Hi Everyone,

Last Friday I had a dinner meeting with a potential client. It wasn’t just anyone… it was my girlfriend’s boss. Yikes! She was so worried that I would do or say something that he wouldn’t like and I was about 90% sure that she was right.

His name is Michael and he is a veterinarian that owns his own Animal Hospital. He has had a website for a while, but he wanted a new one and he knew that I help people with their websites.

I have been in the website business for a long time and every first meeting with a potential client is usually the same. The person wanting the website has a lot of “great ideas” for their new website and they are very excited to tell me about them. This meeting wasn’t any different. He wanted a Beautiful Branded Brochure website (The famous three B’s) that would make people want to come to his animal hospital. He was going to be the ‘Starbucks’ of the veterinary world (or at least the veterinary world in his city).

I hated to rain on his parade,� since he had all of these “great ideas“, but I had to do it.

I told him to disregard everything he had just told me. Forget about the website and think about what you want the website to do. With the look of a three year old that just lost his favorite toy, he said, “uh okay.” Then I asked him, “What is the ultimate goal of your website?” Before he could answer I answered for him… “to make more money”. He quickly disagreed and said that the website wouldn’t sell anything, just show off his hospital.

This is where he was wrong. You are always selling on a website. It doesn’t matter if you are selling products online, selling your services, or just selling the fact that you have a cool website. You are either selling directly through your site, or indirectly by getting people to visit your business or call you on the phone.

So if every website is selling in some form or fashion…They need to be selling well! That’s where I come in.

I explained to him that capturing� his visitors’ contact information is one of the most important things he can do with his website.� This strategy enables� him to follow up with� his visitors� to get them to come to his animal hospital.� I also told him� some of the other strategies from my 3 Steps to Success course.

He thought that all of these things were tacky sales tactics that would reflect bad on his branding. I went on to tell him� that all of the� successful websites are doing these things, and if he did it right,� he could actually improve his branding by giving his visitors something they want for free.� I even came up with an idea of how to capture his visitors’ details.

My idea was to give away a free report via email called “7 Ways to Increase Your Pet’s Life That You Probably Aren’t Doing”. He still thought this was tacky and said that I didn’t understand the type of website that a vet needed. I knew at this point he couldn’t be convinced so I agreed to disagree and referred him to a web designer that cares more about creating “good looking” sites rather than sites that produce results.

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� Think about what I was trying to give him with the website I wanted him to have. (I didn’t say this to him because I knew that he had already made up his mind but I will say this to you).

He would have been getting the names and emails of people that were looking for a vet. He could have easily followed up with them and asked them to come in and visit the hospital. These were the exact kind of people that come into the hospital every day and pay his bills. It’s the exact thing that he ultimately wanted from his website but because it wasn’t the same as the original plan he had he decided it wasn’t for him.

I wouldn’t try and diagnose my dog before I took her to the vet and refuse his diagnosis because it wasn’t what I was expecting. He is the animal expert and I am the website expert.

I am happy to say however that at work yesterday he said to my girlfriend, “I’ve been thinking about what Chad said all weekend and I think he was right. It all makes since now. I don’t like it but it all makes sense now”.

My advice to you is don’t get in your own way. Just because something isn’t just the way you think it should be don’t consider it to be wrong. There is a reason why all of the successful websites on the Internet are following the same 3 steps in one way or another.

Because they work.

To Your Website’s Success,

Chad Conger�

� www.chadconger.com