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TaxCoach Briefs: June 10, 2010
Volume 5, Number 22
****Attention All-Stars and Press Club members ****: The playback from our June webinar last Tuesday is now available on the All-Stars page within TaxCoach. Our theme was "Beat Me Like A Rented Mule": Setting action plans for getting stuff done. Next webinar is July 13 - mark your calendar now and we'll update you with agenda and registration info via The Scout as the date draws closer. ===================================================== MARKETING BLUNDERS FROM GODADDY.COM If you have a website, there's a good chance you use GoDaddy.com as your domain name registrar. If you don't use them, you're probably still familiar with their distinctively tacky advertising featuring race car driver Danica Patrick. GoDaddy.com is a pain in the ass. (If President Obama can publicly call for kicking somebody's ass in the Gulf of Mexico, then I can call GoDaddy a pain in the ass.) Their site is a bewildering blizzard of tiny print and confusing offers. And in a crowded field of competitors, these guys are the undisputed heavyweight champions of upsells. Click to register a "dot-com" name, and they'll try to sell you dot-info, dot-net, dot-org, dot-us, dot-biz, dot-ca, dot-mobi, dot-me, dot-tv, and dot-ws. (Dot-ca? Dot-mobi? Huh? Guys, it's a dot-com world - if you can't get your preferred domain name in dot-com, find another name.) Fight your way through the junk extensions and you'll see more offers for email addresses, site hosting, and other automated services at prices so low that if it was a pile of change, you wouldn't bend down to pick it up off the ground. And it's all automated. You can set your domain names to renew automatically so you don't have to waste time keeping your registrations current. That, of course, is GoDaddy's virtue. That's why we put up with the hassle. They're cheap. Cheap, cheap, cheap. And in today's economy, that makes up for a lot of ills. GoDaddy makes it economical to go and register a dozen or more domains, just to make sure they're yours and not your competitors'. I can't even count how many domains we've registered here at TaxCoach. When I think of a good domain, I immediately go online to register it. (I remember one time thinking up a clever variation for tax marketing, then checking to see if it was available. I was disappointed to find some rat bastard had already reserved it - then I looked further to see who had it, and it was me!) (I know, I know . . . week after week I tell you never to compete on price. But when you're in a "commodity" business like GoDaddy, there's not much else to compete on but price. So if you find yourself in a commodity business, find a way to reposition whatever you're selling so it's not just a commodity!) But - like I said earlier - they're a pain in the ass. PITA. Pain. In. The. Ass. Yesterday afternoon, someone named Angel called me from GoDaddy. Catherine took the call, and told Angel I was unavailable. (Not taking unscheduled phone calls is probably the single most effective time-management move I've made since learning how to tell time.) Catherine asked how she could help, but - get this - Angel wouldn't discuss the matter with Catherine. Noooooo . . . . She absolutely insisted on speaking to me personally. I suspected the call was just another upsell. But what if it really was important? What if there was a problem renewing, say, "taxcoachsoftware.com"?" So this morning, when I first got in, I called. Skeptically. It didn't help that I had to give my customer ID and PIN number before the rep would even talk to me. ("For my own protection," of course.) But I managed to dig them up - and learned that GoDaddy was calling just to thank me for my recent "automatic" registration! Okay. I get it. I'm all for staying in touch with valued customers. That's why we publish these Briefs and the monthly Lineup. It's why we send weekly emails on behalf of our Press Club members. But you don't have to enter your userid and password to read the Briefs. You can print a copy for your staff. And if you don't want to read the Lineup, just throw it in the trash! (Or the recycling bin - Catherine.) And sure, a phone call is a nice personal touch in an automated business. But I don't have a relationship with GoDaddy. I'm a customer, not a client. I mean, come on. Did they really need to get me on the phone to thank us? How hard would it have been for Angel to ask Catherine to "please tell Mr. Lyon we thank him for his business and we're here if he needs us for anything