All salespeople, especially successful ones, know that follow-up with a prospective client is one of the most important steps in the sales cycle. By the way, if you’re one of those people who runs a business and you’re still not convinced you’re main function is salesperson, you need a reality check, but I don’t want to get into that right now.

Right now, I’m curious about the art of follow-up. I have been following up with a few prospective clients this morning, and I was reminded of how I’ve always found the art of follow-up intriguing.

Some people have mastered this seemingly simple, yet dauntingly difficult task. When I think about it, I am always reminded of what it was like to achieve the goal of getting a girl’s phone number in college, then trying to tackle the debate I always had with my friends: when do you call her, what do you say when you call, etc.

In the business world, salespeople experience this same debate on a regular occasion. They might meet a prospect at a local chamber of commerce event and want to follow-up with them to discuss how they feel they can help the client. They might have only spoken with them on the phone once prior. They may have a proposal in the client’s hands and are following up to try and close the deal.

The power of focus

Each of these circumstances presents different challenges to a successful follow-up process. I think, though, the process can be made easier by a clear focus. By focusing on what the real objective is with the follow-up the process is immediately clearer. So many salespeople are stuck on “just following up” they forget to be politely persistent about what the primary objective is. They are fearful of being too forthcoming about what they want to get from the contact.

Clients appreciate the honesty of a salesperson telling them exactly what they want to get the client to buy. It is liberating in a way, the expectations have been put clearly on the table, and both sides can get down to handling whatever obstacle or objection is preventing progress.

When to follow-up

Knowing when to follow-up is a non-scientific art. Though there are undoubtedly numerous studies that have been conducted that provide guidelines on when to follow-up, we have to remember that every prospect is also a person, and every person on the planet is different in some regard than every other person on the planet. This means that, though we can follow the general guidelines, each situation is different, and we have to think about how we might need to change our approach based on the individual circumstances.

Knowing what to say when following up

Just like knowing when, knowing what to say is also an art. In my experience, there are two main schools of thought, here:

1. Get right to the point. Don’t waste your breath asking personal questions or trying to make small talk. This is best used for clients that are busy, and actually appreciate the bluntness. You will actually (though it seems wrong) improve your rapport with this client because they appreciate the fact that you respect their time.
2. Be more personal. Other clients like to know that you care about them as a person. They want you to ask about their kids and about their weekend plans. Assuming you have a genuine interest in this information, make the small-talk and enjoy the conversation. The objective of the call must always be remembered and focused on, though. Make sure you get to the point in a timely fashion. Rambling about everything else under the sun is not productive.

I’ve had 3 Facebook accounts. As I write this, I only have one active account remaining – and it’s hanging by a thread. I’ve started, built, activated, deactivated, and deleted multiple Facebook “pages” for businesses or the like. I had a MySpace account before anyone around me did. I was a little later to the show with Facebook. Currently, I use Twitter to connect to everything in my social media world, including Facebook – but more on that later.

Facebook and I have never really had a good relationship. It never was bad, per say, but it never was good. It was a lot like that person you dated because it was convenient to do so. The relationship was nothing special, but until something better came along, there was no really good reason to end it either.

When Facebook showed up, shortly after MySpace became the craze, I was leery. The elitist attitude that boldly proclaimed, “you can’t join our network unless you are a part of this group or that group,” was not one that I really took fondly to. I was a part of multiple social circles, many of which had nothing to do with the schools or groups that were “allowed” on Facebook. If I was going to take the time to join a social network, I wanted it to be one where everyone I knew could take part.

A shifting attitude about your privacy (and not in a good way)

Eventually, as most people know, that all changed. The elitist attitude, however, has not. It is still running rampant, making Steve Jobs and Apple look like a tepid child. This is clearly understood by a quick look at the sweeping changes in their approach to privacy as outlined here by the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

Facebook Privacy Policy circa 2005:

No personal information that you submit to Thefacebook will be available to any user of the Web Site who does not belong to at least one of the groups specified by you in your privacy settings.

