Call me. I can make your employees happy to read the things they’re required to read.

Happy employees = happy customers = increased demand for your services = happy you.

Ken Harrison
thecopypro.com
631 446-1689

This is a quick story about someone getting it right.

My wife ordered a small electronics carrying case from Amazon.com. Just something to protect her ipod touch. Unfortunately, she didn’t read the dimensions correctly and it didn’t fit the ipod touch.

We went to the Amazon site to see their return procedure and we were not pleased. This was to be another pain in the butt. Nothing, it seems, is easy anymore. She would have to email Amazon to get a return authorization (RTA), repackage the case, and go to the post office to send it back.

Much to her delight, when she received a return email from Amazon.com with what she thought would be an RTA, she received instead a pleasant surprise. In return for being such a good customer, Amazon.com was crediting her account for the full purchase price, and she was able to keep the case to do with what she would.

No repacking, no trip to the post office. Just a credit and a free case. Leaving my wife a happy customer.

Do you think my wife will buy from Amazon.com again?

ABSOLUTELY!

That is good customer service.

Every person who exits your location, hangs up from your phone contact, puts down your letter or deletes your email has an impression of your business that will have an impact on your future relation with them. Or, more precisely, their relationship with you. The impression they are left with will determine if they will ever do business with you (again).

This is not left to first impressions either. Every time they have contact with you, or your representatives, clerks, waitstaff, salespeople, etc., they will leave with a new impression. You know the adage, “What have you done for me lately?”

Whether they are making contact with you to make a new purchase, compliment you on a past purchase, complain about a bad experience… whatever the reason, they are taking notes on how you take care of them. Unless you have a product or service that is truly unique and cannot be obtained anywhere else, if you treat them as an annoyance, there is a good chance they will be taking their business elsewhere.

Pay attention to the golden rules of customer service to retain your business’s most important asset, its customers.

1. The customer is always right. – It’s true. Even when you think they’re wrong, they’re right. Whatever complaint they have about your product is their perception of your product and you’d better not tell them their perception is wrong. That’s like calling someone a liar… not a good thing to do.

2. Treat your customer the same way you expect to be treated. - When you spend your money on a product or service, you expect to get what you pay for. If it’s anything less than what you expect, you have every right to be upset about it.

3. Have every customer facing employee understand your philosophy and buy into it before hiring them. – Every employee is “you.” Your customers or prospects don’t make a distinction. Harry’s Sign Co. is Harry’s Sign Co. whether I’m speaking to Harry himself, or his phone rep. It doesn’t matter to your customer. If Joe, the phone rep, leaves his customers with a bad taste in their mouth, they will leave Harry’s business. And there is a very good chance that Harry will never even know why they left. Very few will take the time to tell Harry that he has a problem in his customer service dept.

Those three rules are the foundation of a very solid philosophy. One that will keep customers happy and coming back to do business with you.

Sometimes it’s hard to know what you should be focusing on …

Should you pick a niche? Take that new course on that hot copywriting opportunity? Beef up your skills? Or write a letter to send to that new source of clients? It can feel like you’re constantly taking two steps back for every step you take forward.

So if you’re feeling frustrated from not making the money you want while you hear stories about other people breaking six figures and living the life that you dreamed of, then you’ll want to read what I have to say …

Because today I’m going to give you a step-by-step strategy that can ensure you’ll stop that cycle and make this year your most profitable ever.

Not only that, you’ll become more focused, productive and confident. Plus, when you apply this strategy, you’re sure to move into the top earners in your field.

Seem like a big promise to make?

It’s not.

This simple but critical strategy is one that income earners in the top three percent use. I’ll lay it all out for you in just a minute, but first I want to demonstrate the importance of what I’m about to tell you by asking you to consider the following …

How much time do you spend preparing for a party or other event at your house?

Based on my experience, I’m guessing quite a few hours. On the extreme side, you might even invest weeks for a big event like the one my husband and I throw every year called Music on the Marsh. This year, we easily spent 60 hours painting, doing home renovations, cleaning, working in the yard, creating invitations, planning a menu, preparing food, building a stage for a live guitar performance and setting up sound equipment.

