making a plan and controlling every aspect of a presentation gives you a much greater opportunity to present yourself and your product in the best possible light. It is also a block against forgetting anything important or interesting that you would like to present. When you just wing it, you are leaving yourself open to distraction, and the presentation may end up with gaps.

Another idea presented in this chapter is about big-picture thinking. The visual presented (30,000-foot level versus Sea-level) makes it easier to see the big picture. You can start with big, broad questions (the 30,000-foot ones), then move down into more particulars until you get to the nitty-gritty sea-level question. This format helps to convey your interest in the customer’s needs and wants, and it shows that you are putting them above you own interest in a quick sale. When you start with questions about their needs (like the script on page 82), they are more likely to respond positively to the sea-level questions.
The three take-away ideas this chapter were all rather different. Which one did you need to hear the most? Which did you like best?

Chapter 6 emphasizes the importance of remaining true to who you are. There can be a lot of pressure to present yourself in certain ways, and to try and sell things in a certain way. More important that sticking with the industry standard is being yourself. When you are trying to be something that you are not, your audience will sense it and will wonder why you are being so “phony.” Not only that, but chances are you will feel awkward and uncomfortable and will not have near so much fun as you might have.

In remaining true to yourself, you still need to answer the audience’s So-What question. You need to present your own So-What value. A perfectly fine (or even amazing) product or service can be dead in the water if the audience doesn’t have confidence in the person telling them about it. In this chapter the author talked about a personal biography. Look at the steps on page 64 and go to http://www.sowhatbook.com
to look at some examples. What sort of things about yourself would you include in your own personal biography?

One of the main points of this chapter is that you need to really be in touch with the So What benefit that your customers are looking to derive from your product, and what different benefits they could derive from your competitor’s products. Especially in today’s world, with rapidly changing and improving technologies, you need to make certain that you stay current and don’t invest in things that haven’t got a great So What benefit for your clients. Unlike AT&T’s videophone, you want to continue creating and offering products with the highest use value.

Imagine that you are one of your customers. Then complete the sentence on page 43: “All I really care about is…” When somebody comes to you, what are they really looking for? Chances are it isn’t something that you thought was the main offering of your product or service. Check the chart of the ostensible and So What benefits of some products on page 44 and construct something similar about what you offer consumers.

This chapter is all about the So What Filter. The So-What-Filter is a method for creating communications that are relevant and compelling for your listeners. To employ this method, you need to examine a script of your communication. You need to then see exactly how much of it is really, truly, relevant to the interests of the audience. This is a far cry from just a salespitch or stating your own credentials. The most important thing is to focus on why it is important and why the customer should care. You can use the So What Matrix to decide on which information is necessary to your conversation: For What, So What, and Now What (on page 32).
Analyze a couple of communications that you have had lately according to the So What Matrix. For what reason were you communicating? Why was it important to the audience? What was the effect of the communication supposed to me?

This chapter introduces the “So What” concept. It reiterates a couple of the points from the previous chapter: think about your audience and what they need, and don’t concentrate so hard on what you’re trying to say that you forget the purpose of communicating. It also introduces another strategy for developing the So What mentality: be genuinely interested in the listeners. Take that interest and use it to present to them the things that they will find most useful or pertinent about your product.

The So What question means to ask yourself before you say or present anything “What does this mean to my audience? Why will they care?” Think about something that you have presented lately (a page on your website, a piece of direct mail, or even just a conversation) and see if you answered those questions. Highlight the portions that are most relevant to a reader, and gauge what percent was merely wasted space. Do you think that you can redesign it with the customer, rather than the product, in mind?

Changing how you communicate isn’t just about changing what you say or even how you say it—at the heart of it, you can only really change the way you communicate by changing the way that you think. You have to learn to approach things from other angles, and how to see what the customer would find valuable about your product. Though this sounds like advice for your personal life, communication is all about the other person. The burden in on the speaker to make what they say interesting and (most importantly) relevant to the listener.

On page thirteen, the book lists two reasons why a person might pick up this book. In either case, you are looking to improve the way that your communication is received by listeners/readers/websurfers. What aspects of your communication aren’t being as well received as you would like? Since the strategies and topics in our book are also relevant in everyday life, these can range from trying to talk with your children, manage your employees, or putting out an advertising message.

This chapter does a great job of doing just what Mark Magnacca is going to teach us to do—communicate something other than “this is what I’m going to sell you” to the customer (in this case, us!). It begins by telling us the value of his book on the very first page of text. The bulleted list on page 3 offers some very tantalizing prizes for being able to become a “So-What communicator.” Being interested in the customer’s needs and communicating that interest is a vital part of communicating the value that your product can give to them.

The three take-away ideas are the most important things to remember about this chapter. The great thing about a book focused on communication is that these points often apply not only to business, but to life in general as well. What do you anticipate will be the hardest part of learning how to communicate more effectively?

