No, unfortunately I haven’t been secluding myself on a distant, tropical island but it’s nice to think about, right? It turns out that I have been just an AWFUL blogger this summer and it’s been a terribly long time since I posted anything. But instead of making excuses, I thought it would be fun to chronicle the things that I’ve been doing this summer instead of blogging.

The summer began with the team and I here at Zero-G wrapping up a long bidding process for a high-profile web design project for an up-and-coming cable TV station (yes, there will be more to come on this!). Winning the project required a fantastic referral from one of our favorite clients, several meetings and phone calls, a trip across the country for me and — oh yeah — beating out 25 other firms to earn the business. I’m usually a pretty humble guy and I don’t like to brag but you can’t help but feel validated as a business owner when your hard work is rewarded and when, even after interviewing two dozen candidates, a client feels that you really are the best vendor out there.

This summer, we also became agency of record for NFCC (North Fulton Community Charities), a group that has been helping feed, clothe and otherwise care for the needy here in our community north of Atlanta. For the last two months we have been engaged in a complete overhaul of that organization’s branding, web site and marketing materials, top to bottom. Our work for NFCC will be unveiled this coming September and our team is extremely excited.

In the middle of all this, working with our other clients and bidding on other new business opportunities, Frost and I also wrote a book, which will be available next month on our web site and on Amazon.com. As always, we’ve also been hosting some terrific guests on Gravity Free Radio. Our interview with Scott Allen, author of The Virtual Handshake, is a must-listen for anyone looking to get involved with social media, by the way.

I’ll be a better blogger again, I promise

I once worked at a company where marketing communications was looked upon as “fluff.” Management looked at us to “spin” things in a way that made it appear as if our products had some sort of added soft benefit whether they did or not. Hey, it’s just “fluff” and it’s something we need to do to sell, right? And who cares if we’re writing checks we can’t really cash… No one actually expects the stuff they read about a product or service to be entirely true and free of creative embellishments, right?

In this economy, these types of transgressions and basic violations of trust with your customers and prospects just don’t fly. Now is the time for companies to really focus on creating true value for their constituents. Ways that you can save them time or money, ways that B2C firms can help their customers balance their lives at home, ways that B2B firms can contribute positively to their clients’ success.

Creating value in a down economy makes your company an easier choice for your customers to invest in; it makes you more indispensable to them and sets you apart from your competition.

Let’s face it, most products and services out there are commodities and there will always be someone out there willing to undercut you on price and there will always be someone willing to deliver faster. Trust and true value are much more difficult to replace.

Pattie Baker, who blogs for Kuzdu.com’s business center made a terrifc analogy between business owners and the old story about the shoemaker who was so busy working for his customers that his kids went barefoot.

The point is, of course, that success as an entrepreneur means finidng a balance between working for your customers and working for yourself. After all, it’s the working for yourself part that will help position you to get the NEXT round of customers.

Bottom line is that it pays to be just a little selfish as a business owner. After all, if you don’t make time to look after your business — and in particular your sales + marketing efforts — no one else will do it for you. Schedule some time with yourself every week to work on your own business. It will pay off.

And thank you to Pattie, who was kind enough to hold Zero-G up as an example in her original shoemaker story on the Kudzu blog. Thanks for noticing

As I prepare for a talk that I’m giving tonight along with some of my business associates, I’ve been looking hard at one of our topics for this evening: crafting a truly unique value proposition. I don’t think I really need to get into why this is so very important given the nature of competition these days coupled with the stress that comes with the perpetually bad news about the economy (and if you haven’t seen our post this weekend about how the economy will be saved, please do!).

Instead, I’m going to give you an idea about where your differentiation as a small business REALLY comes from… The reason that your clients should buy from YOU and not your competition. And, by the way, it isn’t your pricing, it isn’t your assortment of products and/or services, your infrastructure, your web site or the terms of your contract.

Those things are all important but when searching for true differentiation, most entrepreneurs really just need to look in the mirror. It’s YOUR vision that makes your company unique, YOUR background, YOUR body of work, YOUR ability to care for a client. The most significant ingredient in your Unique Value Proposition is YOU.

Don’t be afraid to leverage yourself in your sales and marketing efforts. Small businesses can’t afford to be faceless, impersonal entities like Fortune 500 companies. Take credit for the pieces of you that have been invested in your business. It’s the one thing that your competitors really can’t replicate.

In my line of work, we meet a WHOLE lot of first time entrepreneurs and we’ve seen a whole lot of successes and failures. If you are one of the dreamers out there with a $100 million idea in your back pocket, here are three easy ways I’ve found to help improve your chances of success:

1. Learn everything there is to know about your audience. A product is useless if it doesn’t appeal to the people who you want to sell it to. Stop getting hung up on what your product does, how it works or what freebies you can toss into your new service offering. The right questions to ask are from your audience’s point of view… How does my product/service benefit my audience? How can I make my product more relevant to them? How does it save them time or save/make them money? Savvy entrepreneurs study their customers like scientists.

2. Make a list. The details that are important to you may not actually be the details that are important to the success of your business. Before you spend hours agonizing over the precise shade of red that you’re going to paint your product or the minutia of your service contract, consider all the factors that could cause your business to actually fail and make a list. Sure, some of them are probably product/service development related, some are likely legal, some operational, but you’ll probably be surprised at how many of your “fail factors” are actually marketing related. Like “what if no one gets it?” or “what if I can’t get the word out?” or “what if my audience just isn’t interested?” Make sure you address the BIG problems before you dig into the little details.

3. It’s OK to compromise a little. Sure, everyone wants to launch with a perfect 10 product/service/web site/everything. But that’s not always realistic. Staying 100% true to your initial concept can sometimes come at the cost of your business. Sure, an “imperfect” 7 may not be ideal but consider the upside: it gets you to market sooner (and therefore gets you revenue sooner) and it gives you an opportunity to get your product into the hands of real live customers, allowing you to base improvements and subsequent launches on THEIR feedback rather than YOUR initial idea.

Entrepreneurs, please chime in: what did you learn along the way that kept your business from failing?

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.