Graduations

I have had the opportunity recently to attend a couple of high school graduations, including my daughter's.  The ceremonies are almost always similar with short (hopefully!) speeches reminiscent of the glorious four years just past or philosophical about the years coming up.  High School, at graduation ceremonies, is portrayed as a great incubator of young men and women; a soft-focus frolic through four years with crazy but lovable teachers and mischievous but lovable classmates.  Triumphs are remembered.  Defeats and failures are not.  Everyone leaves graduation feeling good about their their past and hopeful about their future.

I am convinced that graduation ceremonies are one of the reasons so many people generally remember their high school experience as positive.

Some business have seemingly picked up on the transformative power of a closing celebration.  There are car dealers who will take your picture and have the whole sales team applaud when you pick up your brand new car.  Realtors give you a housewarming present at the closing.  A few high end barbers offer a short neck and shoulder massage after your hair cut.  You get the idea.  They are all going for that same positive capstone experience as high school graduation.

I wonder what it would do for our customer relations if we had a "graduation" after every customer interaction.

Legacies

The recent death of an acquaintance got me to thinking...
A year after your death, what will people remember about you personally and professionally?

They won't remember:

• the deadlines you made
• the budgets you balanced
• the meetings you ran
• the desk you kept clean (or failed to)

I suspect (hope) they will remember

• the help you provided someone just starting out
• the time you made a difference 
• the kind of relationship you have with your family and friends
• the kindness you show to people who you will never see again
• the crazy ideas that you championed
• the value you created for your coworkers and customers
• the values you instilled in your children 
• the smiles that you created, through a sense of humor or an act of kindness
• the art you create, whether it is musical art, visual art, performance art, or simply the art of being there

I fear that they will remember

• not the mistakes that you made but the way you reacted to those mistakes
• the times you lost your temper, especially if it is with a subordinate, or a customer
• intolerance
• injustices
• injuries (physical or emotional) that you inflicted
• The amount that you focused on (worried about) the legacy you are leaving vs. the life you are living.

Everyone will leave a mixed legacy.  The trick to leaving a legacy your grandchildren will be proud of, it seems to me, is to live like you care about others, about causes, and about doing good things, more than you care about your legacy.

Doorways

Your customer is standing in your doorway.  In 5 seconds or less they are making a subconscious decision on whether they are going to have a good experience or a bad one.

What are you doing in those 5 seconds to convince them it will be good?

Sunday afternoons

It is Sunday afternoon and my family is looking for something to do.

There are an amazing number of restaurants, shops, and other venues that are closed on Sundays.  I can't believe my family is the only one trying to find something to do and a bite to eat without going to a big box or a chain.

I recently asked a local retailer why they were closed on Sundays and Mondays like almost everyone else in the downtown of the small city where I live.  She told me she was closed then because everyone else was.

That seems to me like a good reason to be open on Sundays and Mondays!

"No!"

"No!" to any good salesman is the start of a conversation, not the end of it.

If you are a marketer or a communicator, someone saying "No!" should make you salivate a bit.  "No!" followed up with the question "Why?" can often help you better understand the thoughts and motivations of a prospective customer.

A person who says "No!" or who complains to you (vs. the person who never picks up the phone or answers the door) is doing you the favor of providing feedback.

And that should make you say "Yes!"

Frequency vs. consistency

A hundred years ago when I was in school taking marketing and advertising classes, Reach and Frequency was the mantra of the day.  In an era when mass media allowed you to reach everyone relatively cheaply, the way to get your message seen/heard/viewed and remembered was to make sure the message reached a broad audience and that the audience saw YOUR message frequently enough so that it would be remembered and, hopefully, acted upon.

With today's electronic media, and with some of recent and upcoming changes to the golden oldies of print, radio and TV, we can send customized messages to micro-targeted audiences inexpensively and efficiently.  Reach is still important, even though it now is a bit more nuanced.  I would argue, however, that frequency in less important these days.  Instead, the extreme targeting power of social and electronic media shifts the focus from frequency of message to consistency of message.

Old marketing messages no longer go into the recycling bin with the morning's newspaper.  They last forever on the internet.  What is almost more disconcerting is they can be found and read by your prospects with almost as much ease as they can find and read your current, intended message.  Because of this, I would argue that long-term consistency of message is as important, or more important, as frequency once was.

Reach and Consistency is the name of the new game!

Deja Vu

I feel like I have been here before.  Trying to decide whether to issue mea culpas about being absent for so long form this blog or just plow in and write something interesting and scintillating that will cause the one person who might still be reading this thing to pass it on to a friend, etc.

Perhaps it is the irony that the last blog I posted before a hiatus of almost a year and a half, was a blog on self-promotion.  Perhaps it is a feeling that I need to reconnect with my marketing roots...or my writing dreams...or both, by wrting this blog. 

Or maybe I actually have something to say.

I am going to make a commitment to writing very regularly in this blog.  I will not make a commitment that what I write will be particularly insightful, interesting or event comprehendable.  If you do stumble across this blog, please let me know what you think...or just that you stopped by to check it out.  Thanks by the way...

That is enough self-concious navel-gazing for now.

I will close with one simple message that I will continue to make...that point is that marketing DOES matter!  In virtually every situation.  This is not a profound statement

Talk to you soon...