Facebook Privacy Policy circa 2006:

We understand you may not want everyone in the world to have the information you share on Facebook; that is why we give you control of your information. Our default privacy settings limit the information displayed in your profile to your school, your specified local area, and other reasonable community limitations that we tell you about.

Facebook Privacy Policy circa 2007:

Profile information you submit to Facebook will be available to users of Facebook who belong to at least one of the networks you allow to access the information through your privacy settings (e.g., school, geography, friends of friends). Your name, school name, and profile picture thumbnail will be available in search results across the Facebook network unless you alter your privacy settings.

Facebook Privacy Policy circa November 2009:

Facebook is designed to make it easy for you to share your information with anyone you want. You decide how much information you feel comfortable sharing on Facebook and you control how it is distributed through your privacy settings. You should review the default privacy settings and change them if necessary to reflect your preferences. You should also consider your settings whenever you share information. …

Information set to “everyone” is publicly available information, may be accessed by everyone on the Internet (including people not logged into Facebook), is subject to indexing by third party search engines, may be associated with you outside of Facebook (such as when you visit other sites on the internet), and may be imported and exported by us and others without privacy limitations. The default privacy setting for certain types of information you post on Facebook is set to “everyone.” You can review and change the default settings in your privacy settings.

Facebook Privacy Policy circa December 2009:

Certain categories of information such as your name, profile photo, list of friends and pages you are a fan of, gender, geographic region, and networks you belong to are considered publicly available to everyone, including Facebook-enhanced applications, and therefore do not have privacy settings. You can, however, limit the ability of others to find this information through search using your search privacy settings.

Current Facebook Privacy Policy, as of April 2010:

When you connect with an application or website it will have access to General Information about you. The term General Information includes your and your friends’ names, profile pictures, gender, user IDs, connections, and any content shared using the Everyone privacy setting. … The default privacy setting for certain types of information you post on Facebook is set to “everyone.” … Because it takes two to connect, your privacy settings only control who can see the connection on your profile page. If you are uncomfortable with the connection being publicly available, you should consider removing (or not making) the connection.

Your data on Facebook (status updates, pictures, etc) is not really yours

The most recent action by Zuckerberg was to make access to your information on the site publicly available, whether you like it or not. The new privacy controls do 6 major things with regard to connections you make using the Facebook “connect” feature (that should piss most people off, though it won’t because they are probably oblivious to them):

1. Facebook will not let you share any of this information without using Connections. You cannot opt-out of Connections. If you refuse to play ball, Facebook will remove all unlinked information from your profile.
2. Facebook will not respect your old privacy settings in this transition. For example, if you had previously sought to share your Interests with “Only Friends,” Facebook will now ignore this and share your Connections with “Everyone.”
3. Facebook has removed your ability to restrict its use of this information. The new privacy controls only affect your information’s “Visibility,” not whether it is “publicly available.”

Explaining what “publicly available” means, Facebook writes:

“Such information may, for example, be accessed by everyone on the Internet (including people not logged into Facebook), be indexed by third party search engines, and be imported, exported, distributed, and redistributed by us and others without privacy limitations.”

1. Facebook will continue to store and use your Connections even after you delete them. Just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean they’re not there. Even after you “delete” profile information, Facebook will remember it. We’ve also received reports that Facebook continues to use deleted profile information to help people find you through Facebook’s search engine.
2. Facebook sometimes creates a Connection when you “Like” something. That “Like” button you see all over Facebook, and now all over the web? It too can sometimes add a Connection to your profile, without you even knowing it.
3. Your posts may show up on a Connection page even if you do not opt in to the Connection. If you use the name of a Connection in a post on your wall, it may show up on the Connection page, without you even knowing it. (For example, if you use the word “FBI” in a post).