Now answer this—how many hours do you spend making a plan to achieve your goals? An hour? A day? A weekend? Most people I know take an hour or so to jot down their goals …

Granted, the party I described was more elaborate than most of the parties I throw—my point is that you put a lot of time and effort to prepare for this one evening, but how many hours do you spend planning for every day of your life?

Now I know you’ve heard this before … that is how important it is to write down your goals. And there’s a good reason for that. It works! But without a written action plan, it’s easy to get caught up going task to task, feeling unfocused and overwhelmed. When you’re unfocused, your output reflects that and it will never get any better if you don’t make a change.

But when you invest the time to create a written action plan, you’ll have every step laid out. Soon you’ll easily stay focused and avoid getting sidetracked on every “next best thing” you read about that can “make your business better.” In essence, you’ll stop asking, “What else can I do?” and instead look at your plan and know what you need to do next.

In fact, making a clear, written plan for your goals can help you work less hard and could very well be the one thing stopping you from living the writer’s lifestyle. Sound too simple an explanation?

Consider the results from the Harvard Study that discovered the answer to why 3% of Harvard MBAs make ten times as much as the other 97% combined.

In 1979, interviewers asked new graduates, “Have you set clear, written goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them?”

The results showed that 84% had no specific goals at all. Another 13% had goals, but they were not written down on paper. And only 3% had clear, written goals and plans to accomplish them.

In 1989, the interviewers again interviewed the graduates of that class. The results? The 13% of the class who had goals were earning, on average, twice as much as the 84% who had no goals at all.

But the real kicker was this:

The 3% who had clear, written goals with a plan were earning, on average, ten times as much as the other 97% put together!

Note the second part of that statement says “and plans to accomplish them.” Here are twelve steps to create your own written plan to accomplish your goals so you can move into that top 3%.

Step one: Take five minutes to write 10 things you want to happen in the next 12 months. Making a quick list like this first helps you to identify what you want most by tapping into your top-of-mind awareness.

Step two: Write down everything you’d like to achieve and prioritize them. Now that you know your top priorities, write down everything else you’d like to achieve and put them in order of importance. This might include smaller goals like reading one book a month.

Step three: Turn your goals into SMART goals. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Results-focused and Time-bound. Rewrite your goals so each goal fits these parameters. For instance, if your goal is to quit your job and become a full-time freelancer, your newly rewritten goal may read, “Attain enough retainer clients to make $75,000 by the end of November, 2011.”

TIP: Use present statements. For example, if your goal is “make $100,000 this year,” then write out “I am earning $100,000 per year.”

Step four: Make a detailed action plan for each goal. To do this, you’ll need to:

* Write down everything you can think of to do to achieve your goal.
* Identify all the obstacles you might encounter to reaching your goal. (Include ideas on how you can overcome these.)
* Make a list of any additional skills or knowledge you will need to acquire.
* Put together a list of people whose help or cooperation you’ll need.
* List the resources you’ll need to achieve each goal.

TIP: Block out enough time to work on nothing but your action plan. I can’t stress this enough. And confess that at times I’ve felt I should be doing something else like writing, learning or getting clients. But this is more important. Besides if you can’t make time to write down a plan for your goals, how will you ever find time to achieve them?

Consider turning this into a reward for yourself by building a relaxing goal-setting weekend into your plan for next year. I have a few friends who do this. One friend rents a cabin in the woods. She spends two days hiking, reading, meditating and goal planning. Another friend plans a goal-planning weekend with her husband, mixing a romantic getaway with yearly planning. Once home, they not only have their action plan for the year, but feel refreshed and ready to tackle their plan.

Step five: Organize your action plan for each goal. Prioritize by what is more important and what is less important. Then put things in order of what you need to do before you can do something else.

Step six: Set deadlines. Set a deadline to achieve each step in your action plan. By setting small, practical steps with deadlines that take you towards your goals, you’ll see real progress. If you miss a deadline, just readjust and update your plan.

TIP: To make this easier, start with your yearly goals first, then break deadlines down like this: six month goals, quarterly goals, monthly goals, weekly goals, and daily goals.

