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Articles filed in: Marketing

What The Cold Caller Forgot


He forgot to think about you and not just him.
He forgot you were busy.
He forgot to work hard to add value and build an asset over time.
He forgot to give before trying to take.
He forgot that you don’t care about his emergency.
He forgot that he can’t buy your permission.
He forgot that without permission he has nothing.
He forgot you don’t like being interrupted.
He forgot that he can’t create demand in a moment just because he needs to.
He forgot to care that it was time for dinner.

Image by Nathan Rupert.

The Bottom Line

There’s an irony about entrepreneurship or starting a business and it’s this. When you begin you’re obsessed with the starting part. Just starting it seems is enough. You may have a vision for what could be, but there is not so much pressure to get there in the beginning. Once you’ve succeeded a little it is expected that you will find ways to scale.

When people ask you how business is going they generally want to know if your bottom line is heading in the right direction. Are profits up? Are you expanding or growing? And so business success is defined by one bottom line. A single metric.

It turns out though that many successful entrepreneurs don’t begin by focusing on just one bottom line. Visionary leaders, who build lasting brands don’t simply concentrate on revenues and profits. They begin with the ideal. They start with a problem they are itching to solve, or with the will to change something and the desire to make a difference.

If money is your only metric then you lose sight of the reason you’re in business in the first place. If you have one way of measuring your success then those numbers are what you focus on, and while your attention is there you forget what made your business successful in the first place.

The words of Neil Gaiman is his commencement address apply to entrepreneurs, creatives, freelancers, aspirational startups and MBAs alike.

“I decided that I would do my best in future not to write books just for the money. If you didn’t get the money, then you didn’t have anything. If I did work I was proud of, and I didn’t get the money, at least I’d have the work.
Every now and again, I forget that rule, and whenever I do, the universe kicks me hard and reminds me. I don’t know that it’s an issue for anybody but me, but it’s true that nothing I did where the only reason for doing it was the money was ever worth it, except as bitter experience. Usually I didn’t wind up getting the money, either. The things I did because I was excited, and wanted to see them exist in reality have never let me down, and I’ve never regretted the time I spent on any of them.”

—Neil Gaiman

Pay attention to the bottom line. Just don’t put your whole focus there.

Image by Becky McCray.

Practice The Art Of Making People Matter

Walk along any suburban street. Sit in any cafe. Listen to telephone conversations at the airport lounge. Here’s what you’ll find. Everyone is having the same conversation.

The early morning gym junkies, the startup hub members, the mothers catching the train to work, the fathers in the book store and the teens glued to their Facebook walls. All worrying about the same things. Each with similar hopes and cares despite their differences.

All wanting to feel that whatever it brings, that this day, they mattered.

How are you helping your customers to belong and to feel that they matter?

Image by Ed Yourdon.

Great Marketing Is Baked In Not Sprinkled On

The most common misconception in business is that you should work on your idea now, and add marketing later…. when you’re done.

Marketing is not just the icing on the cake, or the sprinkles on the top.

Marketing is the whole cake.

The quality of flour you use. The lightness of touch of the baker. The texture as it’s cut.

The tastiest icing, or most colourful sprinkles in the world won’t save a badly baked cake.

Bake your marketing into your business, products and services.

Don’t just sprinkle it on at the end.

Image by Cat Edens.

Adapting Or Shaping

Are you adapting to the current environment, or shaping what’s to come?

The most successful people, businesses and brands don’t jump on today’s bandwagon they design the future.

How are you doing that?

Image by Mark JP.

Stand Out By Telling A Better Brand Story

The summer of 1980 was a terrible time to own a hair salon on Sydney’s Queen Street. The mile long suburban street had over twenty salons to choose from, and haircuts that were once $20, had been steadily knocked down a dollar at a time by each salon in turn.

The first salon to discount started doing cuts for $19, and very quickly every salon on the street was advertising $12 haircuts just to compete and stay open.

The situation was desperate, and many businesses were going to the wall for want of a better solution. Apart from one smart salon owner who created a big sign to put in his window which simply read:

We Fix $12 haircuts.

You don’t have to tell the same story as everyone else. You actually get to choose.

Image by Michael McCullough.

Business Would Be Great If It Weren’t For The Customers

There was no doubt that I could have chosen a better time to go shopping for special flowers, than first thing on Saturday morning in early Spring. The lone florist reluctantly came out from the back room to ask how she could help, then let out a sigh when she realised it wasn’t going to be quick. I hoped that the tiny white roses would be the first thing my dear friend Pen would see when she came back from having heart surgery. This was important.

The florist tutted at my indecision and hesitated to show me the vases she might use. Of course I understood that she was “busy getting orders ready for later that day”. She wanted me to care about her emergency, while she neglected mine.

To succeed in delighting your customers you actually have to step out of your shoes and into theirs. You must see the world through their eyes from the opposite side of the counter.

It’s not always easy, but the businesses that optimise for empathy are magnetic. Less push and more pull.

Whose shoes are you standing in?

Image by Luca Pedrotti.

What The Waitress Remembered

My name.
To look me in the eye.
How I like my coffee.
That her smile could brighten someone’s day.
To make a difference.
That giving a damn is seriously underrated.
To hope to see me tomorrow.
Not to hide behind the rules.
To love her job.
That what she does every day matters.

Image by Cobalt123

Give Them A Reason

Half of the products in your pantry now have a ‘like us on Facebook’ icon on the label. Why should you like a brand of mass produced honey on Facebook? Why does the brand manager think you should care?

Marketing is about doing great work that gets noticed. It’s about giving people a reason to care. It takes time, thought and a deep understanding of who you want to serve and how you want to make a difference. Yet we look for shortcuts. We use tactics to make people notice before creating real value. We forget to help customers to understand and experience, before selfishly telling them what to do.

Working hard to make people say your work is great,
is not the same as doing great work.

We spend so much of our energy here. Crafting the tweetable headlines. Writing press releases to help us get noticed. Trying to get on the radar of influencers. Creating print advertising campaigns. Deep discounting and on and on, when what actually works is doing the thing that people want to talk about.

When you do something that makes a difference you won’t have to work so hard to persuade people to notice or to talk about it.

Don’t just ask your customers to care about you. Give them a reason.

Image by Badjonni.

Thinking About How People Feel Vs Making People Do

Every one of us is a marketer.

We spend our days persuading people to do what we want them to do.

“Buy now.” “Click here.” “Please retweet.” “Only 5 4 left.” “Don’t drink and drive.” “Eat your greens and you’ll grow big and strong.”

My friend Mark and his wife Cindy own and run a tiny bakery. If four whole wheat buns in a batch of two dozen don’t rise they look each other in the eye and ask, “How will we feel if someone takes these home?” And then they simply don’t sell those four buns. Mark and Cindy are in it for the long haul. Yes, they have to balance the books at the end of the month, but they don’t make that happen by putting all of their energy into persuading people to do something.

They spend their days wondering how what they do can make a difference, and how it will make their customers feel.

You could spend your time working out how to make people act in the moment. Or you could think about how you would like to make them feel in the long run.

Image by Quan.