I Thought I was Holding a Dead Child

This morning was perhaps the scariest experience of my life. For a few moments I thought we lost our oldest daughter. I’ll just call her “E” to keep her name off the public record. E took a shower to get ready for school this morning and felt a little sick to her stomach when she got out. She leaned over the toilet, and when we checked in on her a few moments later her head was wedged between the toilet and the wall. At first we thought she was perhaps just throwing up on the floor instead of in the toilet. But she wasn’t moving.

My wife said, “Dave, what’s wrong with  E?” I went over to E, picked her up, and she was like a rag doll, her head rolling into my arms. Her eyes were wide open and not moving. Nothing was moving. I said, “Quick, call 911!!!” Then E started to come around.

All I could do was cry at what I thought was experiencing, and give God a big huge “Thank You” for allowing E to be part of our family. To God be all praise!!!

She probably just fainted … that happened to my wife and her sisters when they were growing up. But that’s not how it looked to me. I seriously thought we were going to lose E. Many tears were shed over what could have been, many more tears of thanks were shed for what didn’t happen.

Mr. Mailman is Funny!

Yesterday I had to send a “cease and desist” letter to a former prospect, warning him of the consequences of using our WebsitesForPrinters.com copyrighted text and graphics on the website he’s building for himself. I asked our mail carrier what the difference is between a Signature Required service and a Certified Letter service. He said if he loses a Signature Required letter, it’s no big deal … but if he loses a Certified Letter he gets fired!

Not quite the explanation I was looking for, but it works!

Sometimes the Words Just Flow

Today I sent an e-mail to a printer with 100+ employees. Their company appears to be hung up on making everything perform in their MIS system. Don’t get me wrong, usually only good can come from tighter integration. Usually. In this case I believe they are trying to make something more complex than it has to be. If they’d just publish a website that gave them credibility (instead of the unattractive site they’re publishing now) they’d be much farther down the road with their customers. That’s what led me to this sentence in the e-mail that was sent to them:
Often times there’s a beautiful elegance in simplicity … if the MIS system is becoming a bigger bite to chew than it should be, please give some thought to what WebsitesForPrinters.com has to offer.
I have no aspirations to become a writer, but something about that sentence just felt right!

An Interesting Comment about PrintSmith Site

I just hung up the phone visiting with a prospect, and he had a very interesting comment. The person I was visiting with was not the decision-maker. Too bad, because he was totally sold on WebsitesForPrinters.com! His boss is really hung up on needing integration with their installation of PrintSmith. I explained to him … and he agreed … that some of our most successful customers are the ones that are also demanding an integration. However, they also realize that the most important part of the order-taking process is NOT the integration, but instead it’s the customer experience during the process of placing the order. Good experience = happy customer = more orders = well, you can figure out the rest of the story. Bad experience = …the end of that story is much easier to complete, and much more painful to discover.

Anyways, the quote that should appear on the refrigerator magnet of every printer is this:

The benefits of integration realized by PrintSmith site are not worth what the customer is forced to experience when using PrintSmith Site.

I wish I had said that! Interesting. Very interesting…!