Referrals and Service Calls [RE-wrenches]

[Jim Hartley]

From: "Daryl DeJoy"

I'm just wondering if everyone feels like it is a legitimizer to have a 
website.

------------------- 

Nope.  And I have kind of a big one I've discovered. Truth be told, it 
was a long cold winter here and we got carried away with it to the point 
of thinking, OH MY GOD!  We even came to laughing at ourselves over what 
a creature it became.  I still feel that way at times and consider 
trimming it down to something more sensible perhaps.  But what's done is 
done and there's no time for that now. Maybe next winter. 

Does it necessarily legitimize me for solar.  No. Not in itself. But am 
I legitimate in doing what I'm doing and hoping to do?  I think so.  
Otherwise, why would I bother spending so much time fiddling with such 
things?  I DO have many other things to do. Whatever serves me best I 
will do.  If it's not PV, I can do webpages maybe.;-)  Or just keep 
building. I don't even have to advertise that stuff. But maybe that's 
not enough.  That's why I came here. 

-------------------

>From working for a while for a company that had a website  it seemed to 
me that a huge amount of time is wasted answering basic questions and 
from people who are shopping around.

-------------------

That's true enough.  That will always happen even in result of Yellow 
Page advertising or whatever advertising.   That's what occurs when you 
stick your neck out there. People notice you and many will just take a 
short waltz with you and end up going wherever, never to be heard from 
again. And shoppers are shoppers.  We all do that.  On the other hand, 
supplying useful information to people via this medium may keep them 
from asking so many repetitive questions and consuming your time.

If you try to anticipate their questions, maybe you can minimize the 
missionary work.  That's what I try to do so I can go about other 
things.  How successful I am, I'm not sure sometimes.  But I do refer 
people to the webpage as a preliminary educational tool and they seem to 
find it helpful, being able to peruse it at leisure.  I hope so. If I 
don't know what someone else knows, I'll refer people to that person 
and/or their webpage.  I like having people's webpages to refer people 
to.  In point of fact, I learn stuff from these other webpages.  What's 
wrong with that?  Many are very well done and/or informative.  I may 
even use some of this information in my own on occasion if it's public 
domain in nature.  That's the way things are nowadays and it's probably 
not such a bad thing considering how things were fifteen years ago. We 
all can more uniformly benefit now, don't you think?  A webpage can 
serve as your 24 hour office staff in some respects. I would think it 
depends on how well trained it is.  And God knows I, for one, could use 
an office staff working for me so I can go do something more useful 
somewhere.  Soon.

-------------------

Allan Sindelar, Positive Energy, Inc. wrote:

Daryl,

The web site can serve any purpose you want--you can say where you work 
andwhere you don't. You can invite queries or discourage them. You can 
sell stuff or say you only sell by personal contact.
You can even have a web site discussing sensible Y2K planning, like we 
do...;) 

------------------

Most cogent observations.  I just made note of them.  But isn't Y2K done 
and over with, Allan?  Or is it Y2.001K now? ;-)  I wouldn't be 
surprised the way things are going.

-------------------

To me the bigger problem is keeping it up to date.

-------------------

No sh**.  And finding live, breathing customers.

Jim Hartley
http://www.homestead-specialties.com
JamesHartley at homestead-specialties.com
Direct Email: grail at inil.com
630-584-8780
630-584-9092 FAX

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