Why should your prospective client trust you?

At the moment I'm enjoying a discussion with one of my clients, a health professional now running her own business but NHS trained.

She's asked me to write some information leaflets and part of what she wants me to get across, invisibly, is the extent of her training and why she is the best person to deal with versus asking advice of others less well trained than she is.

In some ways it's the 'you wouldn't ask your plumber to carry out brain surgery' argument. It's something that's very pertinent for any professional selling their services.

Why should the prospect trust you?

They've picked up your leaflet or visited your website, actively looking to buy what you provide.  If you catch their interest you'll get a few minutes of their precious time.

But only a few minutes... and only if that invisble bond of trust starts to form.

One word may create the first connection... then a sentence.  Maybe a whole paragraph catches their attention.

And you need to understand that their distrust has nothing to do with you as an individual - after all they don't know you.

It's a structure laid down layer by layer of bad experiences with professionals such as you.... 

... then add in some anecdotal evidence from friends and family... plus some scare headlines in the media.

There you are left trying to dismantle an obstacle constructed of scepticism, fear and downright distrust.

What questions are they asking themselves?

With health issues they might include:

How much will it cost me?
Will it hurt?
Do they actually know what they're doing?
How long will it take because I want to feel better right now.

My client thinks education is the key and I agree.  It's a maxim Jay Abraham has preached for many years. 

In practical terms for writing you have to start where they are.  Not in your professional competence and I have to say sometimes arrogance but with their prejudice.

Accept they may have had a bad experience.
Accept you have to work hard to overcome that
and accept you have to make is clear in terms they'll understand that you know what you're doing.

That's always our challenge as writers but unless we can overcome that it will stop people contacting us.  And that's our final goal isn't it?

What kinds of obstacles do you have to overcome to make a long term relationship with your clients?

Editing; is it a lost art?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/feb/11/lost-art-editing-books-publishing?INTCMP=SRCH

While I had breakfast this morning I read the article above by Alex Clark.  Since I do a fair bit of editing my interest was certainly aroused.  From a very low key perspective I can agree with the points made by all the contributors. 

I've always thought it to be the most difficult of skills, especially if you're trying to edit your own work.  I've gone over pieces of mine half a dozen times, printed them out, left them and when I've gone back, found the most glaring of mistakes.

Alex Clark talks about the pressures of commercial publishing impacting on editing services.  That's true but also there's a reduced expectation of the need for editing.  After all if we have a spell checker programme, why would we need a human editor?

Sorry to be ironic but that's been put to me on more than one occasion as a serious question.  I always bless those of my clients who despite their writing skills value the detached observation I can bring to their writing. 

As a professional it amuses me to see the corrections in library books made by a previous enraged reader. And it does surprise me that for books frequently reprinted,  mistakes continue to appear.  Back to cost again I suppose.

The best editors as it says in the article, address not only the proof reading mistakes but the structure of whatever they're reading.  I know I've benefitted from some observations on the small piece of manuscript I had assessed recently.  Yes at first it can damage your ego and make you feel useless, but when you get over that, then there's a lot of value in what insights are offered.

Long live editors say I.

Alan Plater

I watched Alan Plater's last play, Joe Maddison's War, on television last night.

It had all of his trademark quirkiness and compassionate observation.  We've owned the Beiderbecke Trilogy for years and return to it whenever we want something that offers a sense of the ridiculous and wonderful characters.

This week my sister and I are making our annual visit to Scarborough for the jazz festival.  I never had the privilege of talking to Alan Plater but I saw him in action at Scarborough a couple of times.narrating tales of unsung heroes of jazz with his usual humour and passion.

His recent death robs us of a superb writer and we'll be the worse for not having his wry humour to draw on.

Di Slaney - 'sME Poetry Collection

Had a wonderful surprise in the post this morning.  Di Slaney has sent me a copy of the poetry collection I reviewed for her.  Looks wonderful- Black with gold lettering.  Just what you'd expect from a successful graphic designer.

If you're interested in more details about the collection email di@diversity-nottm.co.uk

If you want to read my thoughts and Di's about the collection see http://writerslittlebook.blogspot.com/2010/08/di-slaney-businesswoman-and-poet.html

She very kindly acknowledges my help and more important the help of Jenny at Candlestick Press who I've mentioned before in the Writer's Little Book blog.

Writing business: how it grows and changes

I set this blog up earlier in the year to have a place for longer posts rather than the short punchy entries I make in Writer's Little Book blog.

Now I'm changing the way I do things and it set me thinking how my business is changing.

Like any small business, when you start it's a temptation to take any work because you need the income.  Sometimes that leads you to disaster if the client is wrong for you or they don't appreciate what you do. 

I was lucky that I attracted some great clients right from the word go.  But even then there's a change in the way you view them.  Like many writers I prefer to have a mixture of what I'd call bread and butter work and the more challenging projects.

Eventually it's the challenging projects that provide more growth and development as a writer but they can take your business in a different direction from what you'd expected.  When I first started I thought I'd be writing a lot of sales letters.  Which didn't happen but I did work on many websites which are themselves a form of sales letter. 

Then I was asked about books.  Helping people write them that is... which put me in a bit of a panic because I'd never done it before.  But I reasoned that I hadn't done a lot of other things before so it could be learned.

Having brought my first book project to a successful conclusion, it whetted my appetite for more.  And I found myself being asked by more people about writing books.  How you do it, how you start, how you stop and how to get over those writer's blocks we all fear.

