business
512 posts
Choose Delight Over Satisfaction
When a flight is delayed why are the passengers who quietly accept their fate and meal vouchers never the ones who get priority on the next available flight? Our instinct is to acknowledge and take care of the customer who complains the loudest. We work hardest to get the dissatisfied, those unlikel
The Rise Of The Interested
It doesn’t seem that long ago since a customer would get personal service at a drapery shop even if she was only buying four buttons for the baby cardigan she’d made. A real conversation ensued and colours were carefully matched. By the time money changed hands the assistant knew who the cardigan wa
Only You
We had a storm on Saturday. More than 20mm of rain in minutes. We lost power shortly afterwards but managed to isolate the problem until we could get Frank, the electrician to come on Monday. He was busy. One of his big contractors had also called him out that day and they were a priority—regular…
More And Less
We sometimes trick ourselves into believing we can have the best of both worlds. A foot in both camps. Full belly and cake on the plate. Working towards a goal means abandoning an alternative worldview. Brands like Mecca Cosmetica, Lululemon and Blue Bottle Coffee thrive because they are crystal cle
Questions Worth Asking
The progress we make in business and in life hinges on our ability to ask the right questions at the right time. What we need to discern and prioritise are the questions it’s most important to address. The questions we don’t know the answers to can be divided into three categories: 1. Questions that
Present Tense Planning
When surgeon and author Atul Gawande treats a terminal patient, he doesn’t assess the available options in ways a conventional medical team might have weighed them up in the past. Instead of wondering whether they should keep fighting or if the time has come to give up, he and his colleagues ask a d
Gaining The Advantage
This week you answered a customer query and solved her problem. You responded to every email, tweaked your resume and made your case well in the last meeting. You ticked off the things on your to-do list, had a look at your numbers and made solid plans for the weeks ahead. And that’s exactly what…
A List Of Alternatives To Winning
Alternatives To Winning Caring Helping Being human Growing wiser Inspiring others Righting wrongs Upholding values Giving generously Learning patience Prioritising values Practicing empathy Building community Leading thoughtfully Acting with integrity Exploring possibilities Encouraging progress Mak
Knowing What You Don’t Know
The most unhelpful assumption we make as marketers is that our customers know why they need our products or services. From there we think our job is to offer proof—to tell people why we are the best alternative. The first rule of innovation, sales and marketing is to understand the customer’s pain p
The Art Of Differentiation
We, humans, have always been good at noticing what’s compelling about others. Our species’ survival has depended on our ability to recognise strengths and weed out weaknesses. Today, that skill leads us down the road of unhealthy comparison. We have no trouble rattling off the positive attributes of
How To Get Better At Pitching
Every day we fail to convince people about the value we can deliver. For every yes, we get ten no’s. Why? We’re quick to blame the quality of our ideas or our storytelling when we fail. But sometimes we fail because we’re speaking to the wrong person at the wrong time. Rejections often happen becaus
Three Pillars Of Great Branding
There’s nothing extraordinary about the location of the vegetarian Mexican street food restaurant at the corner of a Fitzroy laneway. The tacos are good, not exceptional. The prices fair, not cheap. And yet, even on quiet Tuesday evenings, when other restaurants advertise specials to entice mid-week
The Limitations Of Marketing To Persuade
We assume sales and marketing are simply a case of fulfilling unspoken desires or unmet needs and making the people with those needs aware we’ve solved their problem. But there’s another piece of the marketing puzzle we often overlook—the doubts our customers must overcome. People don’t just want to
What’s On Your Y-Axis?
The strategy for any project or business and even our days, weeks and months could be plotted on a graph using an x-axis and a y-axis. What every endeavour has in common is time. This is plotted on the horizontal x-axis. What we can change or influence is represented on the vertical y-axis. In a…
The Visibility Paradox
A bullet point list of tactics to increase your visibility might include; perfecting your elevator pitch, networking, forming strategic partnerships or creating a compelling press release. You don’t need to look far to see that we’re expending a lot of time and resources metaphorically waving our ar
Three Ways To Sell
If you want to get more comfortable about selling, it’s helpful to consider which of these three sales techniques you use and to assess how they’re working for you. Describing This is the most common way to sell—one you’ve likely experienced or used. Describing the specifications, features and benef
The Art Of Customer Loyalty
How many store loyalty cards do you have in your wallet? How many more will you be offered this week? Do you still carry a wallet? We’ve tried to turn customer loyalty into a data-driven science. A game of, if we do this, customers will do that. In our desire for something to measure, or…
Welcome To The Meaning Economy
In the 1950s and 60s when my parents were entering the workforce they created value by working with their hands in an Industrial Economy. Workers manufactured and moved things that would be consumed. In the era of the Information Economy, we began using our heads to produce value. We learned to use
How Could We Have Done Better?
Whether things go right or wrong, we instinctively understand there’s always room for improvement. And yet, remarkably, we rarely stop to ask ourselves exactly how we could have done better. Instead, we beat ourselves up about our failures—playing the disappointment over and over in our head. Or we
The Art Of Making Progress
If only your business had more media exposure. If only you could get the materials cheaper. If only all the reviews were positive. If only the website had more traffic. If only your colleagues responded. If only every employee listened. If only more browsers bought. We spend a lot of time thinking a
