success
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What Do You Want Your Audience To Remember?
Many people who’ve read my latest book Meaningful: The story of ideas that fly say that the introduction impacted them the most. It would never have been written without a nudge from a trusted friend, who reminded me after he’d read the manuscript that some people might only read one page. We don’t
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
How To Build Brand Equity
The toilet paper manufacturer has seemingly found a new way to increase customer engagement and build brand equity. Instead of just embossing patters on the paper, the company has decided to emboss its logo on every sheet. Imagine the meetings, time, energy and a myriad of other resources (including
Good Marketing
As she’s scanning organic bananas or buckwheat kernels at the checkout the assistant at local health food store strikes up a conversation. She’s curious to know if the bananas are just for making smoothies and what the customer uses the buckwheat for. These seemingly insignificant interactions are h
The Customer Referral Source Changes The Story
Not all prospective customer enquiries are created equal. An enquiry via website contact form, made as a result of a Google search is very different from a direct referral from a friend. It’s also worth remembering that the customer’s story at the time she seeks you out changes the sales conversatio
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
How Do You Know?
How do you know which product to launch next? How do you know which packaging works best? How do you know what it feels like for someone to encounter your brand? How do you know what story your customer will tell tomorrow about the experience he had today? What we know (or perhaps don’t yet…
The Thing About That List You’re Making
Take a look at the Top 20 Book Lists of All Time on Amazon. This is what most people bought and reviewed—the books that succeeded wildly, beyond expectations. Could anyone have predicted that these would be the books that the majority embraced? Can anyone explain why? Despite their outstanding succe
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…
The Three Marketing Superpowers—Judgement, Empathy And Timing
Just two days before Christmas while every other retailer was happily dealing with long lines, the outdoor clothing and travel equipment store was empty. Not a customer in sight. They should have been doing a brisk trade in torches, camping accessories and stocking fillers, yet the assistants had pl
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…
What Are Your Rules Designed To Do?
It’s never a good sign when a flight doesn’t board on time. When the ground staff make announcements about ‘engineering faults’ and begin handing out meal vouchers you know you’re in trouble. And so it went last month for flight 029 to Hong Kong. Three hours after the first announcement the flight w
What To Question
The comedian doesn’t think about how he to be funnier, he tries to understand what makes people laugh and why. The shoe designer doesn’t simply consider what will look good, she obsesses over what will make a woman feel good. The architect doesn’t just consider the orientation of the building, he ca
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
The Value Of Unknowns
Will the new product launch be successful? Is this really what customers want? Will the digital marketing initiative drive enough sales? Is this the right person to hire? Will the redesign improve engagement? Is the timing perfect? The truth is that we can’t know for sure. That doesn’t stop us tryin
Design For The Outcome You Want
Susan is the VP of Sales at a large company. She’s more than a little frustrated that her sales team keep selling legacy products to customers and don’t make the effort to introduce new product lines to them instead. Of course it’s easier for the sales guy to earn his bonus by filling repeat orders…
Doing The Maximum
Everywhere you look today you will see people doing the minimum. The cashier at the electrical store processing customers without acknowledgement. The doctor who casually flips through your notes without making eye contact. The lecturer using the ‘death by PowerPoint’ teaching method. We hardly ever
What’s The End Game?
Before you pivot. Before you expand. Before you take on extra staff. Before you act on conventional wisdom. Before you panic about the numbers. Before you say ‘yes’ to something when you really mean ‘no’. Before you become someone you don’t recognise. Ask yourself, What was my original intention for