Step seven: Create a yearly calendar for your plan. Once you’ve made your action plan, transfer the details of your plan to a yearly fold-out calendar. You can get one from Franklin Covey for $2.95. It’s a great tool for long-range planning and gives you a way to see everything at once.

TIP: Don’t clutter this calendar up. Use this for your action plan steps only.

Step eight: Invest in the resources you need to make a change. Often when you want to make a change, it requires resources. For example, if you want to get more clients, you might have to invest in a course on how to do this or stamps and mailing supplies to launch a direct response campaign. Have realistic expectations about what you need and make that investment.

Step nine: Visualize success. Visualizing how good it will feel to achieve your goals can be very powerful. In fact, this has worked for me over and over. For example, a little over three years ago, while visiting an acquaintance’s house, I decided I wanted the same view she had. Nine months later, I was moving into a house just a few houses down the street from her—with that same view. A picture of that view kept me focused on my dream. Not only did it motivate me, but it made it easier to know the steps I needed to take. For instance, it helped me narrow my search. And when a foreclosure came up on this woman’s street, it was very easy for me to take the steps necessary to win the bid. Why? Because I immediately knew I wanted it and had a plan to get it, where others had to think about it and couldn’t act as quickly.

To help you visualize better, you might want to create a vision or dream board. Pictures from magazines of your dream vacation, house or kitchen, taking pictures of the view you want, writing statements about what you want, or photos of rolls of cash and a person who is slim and healthy looking. These are all ideas of what you might include on your vision board.

TIP: For an easy and fun way to create one of these, use Oprah’s free O-Dream board. Choose from different backgrounds, import your own pictures or choose from a library of images they’ve compiled, and create text statements for your board. Then you can visit it online or print it out and hang it up.

Step ten: Take Action. Work your plan and expect to be successful. If you fall off your plan, don’t beat yourself up. Just regroup, adjust your plan accordingly and keep at it.

TIP: Replace hard-nosed discipline with self-compassion. It’s normal to start off excited and gung-ho. But when your enthusiasm wears off some, it’s easy to have a setback. When that occurs, a common tendency is to self-criticize. That inner critic can get louder and louder—causing self-doubt to take over. Eventually, this self-doubt can lead to giving up on your goals. This year, don’t be so hard on yourself. Give yourself some compassion when you have a setback, then readjust. You’ll find it easier to get back on track and keep moving forward.

Step eleven: Write your goals every day. Don’t just read your goals every day, write them out every day. There is something potent about writing, “I am living the writer’s life and earning $100,000 a year,” each and every day.

Step twelve: Replenish motivation daily. Zig Ziglar says, “People often tell me that motivation doesn’t last, and I tell them that bathing doesn’t either. That’s why I recommend it daily.” It’s hard to stay self-motivated. Find sources that will give you a shot of motivation every day. That might mean reading an inspirational passage every day or visiting AWAI’s Wall of Fame or listening to motivational speakers on your iPod. Find whatever it is that works for you and build time into your plan to seek motivation from your source every day.

This may seem like a lot of effort to write out a detailed plan. But ask yourself, if you can spend many hours preparing for a four-hour party, don’t you think it’s worth at least that much time to plan for an entire year? Rather than thinking you’re too busy and don’t have the time, think, “I make an action plan because I’m way too busy to be unfocused and not reach my goals again.” Making the effort to create an action plan, writing your goals out every day and spending a few minutes on motivation will help you unclutter your life and free up your time so you can achieve more.

Make this year the one that you break the six-figure mark as a copywriter … or move into that new house … or take that vacation you’ve been dreaming about and so on.

Everything great ever accomplished in this world was done by people who set goals and then worked to achieve them. Don’t let another year slip by where you feel unfocused and never seem to get closer to where you really want to be in life. Make a list of your goals and put together your goal action plan today.

This article appears courtesy of American Writers & Artists Inc.’s (AWAI) The Writer’s Life, a free newsletter that gives you opportunities that enable you to live life on your own terms. Whether you’re looking for a new career, looking to make some extra money on the side, or looking for an easy work-at-home career, there is an opportunity at AWAI that’s right for you. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.awaionline.com/signup/the-writers-life/.