Like a lot of other greening practices, the key to greening your purchasing is research. Research first the things that you already purchase to establish a baseline to measure any possible improvement from—if you don’t know where you started, you can’t know where you’ve gone! Remember that the “greenness” of an item isn’t just a measure of the efficiency of a product in use; it also encompasses the energy it took to produce that item. The chapter provides a lot of links to online information that is applicable to purchasing, from ENERGY STAR and EPA guidelines to government websites describing the tax incentives for upgrading to greener equipment.

The chapter also discusses establishing a green purchasing policy. This will be an important part of your green mission: showing an ongoing commitment to getting and keeping your company green. Examine your current purchasing practices. If this is too much to concentrate on, choose just one aspect of your purchasing such as cleaning supplies or paper. How green are you right now? What space for improvement is there? Look at the steps on pages 240-242, and think about implementing a purchasing plan for those products.

Chapter fourteen goes into more detail about a specific aspect of green transportation—green business travel. By far the most effective way to green your business travel is to have less of it, or none at all. For unavoidable travel, consider using (in order of greenness) trains, other public transportation, or car/vanpools. If you have to rent a car, ask for a fuel-efficient one, or a Hybrid-electric car. Though they typically cost more to rent, you can save money on gasoline, and avoid the appearance of greenwashing. Try to find a green hotel in the city that you are staying in (there are many now using environmentally-friendly non-aerosol cleaners), and always opt out of daily towel and sheet service.

If you are looking to eliminate travel altogether but still want face-to-face interaction, there is now technology to meet your needs. Video conferencing (complete with audio, and document sharing) is not a commonly-used tool. There are many programs which allow you to accomplish this effectively over a high-speed internet connection.

Do you travel a lot in the course of business? This could be “yes” even if you just have to drive a few miles to work every day—every little bit of greening counts! Could you bike or take public transportation to work? If that isn’t an option, could you telecommute?

This chapter ties in well with the last book we read, Inbound Marketing. The staggering number of direct mailings required to reach just a few people reveals the inherent inefficiencies of this method. Fortunately, there are a lot of alternatives to this method, especially since the advent of social media and the prolific uses of the internet. While being online is not carbon neutral (somewhere a server is humming to keep your content up, and customers’ computers will have to be on to access it), it is definitely easier on the environment than processing paper.

There will always be some who prefer to be reached via direct mail, so eliminating that entirely may be a bad plan. Instead, focus on greening your mailings—use soy inks and high PCW paper, and consider putting a “please recycle” label on it. Also, remember to practice good list hygiene—eliminate duplicates and bad addresses (this is great for e-mail lists too!).

What advice from this chapter did you find most useful and applicable to your marketing strategy? Did you get any new ideas that you’ll put into your greening plan?

Transportation is an inescapable facet of any business. People have to come to your business either as employees or customers, and you may also be transporting materials at some point or another. Even if the only impact that can be made is reducing the idling time of a delivery truck, if every small business made this change, more than 270 tons of carbon dioxide would be kept from being emitted into the atmosphere. Buying and hiring local will not only diminish the amount of emissions, but it will ultimately save your business money.
The essential thing for effectively greening transportation and shipping is research—you have to know the practices of the shipping company in order to make the greenest choice. Fortunately, the EPA has compiled a list of “SmartWay” partners (you can find the URL on page 189).

What are your businesses current transportation and shipping practices? Have you considered providing incentives for employees to carpool?

To green your human resources, you can follow the same outline as greening other as other aspects of your business. It revolves around the same two principles as many greening program: reducing paper waste and decreasing energy emissions. Getting your employees involved in your greening practices is not only essential to the success of those programs, it is the basis of green human resource practices. You can provide benefits to employees to encourage their contributions to greening the impact of your business. You can offer commuting benefits such as incentives to carpool, or opportunities to telecommute.

HR Administration is another great candidate for greening. There are a lot of places to eliminate paper waste by moving digital. Even hiring can be made greener. You can accept resumes online, and replace initial interviews with a phone interview.

What changes to HR practices can your business support? What kind of benefits might you enact to get your employees involved in your green mission?

Hi Everyone - the next book we will be reading is "So What?" by Mark Magnacca. As we read in "Inbound Marketing", engaging with your customers and prospects is vitally important to businesses today. But how to get the conversation going correctly? Mark Magnacca will show us how to structure the conversation so that our customers are engaged, right from the start.

Greening your office can apply to every single thing purchased and used by your business. From sticky-notes to copy paper, you can adjust two basic facets of your office supply usage: waste and purchasing. Purchasing greener alternatives is becoming increasingly easier, as creating an environmentally-friendly business becomes more mainstream. Many big retailers now carry products made with at least a little post-consumer-waste. Paper Mate now offers pencils made with 100% PCW, and BIC sells pens made with 74% PCW. With sites like TheGreenOffice.com, making eco-responsible choices in purchasing is easier than ever.

