I had a problem last week and needed some expert advice: one of my web projects was hung up in a technical issue. Our client was having a hard time configuring their server to meet the requirements of our web application and my developers were stumped… I started by pulling out my business card portfolio to see if I had anyone in there who could help, but didn’t find anyone promising. I didn’t know an expert, I thought, so why not ask strangers?

So I went on LinkedIn Answers and asked for a referral to a server admin with expertise in the area we were looking for.

I was overwhelmed by the response. I had people writing in within 10 minutes of posting the request and over a couple of days I’ve gotten about a dozen good responses, including the one that referred me to the expert I’ve hired to come in and fix the problem.

As entrepreneurs we may not work in big offices, but we’re not really alone either.

As a small business owner, I’m often flying solo and presenting on my 15″ laptop monitor… But when I was director of marketing communications for a mid-sized products company and creative firms came to pitch me, they usually brought a roomful of people and their own projector. There’s a big difference in perception from the audience’s point of view and it can be a major handicap if you’re ever bidding against a larger or more established player who can fill the room for a sales call.

So how do you even the odds? Start bringing a couple of employees with you to your meetings. If you don’t have employees, use hired goons: a vendor, a partner, consultant or colleague that can add value to your sales pitch.

Last Thursday, my associate and I went to support one of our clients at a big sales meeting. This particular client is a husband and wife-owned business and they had been working diligently for several weeks trying to convince a middle-management gatekeeper to allow them to speak directly to the executive-level decision makers. After meeting on several other occasions without getting any traction, they were convinced that this would be their last shot.

So this time, we went with them. We helped them with their presentation materials, we sat with them for moral support, chimed in to quickly fill any conversation gaps and presented the marketing-related portions of the pitch ourselves, which gave our team credibility and gave the business owners a short break from presenting.

Before I made it back to my desk 45 minutes later, there was already a message in my inbox to confirm a follow-up meeting with the executive team this coming Tuesday.

I’m certainly not trying to take all the credit for this success; I spent most of my time as a hired sales goon sitting quietly and nodding my head whenever one of my clients made a good point and only spoke a handful of times during the entire meeting. But our presence there was one of several factors that allowed these clients to finally break through and take their pitch to the decision makers.

My colleague Mark DiNunzio talks a lot about applying big business sales techniques to small businesses and this is just one page from the playbook. But it’s effective and takes virtually no effort to implement.

It was an unexpected and considerate detail, especially in light of the stress and uncertainty that comes with doctors visits in general. Plus, it cost them next to nothing to produce and is likely noticed and appreciated by hundreds of visitors every day.

Sometimes it helps to take a step back and put yourself in your customer’s shoes and think about what it’s like to experience your product or service from their point of view. What can we do to make it just a little easier for our customers to do business with us?

People remember the little things… Sometimes even more than the product/service itself. I’ve just written several paragraphs inspired by the parking lot at my son’s doctor’s office. I also appreciate the hot minty towels that my barber uses and that they remember me and my regular order at my favorite coffee shop. They aren’t the only reason I continue to go to these places, but they certainly help.

1. Google Analytics: Let’s face it… Without statistics to guide us, we just don’t know how successful our marketing efforts are on the web. And Webalizer, AWStats and the other free packages that you might find preinstalled on your server just don’t tell you enough. At the same time, there may not be enough value in stats for a small business to justify spending hundreds or thousands of dollars an advanced analytics package. Google Analytics is a really nice solution though. It’s user-friendly, customizable and offers MUCH more information than you’ll get from whatever came with your server space.

2. FreeConference.com: Conference call lines are expensive, many have subscriptions and many will charge you by the minute. So if you’re cheap like me and don’t want to spend money on the conventional conference line but hate hitting the 3-way button on your phone, this is the free solution for you. Here’s how it works: you sign up and they email you a conference line dial-in number, a bridge number and a moderator’s PIN. Then you can start having conference calls whenever you want. You never need to schedule and there are no limitations; you can use it any time, on-demand. There are only two catches I’ve found… First, the conference can’t start until the moderator logs in with their PIN. That means that if you’re late, your guests will wait in limbo until you arrive. Second, you are unlikely to get a dial-in number with a local area code. But with the prevalence of unlimited calling plans, this is unlikely to offend a lot of people.

