Booklets - Business Relationships Now and Later

Whether you are thinking about how to write a booklet or you're focusing on marketing your booklet, it is and will always be about the people you encounter every step of the way. Stay conscious and abundant in your thinking so you can best serve everyone, including yourself. Here are a few all-too-likely scenarios.

• A large-quantity prospect is expecting you to jump through many (potentially non-lucrative) hoops from the start. Like many relationships in life, it is unlikely to get better when it starts like that and may well get worse. Move on.

• Someone had a challenge with buying a downloadable product from your website. It was Sunday. You were actually away from your computer for a change. Within a couple hours, they canceled the order and made a range of widely inaccurate assumptions about your business. What to do? Handle what you can, stay professional, fix your website, lick your wounds, and realize there are zillions of other people in the world. Getting nuts accomplishes nothing.

• A client offered successful introductions on your behalf, without your requesting them. The client "gets it" about who you are and the value you bring. What do you do to thank that person, to reward their behavior?

• A vendor sent you referrals who turned out to be the ideal customers.You may have been dealing with that vendor only a short time or for years. Something more than a simple "thank you" via email would be a really good move on your part, don't you agree?

Yes, it's been an interesting week in the lives of a number of people in the booklet business, which is really not much different than many other businesses when it comes down to it. How are you treating the people in your business circles?

Until next time,

Paulette - seeing the week ending well and knowing "that's life"

www.tipsbooklets.com

www.CollectionOfExperts.com

Booklets, Blog Posts, and Bulk Buyers

A booklet author shared how excited she was to be asked to write some (free) blog posts for a company she was prospecting for large quantity sales. I saw it as a way for the company to benefit from the booklet author's content without paying her for the content, and would likely prompt single copy sales of her booklet. That left me less than enthused for her.

She then made a point I hadn't considered in that moment, yet is something I talked about years ago:

You never know who is reading the article or hearing an interview. It could be a high-value contact from anywhere, who could turn into a large quantity buyer from another company or be a journalist for other media or be someone who would hire her as a consultant or speaker.

It was a great reminder. Now I can pass it on to you.

Until next time,

Paulette - loving when the student becomes the teacher

www.tipsbooklets.com

www.CollectionOfExperts.com

Booklets - Frequent Communication and Another Salable Product

An ezine article this week talked about survey results showing trustworthiness as more important to clients and prospects than having high-quality products or services, or offering fair prices, and that one way to establish trustworthiness is frequent communication.

You may wonder how you can have frequent communication with your people if you think your tips booklet is only one product. It's actually many products. And each product has many components.

By pulling apart the booklet to put each tip onto a card for a card deck or into an email for an autoresponder series, you can "drip" on your clients as many times as you have number of tips. And you can do that either in print or in audio as sound bites.

Once you've done this for yourself, you can also license it to companies and associations for them to use your content in the same way, to frequently communicate with clients and prospects to build trustworthiness and a bigger bottom line.

Do you have the How to License Your Booklet for Huge Profits? Your corporate and association clients want you to have it so they can use what you have for everyone's benefit.

Until next time,

Paulette - ever focusing on leveraging your efforts for the greatest good

www.tipsbooklets.com

www.CollectionOfExperts.com

Booklets - It's All Been Said

You may think that everything there is to say on your topic has already been said. However, it hasn't been said by you, at this time.

Why that matters:

• You have your unique perspective on your topic.
• It's impossible to reach everyone on the planet with any particular piece of information.

Write your booklet anyway. Write it now. Get your message distributed as widely as possible in as many different formats as you can. It will never all be said.

Until next time,

Paulette - who is still talking about tips booklets for almost 20 years, with more to say to people who have yet to hear it and/or can benefit from reminders

www.tipsbooklets.com

www.CollectionOfExperts.com

Booklets - Be Succinct

The biggest challenge for many booklet authors is to write succinctly. Sometimes that's because the writer feels compelled to fully explain a concept. Other times it's being unaware of how to write economically.

