15 Million Bogus Hotel Bookings Every Year!

How do you rate your chances of being scammed when you make a hotel booking?

You probably think the likelihood is pretty remote. But it’s not.

According to the latest figures, something like one in every 16 online room bookings is a fake.

That’s right. Six percent of travelers ended up booking on phony hotel websites that looked like the real thing.

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©Copyright Audri and Jim Lanford. All rights reserved.

Reprinted with permission.

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Do Not Track Solution Still Out of Reach

Who doesn’t feel surprised and more than a little uneasy when an ad pops up in your browser or a posting appears on your Facebook page that exactly reflects something you’ve been doing online.

You’re a victim of tracking the process of watching what you do and where you go online and then serving up an item or product that matches your interest.

Even if the results are helpful, you may feel somewhat concerned, especially since, perhaps, you think you’ve taken prior action to stop those trackers.

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©Copyright Audri and Jim Lanford. All rights reserved.

Reprinted with permission.

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Are You Offering a Commodity or a Unique Solution?

As a self-employed professional, the last thing you want is for clients to perceive you as a commodity. Commodities are products or services that are considered to be basically the same no matter who provides them. When your target audience thinks of you as just another financial planner, graphic designer, life coach, personal trainer, or psychotherapist, you must work far too hard simply to get them to remember you until they need you.

Then when prospective clients consider working with you, they’ll be comparing you to your competitors based on whose price is lowest or whose location or hours are most convenient. Unless you want to offer the lowest prices or 24/7 service in multiple locations, there’s no guarantee that prospects you’ve tried hard to meet and connect with will ever hire you.

Here are five ways you can position the solution that you offer as distinctive enough to attract and hold your prospective clients’ attention, AND convince them that your solution is the one they need.

1. Serve a specialized market — Clients think of themselves as special. Even though a web designer believes that she can serve a photographer just as well as a copywriter, that’s not the way photographers will think about it. The web designer they’ll remember and choose is the one who specializes in building sites for photographers.
2. Practice a professional specialty — When clients have a particular issue they need help with, they look for a specialist in that issue. A person recovering from a traumatic event will choose a psychotherapist who specializes in treating trauma over one who treats multiple conditions. Parents concerned about putting their children through college will be much more likely to select a college financial planner than other planners who don’t specialize in this issue.
3. Offer a branded product, package, or process — Clients often choose to work with me as a business coach because I have a well-known process called Get Clients Now!, not because I’m the cheapest coach around or can accommodate any schedule. And they make this choice even when they hire me to assist with business challenges beyond getting clients. The branded process makes them remember and trust me.
4. Become a recognized expert — When clients perceive you as an expert in your field, they remember who you are, are willing to pay higher fees, and often agree to hire you immediately. You can influence clients to see you as an expert by writing, speaking, teaching, or affiliating yourself with a prestigious organization.
5. Offer something none of your competitors has — This can be the most challenging of these ideas to implement, but a truly unique offering can make you both memorable and desirable. There are many people who offer classes on how to succeed as a speaker, but my colleague Caterina Rando calls hers the “Shero Summit,” and gives the women who participate superhero capes and gloves to wear. Prospective students see the photos, and want to join in the fun.

Don’t hesitate to differentiate yourself by choosing a market, specialty, or brand because you fear you’ll lose clients that don’t fit. You can still decide to work with any client who shows up ready to hire you. But by carving out a unique solution to offer, you’ll be remembered by exactly the clients you most want to have.

Legendary management consultant Peter Drucker once said: “In a commodity market, you can only be as good as your dumbest competitor.” Be smart instead, and find a way to position the solution you offer as a distinctive choice in a crowded marketplace.

Copyright © 2015, C.J. Hayden

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Don’t Be Bamboozled by These Bamboo Claims

Bamboo has been hailed as one of the great environmental wonder products of modern times.

It’s claimed to be sustainable,  easy and fast to grow. And it can also be processed into a variety of practical products from wood flooring to bed sheets.