Zuckerberg’s offer that you can’t refuse

Facebook has become so interconnected with our daily lives (the 400 million of us that are on the site anyway) that the leverage they have to keep us on the site is overwhelming. People are using the site for a lot more than just catching up with old high school friends. They are playing games with their friends, sharing pictures of their life, and so on.

We are all social creatures. We like to be popular, we like to have friends, we like to be able to reach out and connect with someone when we are lonely. This nature of connectivity in humans is a foundational principle on which Facebook’s success is built. And right now, the closest thing to providing a better solution is Twitter – which almost everyone has heard of, but almost no one understands how to use. Because of this, there are 10 main reasons, according to Nicholas Carlson at Business Insider, that you’ll never quit Facebook even if you think you want to:

1. You’re not going to go back to waiting an hour to send an email to 30 people with 40 photos attached.
2. How will you remember anybody’s birthday?
3. How will you stalk your college boyfriend’s new fiancé?
4. Without Facebook what are you going to do when you don’t have a friend’s email address or phone number? Facebook messaging blows. But at least you know you can reach anybody who has a Facebook account.
5. Forget Facebook. 80 million of you are addicted to Zygna’s Facebook game, FarmVille.
6. It takes 2 seconds to “join” a new site through Facebook Connect. It can take a good 10 minutes doing it the old way.
7. How will you hear about parties? How will you remember where and when those parties are? Evite?
8. You don’t care about Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg’s sometimes sketchy past.
9. Sure, Facebook has privacy issues, but you don’t care about privacy anymore. Remember when you wouldn’t use your real name on the Internet?
10. You’ve never quit before. Remember News Feed? Beacon? You didn’t quit then and won’t now, either. Not even if you want to.

You may balk at some of the above suggestions, though I’m pretty sure you won’t say you disagree with all of them. On the chance that you do, and you decide, screw this, I’m going to leave Facebook just in spite, know this: Facebook doesn’t like to be dumped, as a matter of fact, they are kind of Super Ex-girlfriend psycho about it. Read this article describing what happens when you deactivate your Facebook Account.

Oh, and by the way, deactivating your account is not the same thing as deleting it. Your information is still on the site, all you have to do is simply login and it is like you never even left. They don’t make that very clear, and I don’t think many people even realize this fact. If you have decided you really do want to delete your account, use this link to do so, not the “deactivate” link provided by Facebook. Note: even when deleting your account, Facebook, to further portray it’s elitist attitude, tells you that your account will not be completely deleted for 14 days, basically saying, “we know you don’t really want to delete your account, you’ll be back.”

Zuckerberg thinks you’re a moron, and he’s probably right

Ironically, a private IM conversation between a friend and Zuckerberg reveals Zuckerberg’s mentality about the users of Facebook. The naivity of people online is the reason Facebook continues to swell. People simply do not know that they are revealing their information to the world. Take the following story:

I have a close friend who just bought a house. Before he bought the house, he decided to research the seller. He had never met the seller, and all he had to go on was a name. Using that name, he was able to find the seller’s wife’s Facebook profile, which was publicly displaying multiple details regarding their lifestyle and the luxuries they maintained.

Now, my friend is a decent person, and would never use his advanced computing skills (he’s a very talented programmer, with his name on a few software patents) for evil, but he was able to learn more than enough about the person he was buying his house from to feel comfortable with the transaction.

At the closing, my friend did the good deed of informing the seller that he was able to find out many details of his life through his wife’s Facebook profile. Noticeably shocked at the information my friend had about him, the seller was a little more than annoyed that my friend knew so much about him.

People demand privacy, but they don’t even know when their privacy is being violated it. They are oblivious to how openly revealing they are through their own actions. No one really reads privacy policies (Facebook’s is now longer than the United States Constitution). And who would want to? We just want to get online, share some pictures, write some witty ’status’ updates and stay as permanently connected to our friends, loved ones, and complete strangers as possible.

Marketing is the root of Facebook’s evil

Companies are realizing the massive marketing potential that Facebook provides (which is, of course, where all of this really stems from). They are increasingly gaining insight on how using Facebook for business and marketing is a low-cost, and in most cases, incredibly effective tool.