How can it make your customer feel? Does it satisfy a need uniquely? Do you deliver it like no one else? Do you provide exceptional customer service? Is your delivery method faster, easier than your competition? What is your Unique Selling Point (USP)?

And… how are you presenting that USP to your prospect?

Tell me about your product or service. Tell me what makes you unique. Tell me who your perfect customer is and what you’d like them to know about your offer. Tell me about their problems. Tell me how your offer can help solve that problem and I will write a compelling story, with just the right words, for your prospect to be able to say to themselves, “this is easy, I don’t have to look any further, this is just what I need.”

Ken Harrison

The Copy Pro

the roller coaster we’ve spoken about.

Even out those peaks and valleys of income.

Have your knowledge work for you even when you don’t.

You know that a segment of your market will never attend a live seminar; they’ll view it as extravagant.

You know that many of them are single person operations or are small enough that they cannot justify your briefcase course to their location.

Give your client an excuse to take your course, make it easy for them to attend your classroom, give them every reason to want to learn something that will help their business in the end.

With YOU CAN TEACH ONLINE you eliminate every one of those “too extravagant” or “unjustifiable cost” objections, you make it easy for your clients to say “Yes.”

Don’t Share One-to-One when You Can Share 1-10,000

You Can Teach Online™ is an online school that provides everything you need to make it happen.

A complete online classroom that allows you to reach a maximum number of clients who are looking for your expertise and are willing to pay for your knowledge.

Home Page copy:

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What you get: a complete online classroom from the highest quality online school with all the bells and whistles.

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Can this letter make a difference in the life of a struggling student?

Yes – IF you take the time to read it.

In your busy life, I’m sure that most letters are skimmed and thrown away in the first few seconds of reading. And that’s where this letter will fail our student… if you never take the time to read it.

This letter introduces you to a very successful program. A program for teachers that will help our student get the education he wants, needs and deserves.

Professional Learning Board, one of only six companies selected as education partners by the National Education Association, is proud to present:

The Synergy Program – a program that transforms good teachers into great teachers.

What is the difference between two students who have similar financial and racial backgrounds as well as similar ambitions for their future? Why is one of those students motivated to continue their education and graduate from college while the other decides to go right into a job that leads him no closer to his aspirations?

The difference is what happens in the classroom. Bill Gates knows that. He understands what motivates young minds to greatness. In his words,  “The defining feature of a great education is what happens in the classroom. Everything starts from that and must be built around it.”

Teachers are the motivating force behind what happens in the classroom. The Synergy Program is the motivating force behind those teachers. In fact, 97% of teachers who complete the program recommend us to their peers. Yes – it’s that good.

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Call the Professional Learning Board today to see how you can help us introduce more schools to the Synergy Program.

Are your counselors throwing away 100% or more profit?

Do your counselors remember to offer the protection your clients deserve? Funeral expenses are at an all time high, yet funeral home profits are not. Studies show that many funeral homes are not even offering vault protection in cases where it is not required by a cemetery.

Are you guilty of keeping your largest profit potential a secret? Did you know that burial vaults offer clients unparalleled protection against nature and, at the same time, funeral home profits of 100% or more?

More and more families are moving out of state. And families want to visit their departed loved ones in a cemetery in their new area. The disinterment process can be devastating when there is no burial vault protecting the decomposing coffin from the elements and nature.

The moment an unprotected coffin goes in the ground, it begins to deteriorate. After months or years of being underground, the coffin collapses and the loved one’s remains are painfully on display for all to see. You can save the family this heart-wrenching sight by offering a protective burial vault at the time of the funeral.

All it takes is one phone call to Long Island Vault.

No inventory to keep

No delivery trucks to maintain

No additional personnel to employ

ABSOLUTELY NO OVERHEAD

Selling a burial vault is pure profit for the funeral home.

The family feels protected and your profits increase exponentially.  There is no other single component to the funeral and burial that offers as much.

Call Nick at L.I. Burial Vaults today for a free video that explains the benefits to your counselors. Don’t let one more day of lost profit slip through your hands.  Your clients (and your bottom line) will thank you for it.