else"? Did they really need to waste my time to do it? I got agitated with the poor schmuck at the other end of the phone. I didn't exactly "get medieval" on him. But I could see Catherine cringing at her desk as she listened to me berate him, probably wondering what new atrocity my soon-to-be-ex-wife had committed to put me in such a foul mood for the morning. This nonsense with the customer ID and PIN? They called us! Can't they safely assume that the person answering my phone at the number I have on file in their records is authorized to accept a thank-you? Why did they have to waste my time because Catherine didn't have my stupid PIN? The GoDaddy schmuck had no answer. Dude, that's why I have a staff - because I don't have time myself to handle everything that needs to get done here! If I lived on the Gulf of Mexico and had a complaint about oil washing onto my marsh, I'd pick up the phone and call BP. But I sure wouldn't insist on speaking to that smarmy horse's ass who runs the place. I might have to call 84 times - but that's a different rant. (That wasn't nice. Sorry.) And you can be sure next time GoDaddy calls, I'll be even less excited to talk with them. (For the record, my PIN is "0511," and I hereby authorize everyone reading this newsletter to accept GoDaddy's thanks on my behalf!) Okay . . . enough of my rant. What's the point of it all? Well, GoDaddy tried to do something right by sending a thank-you. But they completely botched it by making it painful for me to get it. They ended up causing more harm than if they had done nothing! Is there anything you do that makes your service a pain in the ass? If so, stop it! Do you make it hard for clients to pay you? Start taking credit cards! (And for God's sake, don't cheap out and refuse American Express. Yes, the fee is a little higher. Get over it. Do you seriously want to give clients fewer ways to take money out of their pocket and put it into yours?) Do you offer automated billing to debit your monthly clients' bank or credit card accounts? If not, what are you waiting for? Are you really doing them any favors by making them sit down and write a check every month? Not to mention the time you spend billing clients! As Press Club member David Stone recently pointed out, if you waste just 10 minutes a day, that adds up to an entire week over the course of a year. While I'm on my rant here, is there anything Keith and I do here at TaxCoach that makes us a pain in the ass? Let us know. Email us at PITA@taxcoachsoftware.com. Seriously. How else will we know if you don't tell us? I usually try and wrap up the Marketing Minute with some sort of pithy moral. But this week I'll just be blunt. Don't make yourself painful to do business with. Otherwise you'll wind up with less business. It's as simple as that. ===================================================== We get a pile of mail from members who've completed the Certified Tax Coach course. They're typically very happy to finish the training and get their certification, with rave reviews about the material thrown in as well. We're always happy for them, too! "Thanks to all in Ohio for the congrats. I am excited about the prospects, and have been thrilled with your program. Now to get off my *** and make it all work!!!!" ===================================================== MEMBER CALL-IN WITH ED AND KEITH No call this week. Told ya! Only had one or two miss the announcements all over the place and call in anyway! Calls are generally held each Wednesday, and we'll pick back up next week. If you're looking for clarification on TaxCoach strategies or additional ways to profit from TaxCoach, join us for the next call, on Wednesday June 16, at 1pm Eastern. Enter a question or just listen in on the repartee. Check the "Contact Us" button within TaxCoach for registration instructions. While our elite members (All-Stars, Press Club, and Hall of Fame) can still schedule time directly with Ed as part of their coaching programs, we simply cannot answer marketing and tax-strategy questions via email or unscheduled calls. ===================================================== We can answer questions on using TaxCoach system features anytime. (Save marketing and tax strategy questions for Member Call-Ins.) For best response, email support@taxcoachsoftware.com. Regards, Ed LyonKeith VandeStadt http://www.taxcoachsoftware.com/ (513) 321-2820 TaxCoach SuperTable Certified Tax Coach™ TaxCoach All-Stars TaxCoach Press Club TaxCoach Closely-Held Insurance Company TaxCoach Cost Segregation TaxCoach Briefs archives . . . |