We always love hearing from WebCenter Licensees out in the field—especially from successful, enthusiastic Licensees who want to share some of their experience and advice with us! Last week, we received this great e-mail from Nancy Younghans: Hi Everyone: My name is Nancy Younghans and I live on Long Island. I've been in the business for about 1 year now and just really started to work the business, especially the Web sites. I took some classes with Lisa and Yardley Wang, our District Managers, and after about two weeks got on the phone and started cold calling. I've sold 4 Web sites averaging $1,499 each in 4 months and have about 4 more on the string within the next two weeks!!! All I can say is when you are on the phone, try to be a friend and show concern for their business, especially a new business. The customers really like that!!! Also, follow up is so important—I created a follow up file for each month and also on my day-to-day calendar. If they say they are not ready, ask them when would be a better time to contact them again, and follow up—IT WORKS!!! I closed two deals this way. Hope this helps some of you out there and GOOD LUCK!!! See you at the top!!!   New Sales Calendar On September 9th, MA WebCenters released a new, upgraded version of the Sales Calendar used for setting up appointments with the Sales Support Team. This new and improved Calendar is loaded with awesome features like: New interface—completely redesigned, more intuitive interface that runs three times faster than the previous Sales Calendar Multiple views—view your appointments in a daily, monthly, or list layout, and switch between views anytime with just one click Advanced search feature—quickly and easily locate a specific appointment E-mail reminder—automatically send an e-mail to yourself and the prospect before an upcoming appointment or event Task list generator—set up general to-do lists and appointment-specific checklists to keep track of all the things you must accomplish Contact manager—add and manage contact information for all your clients The new tools and features in the Sales Calendar give you even more control in managing your Web site business. Please take the time to familiarize yourself with the new Calendar, and if you have any questions, call Sales Support at (866) 287-8121 Monday through Friday from 6am to 5pm PST. Do you have a good sales or marketing tip? A story we can use to teach other WebCenter Licensees? Any questions or problems you'd like to see covered in upcoming newsletters? We value your input, so please take the time to e-mail us at newsletter@mawebcenters.com, and please let us know how we can better meet your needs.

Site Translation Tool Upgrade We're pleased to announce that the Site Translation Tool upgrade is now available for all of your existing Web site customers. With just a couple of clicks, their site will be ready to reach new markets and new customers all throughout the world! Once the Site Translation Tool is enabled, visitors can click on a flag representing the language they would like to view—Spanish, French, Italian, German, Greek, Dutch, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese (both simplified and traditional)—and have the Web site instantly translated. This new upgrade is automatically available to all Web site customers who purchased their site before March 18th, 2003. When your customers open up the Tool Box in the administrative section of their Web site, they will find a new Site Translation Tool link for using this powerful feature. If your customers have any questions about setting up the Site Translation Tool, please have them call in to Customer Care at (888) 343-2889.     Design Work for Customers According to some of our Customer Care reps, one of the most common reasons new Web site customers cancel is that they were promised more work on their site than was actually completed. It may seem like a trivial issue, but there is nothing worse than feeling like you didn't get what you paid for—or what you were promised. In many instances, the WebCenter Licensee had done some work on the customer's site, but the customer was expecting more and ended up canceling as a result. So how can you avoid situations like this? Our Customer Care team gave us two solutions to this problem: 1.) Do not do any work on your customer's site. 2.) Draw up a contract specifying your design obligations. The best way to avoid design work misunderstandings is to let the customer do all the work on their own site. Ideally, we want you to be in the Web site sales business, not the Web site design business. Design work can be difficult because how well (or poorly) a site is designed is a matter of opinion, and some customers will never be completely satisfied. Even professional Web designers may not be able to deliver a finished site that meets all of the customer's expectations. Besides, one of the greatest selling features of our Web sites is that customers can modify their own site without paying someone else to do the work. (Remember that Customer Care is a valuable resource available to assist your customers with any changes that they want to make to their Web site.) If you can help your prospects understand the power of modifying and managing their own site, they will truly understand the value of what you are offering them. But what about those prospects who don't want to do any work on their site? What if you have to agree to do some design work to close the deal? In situations like this, you may feel compelled to work on their site for them, but before you do, ask yourself: is it really worth my time? For extensive site modifications, you'll probably put in 15 to 20 hours of work; if you can convince your customer to pay you $50 an hour for design work, you can make an extra $1,000 (significantly increasing the cost of the Web site to your prospect). If you spend that same 20 hours prospecting, cultivating leads, and setting appointments, you could be well on your way to selling two or three more sites (and $2,000 to $3,000 in profit potential). If you are going to work on your customers' sites, make sure that you have a clear understanding of what they expect the site to look like, and make sure that you complete the work within the agreed upon timeframe. You should probably draw up an informal, two-part design contract to protect you and your customer from any potential misunderstandings: one part that you both sign to acknowledge all changes to be made and the date they will be completed by, and a second part that is signed to acknowledge that you have fulfilled your design obligations. Make sure that the contract explicitly states all modifications the customer is expecting—images, fonts, colors, text, Web pages, catalog pages, everything. The best referrals come from satisfied customers, so make sure that you deliver a Web site that your customer will be happy with.