But, and this is important, we saw this happen with MySpace. Companies were using MySpace URLs in their advertising instead of their own websites. The same thing is happening with Facebook. The difference? Facebook has provided businesses with a platform for interactivity – something MySpace didn’t really ever figure out.

Something will change. The question is what/who?

Facebook has very publicly called an “all hands on deck” meeting to discuss the recent backlash to their privacy policy changes. I doubt anything is really going to change, however. The vast majority of people are not even aware of the fact that Facebook has changed their privacy policies, much less how the changes really affect them, personally.

Some users have organized a “Quit Facebook Day” for May 31, 2010 in an attempt to both educate people about the negative privacy policies Facebook has implemented, as well as to encourage people to boycott the service.

Where do you stand?

Will you keep your Facebook profile? Will you make adjustments to your privacy settings? Will you remove your account all together?

Do you believe that you have a right to privacy when using a free service online? Do you believe those that reveal too much personal information on social networks are the ones that should be blamed for their own information being put out there? Tell me what you think in the comments.

Alan Weiss is the author of multiple consulting books and an all around interesting person to gain perspective from. In this podcast, he talks about his 10 steps to Stop Procrastination. It may seem like common sense to most, but to put these items into action really does help make procrastination easier to stop.

Alan’s 10 steps are below. To listen to the podcast, go here.

1. Tuck your ego away. Don’t fear rejection or imperfection.
2. Schedule it. Don’t just get around to it when you can, treat it like a client meeting/obligation.
3. Don’t allow interruptions. Act as if you’re talking to a banker about a big loan.
4. Do unpleasant things early. Get them done, out of the way, don’t think about them all day.
5. Reward yourself. Once you accomplish something, give yourself a treat.
6. Ask yourself if it’s already been done. Stop thinking it’s such an impossible task, someone else has probably already done it.
7. Analyze your fear. What is really causing you to put this action off?
8. Get an accountability partner or group. External accountability that somehow forces you to do what you should be doing anyway.
9. Get in the mood. Play some mood music (your favorite music) that will help you get in the right mood to get it done.
10. Keep perspective. It’s not the end of the world, stop worrying so much, just get it done.

Do you have anything that you do to help yourself stop procrastinating? I’d like to know. Leave me a comment with your tips on stopping procrastination.

I’m big on brainstorming and mind-mapping – getting all of my thoughts down on paper before diving into a topic. It dramatically helps me clear my mind of distractions and  gain better focus on the task/project at hand.

I’m also a geek for cool productivity tools. I recently found this site: bubbl.us. It is a mind-mapping/brainstorming tool that is completely free and web-based. It’s pretty intuitive and works well. I haven’t found anything better so far. Here’s a quick screenshot of what it looks like:

A few weeks back, I decided I was going to bite the bullet and buy an iPad. I decided I wasn’t going to wait until the second or third version came out. I even decided I wasn’t going to wait until the 3G version came out. In Lubbock, the closest thing we have to an Apple store is Best Buy. Not bad, but definitely not nearly as fun as going to an Apple store, but I digress.

I jumped in the car, drove up to Best Buy, walked in, played with one of the display models one last time before I dropped the cash on the one that I was going to take home with me. I watched as some younger guys played with one, oohing and awing and making comments about wishing they had the money to get one. Maybe I shouldn’t have – I do feel a little guilty – but my chest stuck out a little bit when I got the sales person’s attention, boldly asking, “Do you have this one in stock?” I caught a glimpse of envy from the aforementioned younger guys, and it took everything I had to contain my proud grin.

Karma has a way of kickin’ you at just the right time. My pride was proven misplaced shortly thereafter, when the salesperson returned from his kiosk to inform me that Best Buy didn’t have any iPads in stock; none. Lame. Who has two thumbs and feels like a jack-ass? This guy.