3. Yugma.com: Funny name, but a nice free web conferencing tool you can use to complement the free conference line I told you about. The desire to do presentations and web meetings may not be strong enough to justify $20-$100 a month. But with Yugma, I can share PowerPoint presentations — or anything else on my computer screen — for free. Then I can get on my FreeConference line and give the audio portion of my presentation and share the visual part over the web. Now we can do presentations anywhere in the country as if we were there. Except that I don’t need to wear a tie. Is there a catch? Absolutely. You can only invite 10 attendees to a meeting with the free account and you can’t use their scheduling tool which will automatically send conference URLs to all of your invitees. Instead you need to start the conference a few minutes early on your computer which will allow you to generate a URL and email it then. Ultimately, you may want to pay for your web conferences, but this will allow you to dip your toe in the water and keep it there as long as you like at no cost.

4. LinkedIn: I’ve been on LinkedIn for almost three years… Building your network gives you the opportunity to view and search your connections’ connections, their connections and so on. Ever wanted an “in” with a particular company but never had a name? Search on LinkedIn and see what comes up. For example, if I were to search my network for CEO’s in the Consumer Products industry, I get 430 names. They may not all be interested in speaking to me, but I’m free to try anytime I want. If I’m ever talking to a prospective client, vendor or employee, I usually try digging them up on LinkedIn to learn a little more, see if they have any recommendations, etc. LinkedIn also has a great “Question & Answer” section where users can pose business questions to the community and others can show their expertise and help make connections. Essentially, it’s like a giant 24/7/365 networking group with millions of members. And as an added bonus, creating a LinkedIn profile will do wonders for your search engine rankings. Here’s my profile.

5. WordPress: Open source software is a mixed bag in my opinion. You can find something free to do just about anything these days, but that “free” always seems to cost you something in flexibility, functionality, support or scalability (up or down). But WordPress is terrific and a lot better than you’d expect for free. It’s an extremely powerful tool and, from my perspective, near-perfect software at the world’s most perfect price point. To use all the functionality of WordPress, you’ll want to install it on your own host rather than use the version hosted at their site. But you’ll still be blogging within minutes. Content is easy to create, manage and update and with the ability to create static content pages as well as blog posts, WordPress can even serve as a very basic content management system. You’ll still need a designer or firm familiar with WordPress in order to customize the front end and create a look just for you, but that is by no means a requirement for implementing or using the software — just a good suggestion.

Do you have any good small business freebies that you’d like to see added to this list? Email me and I’ll credit you if I use them in the sequel to this post. I’ll take links for “almost freebies” as well. Happy bargain hunting everyone!

If you have a common name like mine, it may be difficult to find yourself. Prominent “Erik Wolf”s include a professional golfer and the president of the International Culinary Tourism Association. I usually show up on page 2 on Google. But if you really try to find me, say by searching for “Erik Wolf + marketing” I’m on the first page and if you search for “Erik Wolf + Georgia” or “Erik Wolf + Branding” I usually come up first or close to it.

Some of the information you might find about me on the Internet are things that I put there. My web sites, my LinkedIn profile, this blog. But some of the information came from other sources… I’ve found a couple of listing sites that have, with startling accuracy, pieced together my entire career including places I’ve worked and the dates I worked there. One site even had links to newspaper articles I’d written while attending college. How? It doesn’t really matter.

Whether we like it our not, we’re living our lives online now and our businesses are too. Searching for yourself and your business regularly is more than an exercise in vanity… It helps you understand what information out there and what, if anything, others are saying about you. When people are considering doing business with a company, a lot of savvy people are searching online. They may also search for the company president and/or their sales person. If there’s information out there – whether an endorsement or a condemnation – you should make it your business to know about it.

It’s also red flag if search engines find no evidence of you or your business… There aren’t many people that can do business nowadays without leaving some sort of online footprint. If you’re not online, get yourself there. How? Well, that will have to be a different post.

Happy searching!

So if you haven’t started making your business and marketing plans for 2008, November is a great time to do that. Start thinking about what you need in 2008 to help you grow. Direct mail campaign? An online contest? New sales materials? An email newsletter? If you build your plans and your budgets now, you can hit the ground running in December and January and make sure you start your year right.

If you start planning for 2008 IN 2008, you’re likely to spend most of your first quarter getting started when you should already be in full gear.

Also, you don’t need a web site in order to be listed. It’s better if you do because your audience may expect it, but Google doesn’t require that you have one.

When you sign up, Google will send a postcard to each address you include with a confirmation code that allows them to validate that you actually do business at that address. Once you punch in your code, you’ll start appearing in listings.