It’s not MLM and involves no selling, or very little, at least. My friend just earned his $1,000 this week, and here’s how it worked:

1. My friend works for a company. The management mentioned they needed a new website.

2. My friend told them they should hire MWI.

3. The company accepted a proposal from MWI for a $10,000 website.

4. My friend gets our standard 10% referral commission, or $1,000.

Maybe you don’t work for a company that needs a new website or SEO, but maybe you do. Maybe you know another company that does. Maybe they don’t need a $10K website, but maybe they need a $5K website and you’ll get $500. Maybe they need a $50K website and you’ll get $5K. Who knows? But maybe all it takes is asking the management at your company or some other company “Hey, have you guys thought about getting the website redesigned? You should talk to MWI.” And there you go, you’ve got a wad of money and it took you all of 20 seconds to earn it.

Yeah, that’s right, we’re giving away five blog websites to five lucky people, for free. Yes, there are some conditions and catches, but if your situation is the right fit you can walk away with a nicely designed blog to promote yourself or your business and we won’t be charging you a dime. Get on over to My Free Website Design for the details.

How’s that saying go about how the cobbler’s children have no shoes? And web design firms rarely have time to update their own website. A few months ago we updated some of the case studies (although we still sorely need to update more of them, especially the SEO/SEM case studies) and we put some goldfish on the homepage, but it was left feeling pretty stark and naked.

In this round of updates we trade gray for a rich blue and made the main marketing banner a solid color background rather than a white background so that the messaging pops a bit more and the site doesn’t feel so empty. We also added a new footer to every page which is where the blog updates are shown, as well as contact info, the copyright statement, and a small “about MWI” blurb so that no matter what page of the site people hit, they’ll know we’re an SEO and web design firm. You’d think that might be obvious, but with so many other companies out there named “MWI” we get all sorts of emails and phone calls. I just got one today from a lady wanting to order some hospital supplies. I have no idea what company she was trying to reach. Apparently she didn’t either, because when I asked her she sounded confused and said “I’m not sure…they just gave me this number.”

Let me know if you have any comments on the new site. We’re always open to constructive criticism, although getting around to doing anything about it is another thing.

Oh, and our XHTML/CSS code finally validates. Yee-ha.

I’m not a huge fan of the orange/white/gray color scheme, and yet here we are. The MWI website has been updated and if you don’t like the colors then you can blame the goldfish and stock photographers. I wanted to create a new homepage marketing image that had something to do with the concept of being left behind, but when you do a search for images under the keywords “left behind” you get all sorts of stuff, none of which was suitable for our purposes.

I was thinking I’d like to have a photo of somebody who had been left by the side of the road with a suitcase while a car drives off, or something like that, but I could not find any such photo or anything remotely similar on any stock photography site. Which is surprising to me since I think the concept would be fairly useful to a lot of people out there. So goldfish were the best I could come up with.

Let me know what you think. But bear in mind we’ll probably be too busy with client work to do anything about it.

We’ve moved MWI’s official blog from weloveblue.com to mwi.com/blog. The feed address stays the same, so there is no need to worry about that if you’re subscribed via RSS. However, if you prefer you can now be informed of updates via email by subscribing on the site.

All the old posts and comments have been transferred over and you should find everything working as normal. And there should be more posts going up now. I’ve been putting off new posts due to the move, which ended up taking a little while longer than desired.

For quite some time MWI and the keyword phrase “utah seo” were a hot item. We were always number one in her book, although she flirted with other firms here and there. I can’t say we didn’t mind, but what can you do? Keywords can be hard to tame and their loyalty is never what you wish it were. Then, a few weeks ago, we decided to shake things up a bit by dramatically modifying the structure of our website.

“Utah seo” didn’t like it, and essentially dumped us, but we knew that in the long run this would only make our relationship stronger if we were patient, worked through things, and built more of a foundation for our relationship. Even though “utah seo” seemed to be put off at first, I think she knew it was for the best, although that isn’t to say she didn’t punish us. At one point she took our relationship to the edge, knocking us down to #9, right near the edge of being off the first page of her SERPs. She toyed with us there for a few days in mock anger, but now things are on the mend.

As Google has indexed our new site structure, “utah seo” has started to soften and as often happens with relationships that involve a lot of passion the ups and downs can come rather quickly. As fast as she dumped us, she’s now picking us back up. Yesterday we were at #9, and today we’re at #5, and who knows what tomorrow may bring.

Is some sort of long-term, committed relationship in the offing? Probably not. Keyword phrases just don’t play that way. They’re committed to you only as long as you’re committed to them, and they don’t forgive the slightest lapse on your part. For now, we’re going to try and keep things going strong, but who knows, the day may come when we leave “utah seo” and move on to bigger pastures ourselves.

