When Things Go Wrong In Business

The other day I promised you a video teaching you about the various “proofing mechanisms” that I use in my sales letters to drastically improve conversions for my clients and myself.

However…

Something happened this week that I need to share with you in this email to warn/teach you so that you can avoid similar mistakes.

AND so that you can understand This All Important Business Truth.

As you may remember, four weeks ago I hired a project manager and TWO additional front end client care managers to help me run my copywriting business http://www.freelancecopywritermike.com .

It was my intention to hire this team to improve the client experience.

Not only do I want to deliver the BEST copy, I also want to deliver the BEST customer experience.

However, like I tend to do, I made a mistake.

This particular mistake may end up costing me upwards of $15,000 in potential lost business just from the past two weeks.

OUCH!

This is a mistake that you may be making and may not even be aware of it (especially if you have people working for you to grow your business).

This is the mistake:

I forgot about my customers when I designed my customer service process.

Sounds insane right?

Here’s what happened:

I brought on the fancy new team. They were bright and shiny and very expensive.

What I told them to do was “use your bright and shiny and expensiveness to expand the system that I currently use”.

Mistake.

If you’re hiring an expensive team to fix a particular problem, DON’T ASK THEM TO SIMPLY EXPAND THE CURRENTLY BROKEN SYSTEM!

It wasn’t until I ran a survey this past week that I realized that the SAME problems were creeping up on me even though I had this bright and shiny and expensive team to make things better.

BLAST!

What was the problem?

People didn’t want to communicate via email to get their sales copy finished.

They want their copy, and they want to fast.

Email is slow.

And all I did with my fancy new team was expand my email capabilities.

I. Am. An. Idiot.

Luckily, the project manager for my fancy new team is NOT an idiot.

So, starting tomorrow, FreelanceCopywriterMike.com will now be picking up the phone and taking orders for the ultimate in speed and quality copy.

In other words, what may have taken two or three days via email will now be accomplished in a 10 to 15 minute phone conversation.

Seems pretty obvious right?

For me, it was a revelation.

Why?

Because sometimes as business owners are head is buried so deep in the sand of just “getting the job done” that the obvious becomes mystic.

I’ve asked you this question before, and I’ll ask it again because I need to keep asking it to myself:

What obvious fixes in your business have become mystic? What opinions of yours do you need to change in order to be more successful? What parts of your business are you-centric instead of customer-centric?

Answer those questions and the increase in revenue will follow.

For me, it already has.

When we had the results back from the survey we were able to pick up the phone and call those people who said:

“I don’t like ordering through email”.

In less than 24 hours we generated over $2000 in new work.

Just think what that could mean for your business.

Okay. Embarrassing rant/confession over.

Tomorrow, I will be creating the video and sending it out for all to see so that you can use “proofing mechanisms” to increase the conversions of your own sales pages (as well as use proofing mechanisms for other sneaky and cash pulling tactics).

To your success,

Mike