A Curious Endorsement

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In response to our recent online stores e-mail campaign, we received this curious endorsement. I thought you might be interested.

Dear Dr Wilson,

Many thanks for your e-mail. We spoke on the phone several months ago, and I found your advice particularly helpful. On your recommendation I had a look a Viaweb, and last week I opened my El Celler Català Spanish fine wines store (http://www.wwwinecellar.com). I found that Viaweb (now Yahoo! Store) gave me the flexibility to do what I wanted, whilst looking after all of the complicated bits I would otherwise have been unable to program. I have often thought of your advice to me back in March. It would have been so easy for you to say, "Sure I'll build your store," but you listened to my needs and gave me an answer that in the end has been the ideal solution for me. I am sorry that in the end I didn't come back to you for you to actually build the site.

I have since recommended your services and your newsletters (I am subscribed to both) to a number of people. There are so many pirates in this business dying to take your money from you -- mostly computer specialists with little clue about marketing -- that I particularly value getting good solid advice, and coming across people who listen first, and offer genuine solutions. OK, it's not a very complicated principle of business, but it is a surprisingly rare phenomenon!

Whilst this may be an odd endorsement for your services ("Thank you for not building my site…"), I particularly value the contact I have had with Wilson Internet Services.

Peter Hodder-Williams
El Celler Català, Tarragona, Spain

Thank you, Peter. Here's another very nice note:

I have to say that my paid subscription to your Web Commerce Today newsletter and Web Marketing Today Links has been repaid many times over. Well done, an excellent newsletter. -- Philip J. Haney, AIIM International

(You can learn more about our Web Commerce Today newsletter at http://www.wilsonweb.com/wct/)

Read more articles from Web Marketing Today, Issue 46, June 1, 1998