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Two Kinds Of Feedback
A common way to get feedback is to describe what you’re creating in detail and then to ask a prospective customer if they would use it. This is equivalent to asking someone for an honest answer to the question, “Does my bum look big in this?”
Sometimes the answers we seek out are not the answers we need to hear.
There are two finds of feedback—that which you think is taking you where you want to go and feedback that actually will. It takes courage to look for the right kind.
Image by Chris Becker.
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The Question To Ask Before Doing What You’re Planning To Do Next
filed in Storytelling, Strategy
Before you schedule that meeting.
Before you contact that supplier.
Before you attend that conference.
Before you pay for that marketing.
Before you hire that guy.
Ask yourself this simple question:
What’s the number one outcome I want to achieve by doing this?
When you get clear (and honest with yourself) about the desired outcome, the next step you need to take becomes more obvious and more useful.
And the flip side is that it’s the best question to ask your clients and customers too.
Image by Benjamin Lehman.
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Different Kinds Of Doing
You have probably sent a few important emails today. Maybe you blasted through a list of to-dos before morning coffee, or followed up on tasks you have outsourced?
There’s no denying that ‘doing’ feels good.
But there are different kinds of ‘doing’. There’s the ‘doing’ that makes us feel like we are getting somewhere and the ‘doing’ that actually takes us to where we want to go.
It turns out that productivity and progress are very different.
Productivity is about getting things done, while progress is about knowing what’s important to do.
What did you do today that will take you where you want to go?
Image by Kailash Gyawali.
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A Brand Of Magic
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
The chairs were out of stock. A delivery was expected some time in December, it might clear customs by January. The sales assistant described the import logistics and company policy. She detailed the 55% deposit terms on all orders placed and made sure to add her name to the written quotation the customer had not requested. The customer looked unhappy.
“We need these chairs in the next couple of weeks,” he said.
“Well you’ll just have to wait,” the assistant shot back.
The customer seemed more disappointed by her attitude than he had been about the chairs.
Of course the assistant couldn’t make the chairs appear, but she had, (and missed) the opportunity to perform another brand of magic by simply acknowledging the customer’s frustration and allowing him to tell his side of the story.
Exchanging goods and services for money is the least magical part of what we do.
The miracles people want are smaller, closer and less tangible than we think.
Image by Samantha Marx.
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The Business You Want
filed in Storytelling, Strategy
If I asked you to describe the business you really want you’d probably find it hard. Here’s why.
We have conditioned ourselves to pay attention to popular metrics of success and we often don’t want to make the sacrifices or the compromises it takes to achieve them.
It’s akin to wanting Jennifer Aniston’s body, without wanting to be Jennifer Aniston.
Our limited worldview of success is relayed in sound bites about those who have built seven-figure businesses and companies with billion dollar valuations. We don’t hear so much about the impact they are making on their communities, one person at a time, in the lives of customers, employees and the business owners themselves. And we also don’t hear about what they gave up to get there.
To be clear I’m not knocking building a profitable, sustainable business, or striving for goals that fulfil you, what I’m saying is that you should define what success looks like for you. That takes time, reflection, personal insight and the courage to be vulnerable. You are only around bound by other people’s metrics of success when you choose to be.
The business you want doesn’t have to be defined by what’s easy to measure—things that don’t tell the whole story about what you have built, the impact you have created, the legacy you will leave or the things you had to give up along the way.
The business you want may not be a seven-figure juggernaut or the next Uber. Just because these kind of metrics are not your primary goal doesn’t mean you’re thinking small. It means you’re running your own race and you know what the finish line looks and feels like.
Image by Benjamin Lehman.
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The Downside Of Adopting An Umbrella Marketing Mindset
The fledgling entrepreneur is embarking on a career in travel. She has just completed her training and is aiming to abandon the 9 to 5 and earn a great living selling discounted flights and cheap hotel rooms. Today though she is working her day job at the beauty salon so she can pay the rent.