Upon discovering that I was not going to be walking out of the store a proud new owner of an iPad, I left empty-handed (well, not really, I bought Avatar on my way out, but that doesn’t really count). Bummer.

I get home; tell the wife that I was unsuccessful in my journey; and sulk for a few minutes. Then it hits me, well, if I can’t get one today, I might as well just order a 3G one online and get the one that I really want (since I’m going to have to wait for it anyway). I go to apple.com, and place my PRE-order iPad 3G.

Now, I understand that pre-ordering is in place for several reasons, the more common ones are that pre-ordering:

• Allows a product manufacturer to better estimate demand.
• Creates an anticipation factor that drives sales and word-of-mouth marketing.
• Allows product sellers the ability to show loyal customers a little special treatment (or so I thought) further ingraining those customers’ loyalty to the company.

That last one is what has spurred this post. I placed my pre-order with Apple on April 22, knowing full-well that my iPad would be shipped by May 7^th. Now, I’ll admit, I didn’t even think about the fact that Apple would release the iPad 3G for sale in stores this past weekend. The idea doesn’t really make sense to me, which is why I guess I didn’t think they would do such a thing.

Now, this morning I received an email telling me that my iPad case has shipped. My case has shipped, yay for me. As I read about others online who have already picked up their iPad 3Gs in stores and are playing with them as we speak, I have to ask: why bother with a pre-order if you aren’t going to make sure those that pre-order get their products before anyone else?

To me, that makes perfect sense – see my above points on why businesses benefit from pre-ordering. Give special treatment to your dedicated customers. After all, their pre-orders have allowed you to determine how many widgets to order from your suppliers so that you don’t go bust by buying too many.

So, lesson learned for me: don’t pre-order from a company that obviously doesn’t understand the benefit of giving such customers the special treatment they deserve.

Lesson for other businesses and product sellers: don’t offer a pre-order without also releasing your product to those that pre-ordered first, before anyone else gets their hands on your stuff, these dedicated customers should be able to bask in the glory of being first. Trust me, if you do so, you’ll get a ton more word-of-mouth out of it.

All that said, I will continue to wait patiently for my iPad. C’mon Apple, hurry up!

I want to meet these five people (in person) and have a 5-15 minute one-on-one conversation with them before I turn 30. That gives me about 2 1/2 years. Anybody want to make an introduction? I’d love you for it! Oh, and they are in no particular order.

• Anthony Robbins – Motivator, Speaker and amazing business person.
• Chris Brogan – Master of social media and personal branding.
• Alan Weiss – Author, speaker and millionaire consultant.
• Seth Godin – Author and marketing mastermind.
• Stephen R. Covey – Author and insightful thinker.

Go do a search on Google for the term “social media expert” without the quotes and you’ll find that Google has indexed 83 million pages that it believes could be relevant to your search. Put the quotes back in and you’ll find that Google believes it has about 1.2 million pages that could be relevant. That means that there are approximately 1.2 million pages on the web that contain the exact phrase “social media expert” somewhere within their content.

Think about that for a minute, 1.2 million.

That is a whole lot of “expertise.” Especially in a field that is only, at best, a couple of decades old (10 years is really even a stretch). To really make you go, “hmm” search for either “marketing expert” or “advertising expert.” Before you actually do, though, take a guess at the results you’ll have returned to you. Do you think they will be more or less than the social media variant?

Go do the searches (in a new tab/window of course). I’ll wait here.

What did you find out? You most likely were shocked at the extreme variance between so-called “social media experts” and “marketing/advertising experts.” I know I was a little surprised.

With so many people claiming to be the expert when it comes to social media, it begs the question: how do I know who to trust to help me learn how to apply all of this social media stuff to my business, my life, or whatever. The truthful answer is this: you don’t. The reality is, no one really, truly knows how this whole “social media thing” really is going to work in the future. No one really knows how it will actually exist (if at all) in 10, 5, heck, 1 year down the road.

