The thing I love about the net is unfortunately the thing I also dislike about it. You can meet people online from all around the world but at the same time you don’t often get to meet them face to face without great expense. Last week was different when I travelled to Perth, I met some great customers, giving me a chance to put faces to weblogs and avatars.

Number 1 tip – visit customers that you’d be happy to be friends with.

This really makes the whole thing very enjoyable. It drives you to do it again. I met some great people who reminded why Perth is such a great place (I grew up there). Had a dinner catch-up at the Two Fat Indians with the Mad Pilot, aka Myles Eftos and his gorgeous Italian descent girlfriend Giovanna (Myles act fast or someone will steal her from you). Myles has a cool time tracking app called 88miles built with Ruby
Also present from Millstream and equally as beautifully designed people were Rosemary and Adrian Lynch. Millstream has an awesome CMS called Spring which I got a chance to quickly check out. Looks a lot cleaner and far more image management friendly than Wordpress, Blogger etc. It has the ability to manage image shadows and fades better than any CMS I have seen. (I’ve tried and used many a CMS).

Between this group of people they are a large part of Port80 and the Australian Web Industry Association. All of whom use Saasu!

More Top Tips To Leverage Your Travel

• Piggy Back – If you have one big reason to travel then use the opportunity to pile on a bunch of other value adds.
• Jam it in – Book up your time but leave some personal time to keep the whole experience enjoyable so you’ll want to do it again.
• Meet customers you like – Time, money and physical effort is being expended. Travel is hard work, see people you like, you’re out laying a lot to do it.
• Watch your travel footprint – I try and catch trams, buses, ferries, whenever I can. You get a better feel for the people and the place than you would from a cab whose driver will just chew your ear off. You can also lower your carbon footprint. The plane trip alone used up all your Carbon budget!
• Learn about your product – Do an in person Q&A of customers you catch up with. Learn what they think of your product, understand their needs and business better and ask them what they would like to see in your product or service offering.
• Break habits – When you go away you break your normal flow. This is actually a very good time to break habits. On my last trip my aim was to stop checking what was on TV that night as the first thing I do when I get home (after saying hello to everyone obviously).
• Follow Up – book all your new prospects into Saasu, thank everyone for their time and progress leads. Most good business trips are killed off by the failure to follow up.