"How Could This Business Use a Web site?" If you're still not comfortable prospecting all the business owners you come into contact with on a daily basis, try using this exercise to get yourself thinking (and eventually acting) like our "Power Prospectors" who schedule three or four qualified walkthrough appointments each week. Every time you walk into a business— whether it is a restaurant or an accountant's office—think of at least three unique or innovative ways that business would benefit from establishing an online presence. (Try to make them specific for that particular business.) You will be surprised how much easier and natural it is to transition from a normal conversation into prospecting when you have a few great ideas for using a Web site to make the business more efficient and profitable. Even if you don't approach the business owner at that time, it will get you in the habit of thinking like a Web site sales professional, and it will help you start seeing opportunities to introduce your Web site sales and hosting services. Train yourself to automatically think "How could this business use a Web site?" every time you walk into a business, and prospecting will become second nature for you.         Maximizing the Trial Period "You've got to help me!! I spent over 30 hours customizing this site for my prospect, but now it's disabled and I can't access the site anymore!" Hopefully, you've never been in this position before, but every single day, our Customer Care representatives receive calls like this from distressed WebCenter owners asking for help reactivating a sample site that was deleted from our system. Unfortunately, these calls do not have a happy ending. Once a site has been purged from our servers, it is gone for good, and there is absolutely nothing our Customer Care reps can do to bring it back. So what can you do to prevent this from happening to you? Make sure you understand how the Web site trial period, reactivation, and permanent deletion system works, and be careful about spending too much time working on prospects' sites. From the day you first build a Web site, it remains in our system for a total of 60 days. The site will be accessible during the initial 15-day trial period, but if the prospect does not purchase the site before the 15 days is up, it automatically becomes disabled. At this point, you can still reactivate the site one time for an additional 15 days, but only as long as it is less than 60 days from when the site was built. If the Web site has not been activated (sold) after 60 days, it is permanently deleted from our system. The initial 15-day trial period is meant to provide your prospects with an opportunity to get a feel for the tools and features in our software, and evaluate whether or not they will be comfortable editing and managing their own Web site. We do not encourage you to spend much time working on your prospects' site, but if you have agreed to help them with some modifications, this is not the time to do it: wait until after they have actually purchased the Web site. (A promise to purchase the site does not count!) If you must make extensive modifications to a sample Web site, our Customer Care team suggests that you use the Create Template feature in your WebCenter to save the site (and all of your work) as a custom template. Not only will this prevent you from losing all of the customization work after 60 days, but it will also give you a head start putting together sample sites for future prospects in the same industry. If you have any additional questions about how the Web site trial period, reactivation, and permanent deletion system works, or if you need help creating a custom template, please call Customer Care Monday through Friday from 7am to 7pm at (866) 932-4357.

List of Active Web sites Over the past year, we have received several requests from WebCenter owners asking for a list of active Web sites built using our software. Unfortunately, we have had to pass along the same response to everyone: "For a variety of reasons, we do not maintain a list of active sites." What exactly are those reasons? Several years ago, we tried to keep a list of finished, active Web sites in our system to show prospective customers as examples, but we ran into several problems… 1.) It took considerable time to regularly check the list of sites to ensure that every single one was still active, and it was nearly impossible to find a suitable replacement from the same industry when a Web site became disabled or inactive. 2.) We could not control the content that was being added to some Web sites, and we could not guarantee that the sites remained representative of the quality our software is capable of producing. 3.) We received a constant stream of complaints about the sites that we chose to list. Some people just disliked the site and thought we did a poor job selecting sites, while others were bitter site owners who insisted that their Web site was superior to the sample site in their particular industry. 4.) Many prospects were calling the site owners to ask them questions about how much they paid for the site, what they thought of the company, how they liked the software, etc. This opened up problems on all sides—for irritated site owners who were tired of answering questions from strangers about their Web site, for prospects who found out they were being charged a significantly higher retail price than the site owner paid, and for WebCenter owners who lost a sale because a dissatisfied site owner had negative or disparaging things to say about the company and its products in general. 5.) Some of our competitors were using our sample Web sites page as a lead source to contact site owners to try selling them a new site, extra design work, or cheaper hosting. We understand how difficult it can be to help some prospects envision the possibilities without a few finished Web sites (preferably in their industry) to show them, but past experience has taught us that the problems associated with maintaining a list of active sites outweigh the benefits. If we could find effective solutions to all of these problems, we would be more than happy to maintain a comprehensive list of all the active Web sites in our system. The Web sites listed on the Sample Sites page of your WebCenter may not provide comprehensive coverage of all the sites and industries in our system, but until you can build up your own portfolio of sample sites, they are good examples of what our software is capable of producing. Ultimately, the best (and most representative) examples that you will have to show your prospects will come from the Web sites that you and your customers have built through your WebCenter.           Did you know that over 50% of all Americans who are online use the Internet to look up phone numbers or addresses? SOURCE: PEW INTERNET & AMERICAN LIFE PROJECT TRACKING SURVEY           Do you have any questions about selling Web sites? Online marketing? Tools or features in the software? Do you have any tips or tricks you'd like to share with other WebCenter owners? If there is anything we can do to help make your business more successful, please e-mail us at newsletter@mawebcenters.com.