What I love is to help someone take action and create something that had only sat in their imagination before.  Of course we'd all love an instant best seller, but it often doesn't happen like that.  But I do believe the mere action of putting pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard kicks off a process that can lead to all kinds of things beyond the act of writing.

So my business has changed and is changing.  I'm emphasing what I can do to help writers.  Next month I'll have a new website that will be branded under my own name.  And that will open more door to me.

I'm taking over to the new site all the Writer's Little Book material and it will offer a full range of services to writers.  There are some exciting developments coming along with the possibility of having videos of interviews with writers on the site as well as more guest blogs.

It's a development that has me buzzing and I'm looking forward to sharing what I find out with you.

Writing articles to increase your reputation: 3 reasons to invest the time

What can articles do to help you stand out?

In disciplines where there are many practitioners, people often struggle to gain space enough to tell people what they can do. You can shout louder than others which might work in the short term, but if you’re looking for a solid long-term career, you need to look at all the avenues open to you that get the word out to prospective clients.

Here are three reasons for writing to help you decide on the type of articles you can write.

Record your successes

Depending on your trade, profession or area of expertise, you can base an article on a successful piece of work.  Consider laying out a recent project in the form of a case study then extract the important general principles that you can pass on to others.

Where possible avoid bragging or trying to sell your services directly. Positioning yourself as the expert able to find solutions to challenging problems is a much better advertisement than any paid ad.

In your personal details at the end of the article, you can then point the reader towards your website, other resources and testimonials. All these can confirm the picture of your skills you’ve built up in the article.

Point the way to your book

The best business card you can have is a book. It conveys immediate authority on you. After all you have to be an expert to write a book don’t you?

Many people believe that writing books is time consuming and difficult. It can be like anything else if you don’t choose to prepare to do it.  If you feel sick at the thought of writing a whole book, then consider this.

Ten reasonable length articles say 1,500 words each can provide you with the bones of a substantial book.

For your work I expect you can find 10 questions that people ask about all the time. Answer those questions and that creates 10 basic chapters. Add on an introduction chapter, a conclusion and you’ve turned articles into the beginnings of a book.

Show them you're a person of influence

Everyone knows someone who knows so much about a topic they’ve considered influential. How about being that person in your field?

Writing articles is a great start to creating your sphere of influence. And if you’re happy to share your expertise, you can have articles turned into pdf documents which you can hand out at networking events, places where you speak and meetings with prospective clients.

It only takes a few of these articles to be passed around among other influential people and you have a ready made reputation.

Being prepared to invest time to write some articles is future money in the bank because of the return on investment it can bring you.

Writing your book; how many assumptions are you making?

Working with writers is endlessly fascinating. 

And challenging.  And frustrating.  And...

I guess you get the picture.  It's different every time which I love and even if there are similar topics to books, the unique perspective the author has, creates that difference.

But... there are some common threads when I work with them.  And it's to do with assumptions they make.

About themselves as writers.
About their prospective readers.
And most important about the connection between the two.

Assunptions about themselves as writers

1. They can't write a book because it's different from anything else they've done.
2. They have nothing to say because it's all been done before.
3. They don't have the time.

All of these are practical issues not literary ones.Once we've worked through them and I've offered them some suggestions to consider that usually sorts them out.

Assumptions about their prospective readers

1. That because it's written, the readers will oblige by buying, reading, recommending.
2. That readers have the time to sit down and read at length.
3. That readers don't know what's what.

Again these are practical issues; assumptions held because they either do relate or don't relate their own behaviour to that of prospective readers.

The first is the old better mouse trap situation.  Nobody has to be interested in our books.  We have to find compelling reasons for them to be interested.

If they don't have the time to write the book, why do they believe the reader has the time to read it.  The argument might run that it takes less time to read than to write, but that makes the fatal assumption that everyone reads at the same rate, with the same discipline and enjoyment as we do.

Pay attention to how you present your information

Imagine there is someone who could really use the advice your book offers.  But they don't like reading and they don't have the money to spend on one to one consulting.

Are you going to create a book that excludes someone who might change their life for the better having read your book?  It's not a case of dumbing down material.  It's a case of presenting it in a form that's easily digestible and simple to apply.  If you want to write an academic book that only 20 people in the world that's fine. 

That doesn't apply to most of us so we have to pay attention to not only the information we present, but how we present the information.

Assumptions about the connection between writers and readers

1. That there is none.
2. That what the writer wants to do is more important than what the reader needs.
3. That there's only a one way connection.

I've met writers who don't care about their readers.  Period.

They want to tell their story and that's it.  Like it or lump it, the reader gets what they get. That's an okay place to be if you don't want any connection and the thought of readers make you feel slightly soiled.

Yes readers are irritating because they react in ways different from what you want or imagine.  But developing as a writer, especially if you write non-fiction means taking account of what's happening in the world beyond your computer.

Which involves being connected in some way to readers.  And which leads to the two, not one way connection.  Listening to what readers tell you about how your book met their needs or didn't, can give you feedback many companies would shell out large sums in market research to discover.

Recently I met a reader of my first book, Writers Little Book with Big Ideas.  What she took most from the book was to simply get on and write.  Now that might seem a straightforward statement but you wouldn't believe the number of people I meet who suffer from that very challenge.

Of putting pen to paper or fingers on keyboard and doing it.

You see much as we think we know what our readers need, how they'll react to our writing and what they gain from it, we don't.

Not really.  Because readers always surprise you by finding things in your books that you had no idea were in there, or intended to be in there.

So the fewer assumptions you have in your head about your readers, your ability as a writer  before you start to write the better. 

Not knowing is a good place to start and you'll write a more rewarding book for you and your readers working from there.