Know your service and do it well.

I actually needed some time to think of how to respond to this without coming across as harsh - which I still might do.

Here's the bottom line. A WSO or any training material is purely there as knowledge based product. It doesn't get you out of bed in the morning hungry to succeed in your offline business. It will not spoon feed you every-day tough-knocks-business-knowledge. The kind of stuff you only learn when you actually get out on the field.

A WSO will not give you that inner drive nor confidence to move from sending out a few emails to actually walking into a business and saying, 'Hi, here I am... ' or picking up the phone to do the same. It may tell you the process but it will not knock on your door and make you take the action.

A WSO will not stop the sweat building up on your brow as you stand in a room full of serious business owners to deliver your very first 60 second pitch. Or provide you with the confidence to speak in front of several hundred people at a seminar.

A WSO will not teach you integrity and care you must demonstrate with every client and prospect regardless of how they treat you.

Believe it or not there are countless people in offline marketing who've never heard of this forum nor WSO's and that doesn't stop them going out there and getting clients and for some of them treating the clients like a fast buck meal ticket. There are rip of merchants in every single service industry so honestly I cannot for the life of me understand why you would bring WSO's into this?

When you get a prospect come to you saying they've spent their savings opening a business and have been totally ripped off with a terrible website and the only keyword they are ranking for is their own name you come back to me and tell me how great that is. Because honestly first and foremost it can be really quite a task to persuade that prospect your business is different and that your fees are fair - because lots of haggling can happen when they've been ripped off (they don't want to be ripped off again).

Not so long ago before I even thought of launching a WSO I came onto this sub-forum and asked if there was anyone who had any questions about offline marketing because I'd gained a lot from being here and I'd gone off and built a good business. One person responded. Yet you still see some people asking the same thing here they've done from the beginning.

Much of my working a business knowledge did not come for free and like anyone giving advice there are times to give away knowledge for free and a time to say there is a fee to learn from me. As a coach would.

This may push some angry buttons but to heck with it - there are people on here who will never succeed in building a business as an offline consultant. Because they're still sitting on this forum looking for the magic pill or will be waiting for an easy route to do something. There are some really quick money making services yes, but to build long term business success you need a plan.

A successful business where you're working with local businesses takes trust, assertion, integrity, fast thinking in some testing situations and an absolute faith that you are delivering the best possible service for your client. It also takes communication and there are some people here who don't even want to leave the safety net of the seat behind their computers.

The 'chancers' as Danny calls them will take a piece of the cake because chancers first know how to get clients - but in the long run they leave a lot of business owners wondering if there are any decent marketers out there. Once bitten twice shy and my point was this does not make our job easy nor does it represent offline marketers well in general. Like I said, it's not nice to hear someone has been duped. I don't count WSO's in that - we're all adult enough to figure out there are no magic pills. Well some of us are.

Btw, this week I've been invited to speak at a conference about businesses using social media - I didn't get asked by the organizers to do that because I simply read a WSO. I got it because I got my tail into gear and have a rep of doing a good job when I do.

I was a wannabe once too and the one thing I didn't do was blame anybody for my lack of knowledge. I got off this forum and took the knowledge it gave me - free or paid and ran with it. I suggest some people here need to man up and do the same if they want to make a business in offline marketing succeed.

V