Her strategy for finding new customers is simple—she just tells everyone she meets that she is in the travel business and since ‘everyone loves to travel’ she is bound to get a bite from someone. She delivers the same pitch to the guy who fixes her computer at the Apple store and the suburban mum who pops in for a quick leg wax.
The misconception she has been sold is that everyone is a potential customer until proven otherwise and that all customers and the stories they believe are created equal. Of course travellers come in all shapes and sizes and not everyone wants what she’s selling, delivered in the way everyone else wants it.
While it might be convenient for us as business owners to adopt an umbrella marketing mindset, treating everyone like everyone else doesn’t work so well any more. Assuming that all potential customers are created equal and will respond to the same story if we can just deliver it often enough makes for undifferentiated, homogenous products, lazy marketing and disillusioned customers and frustrated entrepreneurs.
You didn’t set out to be average, or to make something for everyone and you don’t have to market that way either. Go make your customers feel like someone.
Image by Sascha Kohlma.
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Your Secret Weapon
The following email landed in my inbox a few weeks back.
You won’t have any trouble picking holes in this approach and avoiding them in your business.
———
Hi Bernadette,
I was thinking if you need assistance with your cold calling efforts. We have a team focused on setting up appointments and generating leads to help you achieve your sales goals without the hassle of chasing decision makers.
If you need more information regarding our services, I can have our Senior Sales Rep call you to discuss things further. How about some time today?
Please let me know the best number to reach you.
Best regards,
First Name Surname
XYZ Prospecting
———
Of the twenty things on your to do this morning what’s more important than speaking to a potential customer? The day he becomes a ‘hassle’ is the day it’s time to shut up shop.
Yes, it’s possible to find people to outsource the tactics to, but you can’t easily outsource caring—which is every great brand’s secret weapon.
Image by Nana B Agyei.
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In Praise Of Intangible Value
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
What did they do to create value?
Design a new portable music player or give you 1,000 songs in your pocket?
Serve coffee at $4 a cup or become ‘the third place’?
Create a platform where people can rent a room or make them feel like they belong anywhere?
Start a photo printing service or help people to make memories lasting and tangible?
Found a fitness company or create a movement?
Make a burrito or make a stand?
What will you do?
Image by Elaine
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What Change Are You Making?
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
The sales assistant at the pop up boutique glowed. She enthusiastically pulled things one at a time from the rails to show to the customer.
“These pants will change your life,” she said.
I thought that was a huge claim to make about what seemed like an unremarkable pair of trousers, but when the woman emerged transformed from the fitting room I began to believe it might be true.
“I love how long my legs look in these,” she said. “They are so comfortable and I can dress them up or down, they will be the only pants I pack for my next overseas trip!”
She was already standing taller and looking more confident—(it works).
The change happened in minutes right before my eyes.
When a great designer sits down to sketch he is thinking about more than how the pieces of fabric will be joined together at the seams, or how many units he needs to shift next spring. A truly great designer is thinking about the way his designs will change how a woman feels about herself when she wears them.
It’s possible to change a moment in someone’s day with a well-fitting pair of pants, a raw brownie, an excellent cup of tea or lines of code that make that moment easier, richer and better. Changed moments have a way of tumbling into one another, like dominoes that fall as if by magic in a domino run. If you’re changing a moment, you’re changing a life.
We’ve gotten used to selling ourselves, and our work short (both to the world, but most importantly to ourselves). We’ve allowed ourselves to be defined by narrow job descriptions, and what we do to be reduced to rational benefits. You are more than your job title—a barista, programmer, baker, logo designer, manufacturer or CEO, responsible for making something that works.
You are a change maker.
Often the hard part is understanding and then articulating the change you want to make.
We don’t spend enough time answering this question before we begin.
What change are you making?
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You Are Not Apple, And That’s No Excuse
“That’s all very well, but we are not Apple,” says every CEO and entrepreneur, when a well-meaning colleague gives another Apple best practice example as a possible way forward.
No, you are not Apple and you don’t have to be.
There are a million ways to do meaningful work.
Owning the fact that it’s possible is how you begin.
Image by Steve Rhodes.