intention
258 posts
The Key To A Great Product Story
As an entrepreneur or business leader, you will inevitably be asked how your product or service is different from your competitor’s. Often this question comes from someone who isn’t even a potential customer (but that’s another story). Our fallback position is to lead with features and benefits. We
What Are You Here To Do?
When Deborah Thomas, newly minted CEO of Ardent Leisure, was asked if she knew how to operate a roller coaster, she probably gave an inward sigh along with her considered response. “I’m not here to operate the roller coaster; I’m here to make sure that people queue up and want to spend their money t
Company Culture And The Ripple Effect
By the age of six months, a baby begins to understand that his actions can affect his environment. It’s amazing how as adults we quickly unlearn this. As business leaders when we talk about shaping or changing company culture we sometimes forget to own the fact that we are the culture. Culture is no
Shortcuts Are Overrated
A map works even though the cartographer hasn’t described how every step should be taken. We get to where we want to go when we have a good reason for going there. Tactics are useless without a strategy. Shortcuts are overrated. Results take time. Why hurry? Image by Franco Folini.
The Purpose Of Clever Packaging
If you love chocolate as much as I do you’ve probably heard about the Mast Brothers scandal. The artisan chocolate makers are accused of not being completely transparent about their process when they launched in 2007 and of pulling the wool over customers eyes with “clever packaging”. Transparency a
Meaningful Work
We’ve all witnessed a version of this in action. The speciality restaurant vowing to serve free range, grass fed and organic. The gift shop committed to selling local and artisanal. The designer who refuses to work with fast food companies. Uncompromising—until they think about scaling or they hit a
7 Steps To Becoming A More Strategic Marketer
As marketers we spend much of our time and energy on tactics. We agonise over the creation of lead magnets, spend countless hours honing sales pages and perfecting social media promotions. How To Become A More Strategic Marketer 1. Take a long-term view of your business, one that doesn’t require you
The Power Of Customer Context
There’s a tiny hole-in-the-wall florist in the heart of the city, close to big office buildings and the cafes where people meet for breakfast and lunch. If it were an ordinary florist it would be the kind of place people would walk past on their way to somewhere else. The neighbouring florist’s made
What Can You Build Upon?
You have just 20 minutes. What’s the most valuable thing you can do with them? It probably isn’t checking your LinkedIn updates, responding to housekeeping emails or listening to one more podcast about productivity. Checking and updating may feel like work but they aren’t things you can build upon.
How To Optimise For Customer Delight
“You’re here for the Valium?” blurted the dental receptionist as they arrived. The young man looked blankly at her and then at his mother. He was about to have three wisdom teeth removed under local anaesthetic. He had arrived early to be prepared for the procedure and dutifully took the 20mg of Val
The Noisy Bell And Napkin Worthiness
John Lydgate was right, “you can’t please all of the people all of the time.” And yet a huge part of our job as business leaders, entrepreneurs and product creators is to meet a standard that pleases most of the people we serve, most of the time. Feedback—the information and reactions we receive abo
A Reputation That Precedes You
It’s 5pm, still thirty minutes to go before Mr Wong opens its doors for dinner. The line snakes down the street and around the corner. A few people have bookings for tables of six or more, but not many, most are walk-ins who know that if you’re not dining with a bigger group and have…
When The Marketing Works
We spend so much of our time in ‘push mode’ that we can forget to celebrate what went well or to evaluate why. When you make the sale it’s natural to begin working out how to make the next one. We make the next one by working out why we made the first. It’s important…
Double Your Business
Greg opened his diary and booked the new client in. It was a small electrical job, hardly worth going out of his way for the call out fee of $120—the kind of job that most of his competitors wouldn’t have dreamed of booking this close to Christmas when everyone wanted everything yesterday. He turned
The Right Thing To Do
Joe was in a real fix. The equipment he’d been scheduled to hire from the builder’s supplier had accidentally been hired to another customer, there wasn’t an alternative machine available for a month. Joe needed to do something fast, if he didn’t the job he was working on would be behind time by wee
What Your Marketing Needs More Of
Think of a person you love to be around, someone you have rich and satisfying conversations with. It’s likely your conversations are a two-way exchange including acknowledgement, pauses and even moments of silence. Compare that to how we market to customers. We know that the best conversations make
Doing Is Underrated
The customer you could follow up with. The survey waiting to be sent. The product you could trial. The colleague yet to be contacted. The copy you could test. The important observation you might take action on. Each one is an opportunity to learn something that could change everything. The GoPro sta
Good To Do Vs. Right To Do
The brand new billboard spanned the four lanes of the freeway that led to the airport. The location was obviously a strategic move, given that the company being advertised was in the travel business. The gorgeous image of a lone traveller in the wilderness had likely been painstakingly chosen by the
First Impressions Vs. Lasting Impact
“What’s that new cafe like?” asked a business colleague from out of town. His question got me thinking about how much a negative response from a single customer could cost a business. What’s the lasting impact of a one bad experience? We can invest time and energy and money into the things we believ
Want To Vs. Have To
The famous fashion designer doesn’t have to pay a fair wage to the workers in the Indian village, who hand bead the $600 dresses she sells to affluent Melburnians. Her customers would never know—and yet she does. The busy graphic designer doesn’t have to make suggested improvements to the slide deck