Despite a do-not-call registry every business has to deal with sales calls. I’d say MWI averages about three per day. Sadly, almost all of these sales people do things that immediately alert me to the fact they’re a sales person, and none of them get the hook in that they’re trying to. Here’s a list of things not to do when making a sales call to MWI. If you do, it’s the instant hang-up.

1. “How are you?” I can identify a sales call immediately when someone calls and asks “Mr. Steimle?”

“Yes.”

“How are you?”
You see, nobody who knows me ever starts a phone call this way, which means if you do, I know that you don’t know me. I also don’t have any clients or potential clients who call me this way, so I know you’re not trying to give me any money. And if I don’t know you and you’re not offering me money then chances are I don’t have time to talk to you.

2. “This is not a sales call.” There are only two kinds of people who say this at the beginning of a phone call; sales people and credit card companies. Enough said?

3. “So and so worked with you in the past but they no longer work here and I wanted to follow up…” This might work on me if anybody who ever used this line worked for a company that has actually transacted business with me before! Typically the reality of the situation is that I’ve been pestered by a sales person from that company before. I suppose the sales person could rightfully say “We’ve worked on you before…” but trade “on” for “with” and you’re lying to me, and I try not to do business with liars.

4. “I’d like to talk with you about your [telecom, Internet, phone, etc.] needs…” Sorry, don’t have any such needs. Do you really think I’m going to go through the trouble of getting an estimate, filling out paperwork, getting out of an existing contract, switching hardware, and then perhaps getting service that is no better and perhaps worse than what I currently have just to save $10 per month? You could tell me you were going to cut my expenses on telecom by 50% and I still wouldn’t switch. Partly because I don’t believe you, partly because my costs simply aren’t that high to begin with. And even if I were in the market to buy such services, I wouldn’t trust you as a sales person. I’d ask around and find out what other people I know and trust are using.

5. “Let me cut to the chase, how’s your investment portfolio doing these days?” Let me cut to the chase–I don’t have an investment portfolio. A guy called me one day trying to sell me on his executive investment portfolio management program, or scheme, or whatever it was, and he made the mistake of not asking this question up front. I let him talk for 45 minutes while I answered emails until he asked me how my current investments were doing. I told him I didn’t have any. He asked if I was planning on investing. I told him I wasn’t. He hung up. I think he was probably mad about that one, but you know what? I don’t feel all that bad about it.

6. “This is so and so, please call me back at…” I get this type of voicemail once or twice per week. They don’t leave any information except their name and number. They don’t tell me what company they’re with, nor what they want to talk about. Who are these people? Do they really think I’m going to call them back so they can give me a sales pitch?

How to Make a Sales Call

Ironically, nobody ever uses the one approach that would work on me, or at least would get me to listen, and it’s so simple.

“Hi, I’m so and so. This is a sales call and I’m sure you hate sales calls, but if you give me 30 seconds to explain what I’m selling and you’re still not interested, I promise to take you off my call list and never call you again.”

How could I refuse that? I know I’m dealing with someone who gets how I feel. I know he’s only going to use up 30 seconds of my time. And he dangles a carrot in front of my nose, promising to never take up my time again if I listen for just 30 seconds. He invites the best out of me. I’d be a jerk to not give him 30 seconds when he asks this way. And so he’s gotten me to let my guard down and actually feel compassion for him. After all, he’s some poor sales guy who has to call people like me all day and he’s so desperate that he’s even trying to hide who he is anymore.

But who am I to tell a salesman how to do his job? Am I a sales expert? No. Am I a management consultant? No. And maybe I’m the weirdo out there. Maybe other people who receive sales calls respond perfectly well to all the things that turn me off. But frankly, I’d find that hard to believe. But if you’ve got experience that says otherwise please chime in.

Well, it’s search engine optimization, it’s search engine marketing, it’s SEO consulting and training, and it’s web design, but that’s it! After many years of trying to be too many things for too many people, we’re cutting back, again, and focusing on what we’re really good at and what we enjoy doing.

Every year Connect Magazine publishes a print directory of various service firms in Utah, including “interactive” firms, which apparently includes companies like Omniture that provide website analytics tools as well as web design firms.

After seven years or so of having a real office with walls, lights, phones, secretaries, lease payments, utility bills, and break-ins, MWI has finally made the transition to a virtual office model. Some are probably saying “Well, this is just because MWI is going out of business and this is just a step along the way.” But alas, no, I’ve been much closer to going out of business than I am now many, many times, and MWI is still around.

As for the reasons for going virtual, some of them I’ve detailed on my personal blog under the titles The Virtues of Going Virtual and The Virtual Office is Complete, but what I haven’t discussed is why I think ultimately this makes sense for a lot of companies.