Of course, the best way to save resources is to not use them in the first place. This chapter places a lot of emphasis on going digital and trying to reduce the amount of paper that you use, rather than just advocating the usage of products made with a high percentage of PCW. How digital is your business? Are you more likely to print a memo or send out a group e-mail? If you aren’t as digital as you could be, consider phasing in digital receipts, invoices, memos, etc.

Water waste is something that we all have to contend with—even if we aren’t business owners. Fortunately, due to its ubiquitousness there are a lot of strategies that have been developed to deal with the innate inefficiencies of water usage. Before you start making changes, you should take a measurement of your current water usage. Once you have done this, you can start making changes and measuring their effects. A first, easy change to make is to install water aerators on sinks and hoses that you use. You can check to see if you are using low-flow toilets. If not, you don’t necessarily need to replace your fixtures—you can simply install a water-displacer which will keep the tank from refilling entirely.

By the time we get through Part 2 of this book, we’ll already be well on our way to creating more efficient and greener business. Had you ever considered streamlining your water-usage? What sort of impact do you think changing your water practices will have on your overall efficiency? Even if your business is not water intensive, there is no reason not to become efficient where and how you can.

On page 128, this chapter tells us that “the ultimate goal is to design operations so that you employ the most energy-efficient technology available to implement the most resource reducing practices possible.” This definitely seems like a tall order, but taken in small steps it is completely do-able. This chapter also has a lot of lists of things to do to improve your energy efficiency in every energy-using aspect of your business. A fair portion of the extra energy costs that you could be incurring are from insidious sources like “vampire power” or a building which is poorly equipped to deal with the weather. While some of the changes which will be necessary may be expensive (such as replacing windows or insulation), the gains in efficiency can make up for the up-front cost over a number of months.

Take note of some of the ways in which your business isn’t as efficient as it could be. These things can be something as simple as noticing how many appliances you leave plugged in, or taking an inventory of the single-paned windows in your building. What can you start changing in your business? What changes can you start phasing in this year?

We all heard growing up that we need to reduce, reuse, and recycle. This chapter is centered on reducing wastes and recycling. Most people focus their attention on the first and the last: reducing and recycling. Reusing is just as important as the other two things in the list. What makes it more difficult to enact is some of the overhead that can be involved. Make certain that breakrooms are stocked with real dishes, and encourage leaving the plastic/paper utensils for another place. Reusing and recycling are two sides of the same coin—part of your plan to reuse should include purchasing paper products made from post-consumer waste.

Reducing, reusing, and recycling are the base of any greening project, in your business or at home. Where is your business prone to waste? Is there a way that you can change that waste into something that is reusable instead?

This chapter takes us back to the old phrase “communication is key.” When you are greening your business there is always the danger of appearing to be simply greenwashing, to keeping communication open, honest, and clear is incredibly important to your continued success. Your green mission statement (from chapter three) is an important tool for this communication, but there are also other ways that you can begin communicating your green plans to current and potential customers, stakeholders, and employees. There is a section in the chapter (starting on page 83) of different tools for communication. They cover quite a range—from signs to newsletters to social media. If your business has a social media presence, you should definitely communicate your green message there.

Taking a varied approach will help to spread your message as far as possible. What is your plan for communicating your green mission statement? Are you going to be a “one-man-team” or will there be others working with you to communicate?

Going from an idea to a fully-fledged plan can be quite a daunting process. It is nearly always easier to decide to do something that it is to actually go about doing it. In this chapter, we are taken step-by-step through the process of creating a greening plan. In order to create a plan to get your business somewhere, you must first know exactly where you are. Measurement is key to understanding what you are doing now, and to see what changes your green efforts are making. There are a great many things to measure: the usage levels and costs of water, electricity, paper, lightbulbs, et cetera. Because of the overwhelming nature of trying to go green all at once, this chapter recommends that you start with one item—say, water usage—and go from there. Nothing will leave your efforts dead in the water like feeling overwhelmed.

Where do you think you will start? This is all preliminary, so it doesn’t matter if you’re not sure yet. If you don’t know where your journey will begin, try to start prioritizing things that you can change and make more efficient (greener) in your business.

Chapter four is an introduction to “Thinking Green.” If green-ness hasn’t been a big part of your mindset or plan before, then it can be hard to reorient both yourself and your business into a more eco-conscious space. I was struck by the first section about changing workplace attitudes. While this does start with you, it will be impossible for your business to become truly green without the support of all your co-workers and employees. Working from the ground up, starting with what happened inside your own building, is a good strategy for easing into becoming green.

Try and gauge the current interest level of your co-workers. Are they gung-ho or reluctant environmentalists? What sort of changes and encouragements can you create to help get the entire team on board?