Remember MySpace? That dinosaur of a social network? It’s hanging on for dear life, and it gained peak popularity no more than a few years ago. Twitter has already exploded and leveled off – no one in the media really seems to care anymore. It’s reached the same level of recognition as Facebook, but only a few people actually use it.

So, back to the point:

Who do you trust to help you learn more about social media and how it applies to you?

Well, think about this. If no one really knows what the right answer is, then logically, no one really knows what the wrong answer is either. Take comfort in that.

Granted, there are plenty of things that have been done by people that are considered “wrong,” just like there are plenty of things that people have done that are considered “right” when it comes to social media. The answer to knowing who to trust is to observe and learn from the people that seem to never do those “wrong” things. Or, if they do, they have the humanity to own them, learn from them, teach/share with the world (since sharing really is what social media is all about), and move on.

Use common sense; use good judgment; ask yourself if you think some of the stuff these so-called experts are trying to sell/teach you makes sense. And if you are thinking about paying one of these people to help you with your own social media efforts, ask for and actually check their references.

If you’d like a head start on people that I think know what they are talking about and are doing it as right as possible when it comes to social media, check out some of these people:

• Chris Brogan (Twitter, Site)
• Ed Shahzade (Twitter, Site)
• Calvin Lee (Twitter, Site)
• Ann Handley (Twitter, Site)
• Scott Stratten (Twitter, Site)
• Lauren Fernandez (Twitter, Site)
• David Spinks (Twitter, Site)
• DJ Waldow (Twitter, Site)

There are plenty of others that I’m sure I have noticed are doing it “mostly right,” but I can’t remember them right now. For some really good questions and some amusing reactions to the wrong answers for interviewing and potentially working with social media experts, take a look at this “10 Questions to Evaluate a Social Media ‘Expert‘” post by Ian Lurie.

The moral of the story?

Be careful who you trust to teach you about social media. There are literally millions of people that claim the title, but only a select few that have earned the title (oh, and here’s a hint: most of the people that have earned the title and deserve the respect to be called social media experts, don’t call themselves social media experts).

Noise. With all of the outlets and inlets that the Internet provides, we experience more noise than we ever have in the past. Learning how to successfully wade through the noise and get to the good, quality content is an art in and of itself.

Regardless of the channel, there is noise to be found. Conduct a search on Google, and you’re likely to find ads and organic listings that flat-out don’t make sense to your search (noise); jump on Twitter for a few minutes and you’ll likely read tweets about people’s pets or dietary decisions for the day (noise); or, as in my latest recognition of noise that I personally deal with, launch Google Reader to catch up on what everyone you like to read is talking about and you’ll probably have some articles/posts that you really don’t care about and probably never will; or if you subscribe to multiple feeds from similar sources (like the New York Times technology section and Mashable) you’re likely to read about the same story/event 2-4 times in one sitting.

Chris Brogan, in this post about Attention as a Currency and Noise (worth a quick read) promotes the common-sense idea of budgeting attention/time for yourself. Though the idea is a common-sense one, Chris, as he often does, explains it in such a way that makes it easy to apply.

Budgeting, whether financial budgeting or attention budgeting often requires two major steps:

1. Determine what things you can’t live without. Financial budgets will usually include such things as a mortgage/rent, insurance, etc. Attention budgets will usually include such things as your boss or clients, your family members, etc. Essentially, you will be required to keeps these things in your budget on some level.
2. Determine what things you can easily get rid of. Don’t be a hoarder. Sometimes it makes better sense to simply cut something from the budget altogether rather than trying to find a way to keep paying for it. A great example of this for a financial budget would be to cut the having a latte at Starbucks every day. For attention budgets, you might simply unsubscribe to the feeds that you don’t get at least 80% value from as you read through them. By simply unsubscribing from the feeds that don’t provide you with a sufficient level of value, you are able to immediately reduce your attention spending level.

