Lo Tech fights hi-tech with Hugh Tafel

Here's a blog post from Hugh Tafel, a great FocalPoint Business Coach who is in Canmore, Alberta. I think you'll enjoy this story... This story really matches Hugh's easy going style and its easy to see why he gets such great reslts. - He just keeps it real.
Thanks Hugh....


Do you ever feel overwhelmed by all the new sophisticated
ways you could be promoting your product and services? It's
tough
enough designing a good website, understanding key words, SEO,
beta and meta-tags and auto-responders.

Now we are told we must also figure out how to use Web 2.0
with interfaces like Facebook, Linked-In, Twitter and
countless other ways to connect with prospects and move them
to buy from us.

Which is why you'll like this story.

A colleague of mine was telling me recently of challenges he
had in finding tenants for a small house he owned
containing two suites.

Over the past several years, whenever a tenant was vacating a
suite and he needed to find a suitable replacement, he would
simply run a little ad in Craig's List - a popular website for
finding and advertising almost anything.

So a month ago, he does the same thing - runs a small ad in
that site.

Nothing - nada. No response what so ever.

Then to make matters worse, his second tenant also decides to
move out. Now he is looking at an empty house and his previous
method for obtaining tenants is not working. An asset (the
house) is fast becoming a liability.

What to do?

My friend decides to do what nobody seems to do these days. He
gets himself a simple sandwich board sign and writes on both
sides: "For Rent" along with his telephone number and places
this sign on the lawn in front of the house near the sidewalk.

He does this on a Sunday.

24 hours later, he has over 30 calls from potential renters.

Great success right? Not quite.

Almost all of those calls were unqualified because most
understood the sign to mean that the entire house was for
rent. He was renting suites.

So he changed his message to read, "Suites For Rent" with a
contact number. This time, he received a similar number of
"qualified" inquiries and was able to return his property into
the nice, paying asset it was before.

Two principle lessons you should get from this story.

1. Simple is often better, cheaper and more effective than
complicated and sophisticated. Low tech can beat hi-tech.

2. Make sure you match your message to your target audience.
Otherwise you may find you attract a lot of the wrong crowd
and that only wastes your time and money.

Hugh Tafel,
FocalPoint Business Coach
Canmore, Alberta