Say what needs saying in as few words as possible. Make your point so you can go on to make another point.

Until next time,

Paulette - teaching by example

www.tipsbooklets.com

www.CollectionOfExperts.com

Booklets - A Project, a task, or somewhere in between

3,500 words written to a specific tip-writing formula - do you see that as a project, a task, or an undefined "other?"

Here is a range of often-heard reactions in the conversation about writing a tips booklet:

• "I'm not a writer."
• "Oh this will be so easy - much easier than writing a whole book."
• "I don't have time."
• "I have so many topics to write about - which should I choose first?"
• "I can write dozens of booklets."
• "What happens once it's written?"
• "I can knock this out right away."

Like so many things, the initial point of view can determine the process and the outcome.

What's your point of view?

Until next time,

Paulette - who took 2 weeks to write her booklet years ago without knowing what she was doing

www.tipsbooklets.com

www.CollectionOfExperts.com

Booklets - Your Company Policies

One of the best things about having your own business whether it's focused on booklets or not is that you get to choose. You get to decide what works for you. You get to do it your way. Some people worry that will cost them business. The odds are high that if it does cost you business with booklets or any other part of your business, it's more than compensated for by the additional business you generate by doing what works for you.

Just because "all the other kids are doing it" doesn't mean you have to. I mean that as a colleague not a parent when I say that, though it may remind you of a parent saying that, or even you saying it to your own kid(s). I know a very successful speaker, for instance, who refused to create a demo video even though that was/is a standard thing to do in the professional speaking industry. And this person carved out a unique niche and thrives more than most, still with no demo video.

Here are a few things that are included in my business policies related to booklets and my overall business:

• The minimum number of tips booklets I sell is 100 copies. I am not in the single-copy fulfillment business anymore, not even at a speaking engagement.

• The earliest phone or the rare in-person appointment I make is usually 10 am Pacific, with the occasional exception of 9 am. Breakfast is always at home and not part of a meeting with anyone, as in "I don't do breakfast meetings." The only exception to that is once in awhile if I'm at an event and it's someone I really want to meet with and that's the only possible time. I generally ease into my day with a range of things to ground me and put my mind in forward motion. It's for your benefit and mine that I take that time first.

• Evenings and weekends are for re-charging my batteries so I am more able to provide good service and be innovative the rest of the week. There is a rare time I'll do a speaking engagement on a weekend, and there has to be a good reason to do that.

• Most of my products (aka Learning Tools) are now downloadable, with permission given for the client to print them out if they'd like. This allows you, the client to get the product instantly, to start benefiting faster, with less overhead influencing the price.

Those are a few of my business policies. What are yours?

Until next time,

Paulette - who sent someone a PDF today instead of selling them a single hard copy because I'm not in the single-copy fulfillment business, no matter how much begging or disbelief happened

www.tipsbooklets.com

www.CollectionOfExperts.com

Booklets - What's Logic Got to Do With It?

Strategies in writing, producing, marketing, and selling your tips booklet are good -- as starting points. Sometimes the intended strategy prevails as a good way to proceed and other times it becomes apparent that a course correction is needed.

It's often like learning the commonly accepted rules so you can break them or, instead, realize they won't serve you if you veer away from them. Different situations require different solutions.

Writing the booklet in tips format serves a certain learning style and market, and not others. Creating the booklet so it is 4" x 9" works in many situations and not others. If 3M wanted the booklet to be 2" x 2" so it could be packaged with a pad of Post-It notes, and they wanted 3 million units of it at that size, you'd certainly accommodate that. If a company wanted to use your booklet imprinted with their logo and contact information as their holiday greeting to 10,000 addresses on their client and prospect list, it really wouldn't matter much if they were on your original target market list, would it?

Start with what makes sense and be responsive to what else shows up if that works for you and for the client.

Until next time,

Paulette - who has seen many things that defied logic

www.tipsbooklets.com

www.CollectionOfExperts.com