Thinking by Peter Davidson: Four Ways a Blog Works for a Small Business

excerpt:
When a customer first calls me to talk about a sign project, I have about 3 minutes to convince them I can do a better job that any signmaker out of the Yellow Pages. That's a lot of pressure on those 3 minutes...
What I tend to do now is at the end of the phonecall, I ask them for their e-mail address. I e-mail them a thank you note for taking time to talk to me on the phone, and send a link to my Blog and encourage them to take a look. Now, my Blog can be the "automatic salesman" and sell to them for the next 10 minutes or 6 months (depending if they take a peek every now and then). Using the Blog this way had gotten me jobs, period! and I have not had to do the "sales work"!
Now that's a good tool...