Well it’s certainly good for the ego. I know a number of marketers who pride themselves on being inaccessible to their customers.

You MUST go through their support desk or PA to get anywhere near them.

Now I’m not posting this because I’m some sort of ‘my door is always open’ marketer because I’m bloody not – I value my family and private life far too much for that

But if you’ve been around me for a while then the chances are you know that you can always get in touch with me. I have a ticket desk that my support teams answer because otherwise I’d spend all my time dealing with lost download links, login URLs and testimonial requests

But the stuff like interview requests, JV offers, partnership offer and the like ALWAYS get to me and most of the time you’ll get a personal reply.

This isn’t always the case with online marketers though…

Some years back I was going to invest several thousand dollars for personal mentoring from a well known guru dude. I was pretty sure he was the right person to guide me through something I was setting up and contacted him to request a five minute chat.

It was like trying to contact bloody ELVIS

I was fobbed off by his support woman (a bit lower down the food chain and she’d have been living in a friggin’ POND), and then after a week when I did get some response he told me he wanted a non refundable $500 to speak to me on Skype for five minutes

I decided he was an ‘up his own arse’ tosser and the coaching thankfully never came off

I say ‘thankfully’ because I later heard bad tales of how he has a rep not being too accessible for his paying clients either

There is a school of thought that recommends getting paid for ALL your time, even the five minute consultations with prospective personal clients. I can see why that might be a good idea

But I don’t agree with it.

Instead train up your support to ask a few questions that will weed out the tyre kickers. And don’t forget that spending five minutes chatting to prospective clients allows YOU to know if you want to work with someone too. So it’s not all one sided.

The moral of the story?

Get yourself good support as soon as you can afford it to free you up for the important things, and spend time communicating with your readers. You’ll pick up some high value customers and you won’t take yourself so bloody seriously either

Comments welcome

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