Of course the only way to truly reduce your spending is to stay committed to doing so, before you follow that person on Twitter or subscribe to that RSS feed, read through what they are saying/have said in the past and make sure it is in line with the type of information you believe you would like to spend your attention on in the future.

On the flip-side of this whole thing, it is important to realize that as people increasingly gain access to information and data, they will increasingly become more selective about what they choose to spend their attention budgets on. If you want to gain or maintain a percentage of that attention budget, you must make sure to deliver value and quality content/products/services, etc that keeps them interested and coming back for more.

And to borrow a Chris Brogan line, what say you?

I was reading a story about RedEnvelope (I’m not affiliated with them) today. It started out as a typical marketing case study – with the usual woes of what was going on before massive change and an insertion of marketing talent, followed by the high success of the marketing efforts of those same people.

It is a positive story, overall, and granted, the story was written in 2002, so it is a little old, and I have no idea how well RedEnvelope is doing now. There website is still online, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are doing well. That is not the point I’m trying to get at though.

The thing I found interesting about the story, was actually the comment made at the end of the story. After all the build-up of a huge marketing success, the story is slammed down by stating coldly that the company spent $4 in marketing for every $1 in gross sales.

That’s four times the amount of gross sales in marketing. To me, there is no reason this story should have been considered a success at all – of course, that is not taking into perspective what happened after that initial investment in marketing. The point remains, however; without a clear and guaranteed return on that investment, spending four times the amount of sales on marketing is not acceptable by my standards – regardless of the amount of sales generated.

Marketing efforts must be able to demonstrate a clear, measurable path to a return (and hopefully a large one) on investment. Even social media, for example, has the ability to be measured, and it most certainly should be.

Blindly spending vast amounts of money on marketing is not a sure solution to success, especially in today’s society of advertising and marketing bombardment on consumers. People are increasingly turned off by traditional marketing efforts, and are leery of the new marketing efforts being employed. Spending money without a strong indication of the return on investment is just plain stupid.

I don’t mean to pick on RedEnvelope, especially because I don’t know what the overall success of that initial marketing effort was, they may now spend $1 in marketing for every $4 in gross sales – and that very likely could be the case because of that initial effort. But on the surface, the story does not yield itself to a positive light for RedEnvelope’s initial thinking.

Before spending 30%-50% of your startup capital on marketing, make sure that you spend that money in a way that is 1) trackable, 2) measurable, and 3) as close to guaranteed to give you a return as is possible.

Whether it should be considered a blessing or a curse, having an iPhone certainly provides one with the ability to be incredibly helpful to passers-by.

Case in point: today, I accompanied my wife, Lynne, to the Lubbock courthouse while she setup her assumed name for Ahava Graphics (her new graphic design business). On our way from the parking lot to the building, a couple stopped us and asked for directions to a local business. Unfortunately, they didn’t have an address, or know the actual business name – just part of it.

My initial reaction was to say, “no, I have no idea where that is,” because, really, I didn’t know. But, instead of saying that and letting the couple carry on without any assistance, I said, “I can look it up for you, hang on,” and I pulled out my iPhone.

I opened Google Maps and did a quick location search for the part of the business name they were looking for. Within seconds, I was able to show them the screen of the iPhone and two possible locations on the map. After looking at the first location, then the second, they realized that the second location was precisely what they were looking for.

Instead of having to say that I wasn’t able to help them, I was able to provide them with the information they needed, and in a matter of seconds. Some may think Apple is an evil company, but I was certainly better equipped to do my one good deed for the day because I had an iPhone – my iPhone made me a better Good Samaritan. Just sayin’ .

There is another point to consider here, as well. Does your business have an appropriate local search presence on Google Maps? As more and more people use their smartphones and Google Maps to provide them with directions to your business or businesses like yours, making sure you are listed the right way on Google Maps will become as important as your website itself. It’s free to setup your listing the right way, and it only takes a few moments of your time. Make sure you have done this, or your competitors are likely to get your customers’ business.