It’s also fairly expensive, perhaps because of its environmental credentials. And that, inevitably, has led to the misleading use of the word “bamboo” on product labels.

Click here to read the full article. 



©Copyright Audri and Jim Lanford. All rights reserved.

Reprinted with permission.

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The Fish on Your Dish May Not Be the Salmon You Sought

Salmon is salmon, right? Well, yes, in a manner of speaking, but there are also several different varieties of America’s most popular fish dish.

And if you don’t know your Chinook from your Chilean or your Alaskan from your Atlantic, you could be on the receiving end of a salmon fraud that has nutrition and fishery experts increasingly worried.

A while back in  Seafood Fraud: What’s Really On Your Dish? we wrote about how environmental research group Oceana discovered that many types of seafood were mislabeled, intentionally otherwise, and that as many as 87% of some fish types were wrongly described in grocery stores and restaurants.

Click here to read the full article. 



©Copyright Audri and Jim Lanford. All rights reserved.

Reprinted with permission.

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Seven Ways to Get Clients to See You as an Expert

As a self-employed professional, the view that prospective clients hold of you is crucial. What you want is for clients to see you as an expert. How clients perceive your level of expertise will influence not only whether or not they hire you, but also how much they’re willing to pay, how easy it is for you to close the sale, and whether clients award you big projects or small ones.

It may feel like you, the person to be hired, don’t have much power over clients’ perceptions. You may believe that clients will make their own decisions about how — or whether — to work with you, regardless of what you do. But that’s not true. There is much you can do to influence how potential clients view you before you ever have your first conversation with them. Here are seven ways you can influence clients to perceive you as an expert.

1. Speak — Public speaking for groups of potential clients or referral sources is a powerful way to demonstrate your expertise, while simultaneously making a personal connection. Whether you speak at conferences, professional meetings, webinars, or teleclasses, audience members will automatically value your expertise more highly because it’s coming from the podium.
2. Teach — If you enjoy speaking in public, consider finding an opportunity to do so on the faculty of a university, training school, or resource center where potential clients or referral sources attend classes. In addition to the usual benefits of public speaking, you’ll gain instant credibility as a faculty member of a recognized institution.
3. Write — Writing articles, blog posts, white papers, case studies, or ebooks can allow you to reach a wider audience than speaking or teaching. Plus, writing has the significant benefit of permitting you to capture your expertise once, then share it over and over. Once clients view you as the “author of” one or more publications, they’ll begin to think of you as a trustworthy advisor.
4. Publish — Writing for your own blog or newsletter is an easy way to get started as a writer. But you’ll become more credible once you publish outside your own website or mailing list. Consider writing guest posts for other blogs your audience reads, or articles for industry newsletters, trade journals, or local publications.
5. Join — Clients will often survey your affiliations to judge how “professional” you are. Even when a client knows nothing about your field, they’re likely to consider you more of an expert when you belong to one or more professional associations related to what you do.
6. Serve — Volunteering on a committee or serving as an officer for an industry association or local community group provides multiple benefits. You’ll make new connections with potential clients and referral sources, gain recognition from colleagues or neighbors, and be seen by others as someone who’s at the center of things.
7. Position and Promote — All of the above activities will produce better results when you make sure prospective clients are aware of them. Your professional bio should include where you speak or teach, where you publish, and what organizations you belong to or volunteer for. When you get booked to speak, begin teaching a new class, publish an article or other writing, or take on a new role with an organization, let your mailing list and social media connections know.

Don’t spend all your marketing time and money just on being more visible to prospective clients. Visibility marketing like running ads, email blasts, direct mail, and promotion-only social media may get your clients’ attention, but you want more than that; you want their trust. Make sure to include some of the trust-building approaches above in your marketing mix.

Then clients won’t just see you, they’ll see you as the expert you truly are.


 Copyright © 2015, C.J. Hayden

Read more free articles by C.J. Hayden or subscribe to the GET CLIENTS NOW! E-Letter.