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Articles filed in: Strategy
Care Most
It was the day of her son’s birthday party. Natalie was on red alert. Everything had to be perfect. She’d booked the party venue months ago and ordered the birthday cake weeks in advance. Things began to unravel when she went to pick up the cake. There’d been a mistake. The cake Natalie ordered, featuring her son’s favourite cartoon character hadn’t been made. She exploded.
Max, the bakery assistant, just listened. He allowed Natalie to finish before he spoke, acknowledging her frustration. Then he apologised before offering her an alternative cake free of charge.
Max could have blamed the person who took the order or the baker who forgot to make the cake. He could have assumed that because he couldn’t make everything right, there was no point trying to make something better.
We sometimes believe we are powerless to make a difference in an ‘all is lost’ moment, when in fact the opposite is true. Often all it takes is the smallest signal that we care to change everything.
Image by kazuend
Perfect Timing
filed in Marketing, Story Skills, Strategy
The man raising money for charity stands near the Flinders Street station steps during the lunchtime rush. He waves his clipboard and attempts to catch someone’s eye. He starts his pitch several times, and when busy commuters silence him by raising a hand, he changes the script.
‘Are you a nature lover? Are you worried about climate change? Can I talk to you for just sixty seconds? Hi there!’
His words aren’t working for him. But it isn’t just what he’s saying or how he’s saying it that’s preventing him from engaging people in a sales conversation. His problem is imperfect timing.
A crowded street might seem like the ideal place to meet the maximum number of potential donors, but just because people are there doesn’t mean they are open to being interrupted or persuaded.
An ideal audience isn’t one that’s available—it’s one that’s receptive.
When we say something is just as important as how we say it.
Image by Alex Proimos
Gap Bridging
Every non-fiction book title in the book store makes a promise to a prospective reader.
The author promises to bridge a gap in the reader’s knowledge, skills or abilities.
The reader believes they will be changed by the time they turn the last page.
Your audience is also asking you to make and fulfil promises.
What gap does your product or service help your audience to bridge?
Who are you promising your audience you can help them to become?
Image by Michal Balog
Needs And Wants
filed in Meaningful Work, Strategy, Success
As creators, marketers and salespeople, we are, quite rightly, used to obsessing about our ideal client’s needs and wants.
After all, if we don’t understand what the people we care about serving care about, we’re unlikely to get the opportunity to serve them.
But if we are to do our best work, we must also be intentional about the kind of business and life we want to build. We often default to prioritising our needs while neglecting our wants.
What do you care about?
What kind of work serves you?
What do you need?
What do you want?
Image by Alice Achterhof
A Question Of Choices
filed in Meaningful Work, Strategy, Success
What makes you the best choice for the people you want to serve?
What makes these people the best choice for you?
What stories do you choose to tell your right people about the value you create?
What stories do your right people choose to believe about the value you deliver?
What choices do you make every day about how to build your right business?
How do those choices help you to earn the trust of the right people?
Our choices not only determine our priorities, plans and results—they are also clues about what matters to us.
Image by Maarten van den Heuvel
The Daily Opportunity
filed in Meaningful Work, Strategy, Success
We tend to think of opportunities as make or break moments. Those once in a lifetime happenings that could have accelerated our dreams if only we’d grabbed them before they passed us by.
But meaningful progress doesn’t happen in a single, magical alignment of the stars.
Opportunity can’t pass us by because it’s available to us in this moment and the next one.
The stars align when we show up every day to make the most of the opportunity that’s right in front of us.
Image by Jeff Sullivan
Looking For Someone
filed in Marketing, Strategy, Success
One day, maybe today—you will get an email enquiry or a call from a person who says they are ‘looking for someone’ who does what you do, to help them to achieve their goals.
You will be tasked with convincing this person you are the right ‘someone’ for the job.
You will need to find the right words and price to make them pick you above the other options they are considering.
Imagine how much better your story and your work would be if you weren’t aiming to convince everyone.
How can you become the one for the people you want to matter to?
Image by Brandon Lopez
Nurturing Growth
Most companies are founded to change something for the better. From Nike to Moo and Patagonia to Starbucks, the founding principle was grounded in service to a community of people with an unmet need—whether that was athletes, entrepreneurs, outdoor types or people who needed a place to get together over coffee.
It’s virtually impossible to think of building a successful business (or life), without having the intention to grow. But sometimes growth for growth’s sake can be a trap. What if instead of thinking about growing our businesses, our expertise or our influence, we considered how we could nurture them instead?
When we begin to think in terms of nurturing (protecting something while it grows), we are compelled to be more intentional about how we grow—and focusing on how makes all the difference.
Questions For You
1. Why is it necessary for your business to grow?
2. How does it need to grow?
3. What does sustainable growth look like for you?
4. What are you unwilling to compromise on to achieve growth?
5. What else should you consider before making your next move?
Every journey begins with two decisions.
We must figure out where we want to end up, but also and how we want to get there.
Image by Michał Parzuchowski
On Finding The Right Customers
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
Building a sustainable and fulfilling business isn’t just about finding enough customers—it’s about finding enough of the right customers.
Here are ten questions you can ask yourself to guide your thinking about what kind of customers will enable you to do your best work.
10 Questions For Finding The Right Customers
1. If you could only work with a handful of customers, which would you choose?
2. Why are these customers ideal for you?
3. What do your ideal customers want from a service provider?
4. What do you want from your customers?
5. What story will you tell customers about why you are the best fit for them?
6. What story will you tell customers about why they are the best fit for you?
7. How will you price your products and services to attract only those ideal clients?
8. How many of these ‘right customers’ do you need to build a viable business?
9. Where will you find your ideal customers?
10. How will your ideal customers find you?
Customer-company fit is underrated.
Image by Cristina
Only Human
filed in Marketing, Story Skills, Strategy
Today you and I will pay $4 for a coffee when we could have paid a dollar.
We will take vitamins it’s claimed will improve our health, even though we have no definitive proof that they do.
We will eat too much and exercise too little.
We will distract ourselves with non-urgent tasks and fail to do the one thing we promised ourselves we’d get done.
All because we are only human—beings, who as neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor says, are feeling creatures that think, not the thinking creatures who feel, we like to believe we are.
Despite knowing this, we will still try to convince our kids, our colleagues or our customers to change their minds with facts and rational arguments alone.
We need to constantly remind ourselves that we are neither all head or all heart and act accordingly.
Image by Shane Rounce