Seth Godin's Blog, page 206

When smart people work for big companies

A good employee says, "I know that this is a serious problem, it's hurting our customers and we can do better, but I can't do a thing about it because it's run by a different department."

A version of this might conclude with, "And I don't even know the name of the person who's responsible."

This is a sure sign of systemic failure as well as a CEO who is not doing the job she should be. When smart people who care get frustrated, something is wrong.

This lack of responsibility/communication is not a feature or a benefit that helps customers or shareholders. This is a flaw in the system of the big company, a cost of having a larger organization. The very same system that allowed the organization to become big and powerful is showing serious cracks.

It doesn't have to be this way. But it will unless senior management hires, trains and organizes to avoid it. Is there a more important issue to be worked on?

If you think that's what we want, why don't you give it to us?

The sign in front of the breakfast bar at the hotel says, "from garden to table."

Really? Virtually every item I see has been processed four times, steamed, stored and steamed again.

Marketing pitches are finely tuned to resonate with the audience in mind. Too often, though, the marketer is only in charge of the pitch, and someone else in the organization has to make the thing.

So the marketer brags about how tasty the food on the airplane is, or how reliable the cell phone service is or how magically transporting the aromatherapy of the soap is--and then someone else, someone under different pressures and constraints--has to deliver. And they rarely do.

They rarely do because the paying customer isn't their customer. Their customer is the quality control department, the accounting department and the "don't-rock-the-boat" department.

Marketers need to spend less time making promises and more time keeping them.

The easiest and the best

The easiest customers to get are almost never the best ones.

If you're considering word of mouth, stability and lifetime value, it's almost always true that the easier it is to get someone's attention, the less it's worth.

Selling to people who haven't bought yet

The portion of the population that haven't bought from you or your competition yet is not waiting for a better mousetrap.

They're not busy considering a, b and c and then waiting for d.

No, they're not in the market. They don't believe that they have a problem that's worth the time and money they think it's going to take to solve it.

As a result, smart marketers don't market to this audience by saying, "hey, ours is better than theirs!"

If this group thought that they had a solvable problem, the would have solved it already.

No, they won't respond to a better-than-them pitch. Instead, they're much more likely to respond to a new statement of their problem and a new statement of the solution. Don't ask them to announce that they were wrong when they decided that they didn't need a tablet, a survival kit or an anti-impotence drug. Instead, make it easy for them to make a new decision based on new information.

Ticket update for May 16

The premium tickets for my NY gig have already sold out and there are no more student tickets either. Sorry to disappoint.

Early Bird tickets end on Sunday, the 22nd. And the six-pack remains your best buy. All the details are here. Thanks.

Bandits and philanthropists

The web is minting both, in quantity.

Bandits want something for nothing. They take. They take free content where they can find it. They fight for anonymity, for less community involvement. They want more than their fair share, and they walk past the busker, because they can hear him playing real good, for free.

The spammer is a bandit, stealing your attention because he can get away with it, and leaving nothing in return.

Philanthropists see a platform for giving. They support the tip jar. They argue for community standards and yes, for taxes that are more fair to the community. They support artists online, and when they can, they buy the book.

The artist who creates a video that touches you, or an infographic that informs you--she's giving more than she gets, leaving the community better than it was before she got there.

Both types have been around forever, of course. But the web magnifies the edges. It's easier than ever to be a free rider, to make your world smaller and to take. And easier than ever to be a big time contributor, even if you don't have any money. You can contribute your links or your attention or your energy...

The fascinating thing for me is how much more successful and happy the philanthropists are. It turns out that when you make the world smaller, you get to keep more of what you've got, but you end up earning a lot less (respect, connections, revenue) at the same time.

Two ways to buy the expensive

Buying something like a house, a piece of fine art, a used car or a business is as much a marketing exercise as selling that very item might be.

There are two common approaches. The first is to denigrate.

Explain that the seller has bad taste. That the car isn't in good shape. That the art was poorly selected for the resale market. Poke holes in the business model, the management team or the landscaping design.

Better still, make the seller feel as though she's on thin ice. Bring an exploding offer to the table and watch her squirm as it goes down in value from day to day. Point to others that have waited too long to sell and how they ended up regretting it. Question her values and her judgment.

In other words, go for the win, where winning is defined as getting a great price.

There are two problems with this approach. The first, and the biggest, is that anything you truly want to buy probably has multiple buyers interested, and with better information available every day, the best stuff is going to be sold to someone else. Your denigration strategy is going to inevitably limit your pool of available items to sellers with self-esteem or desperation issues.

The second problem is that the word spreads. Your gallery or your buyout fund or your dealership quickly earns a reputation (there's that marketing thing again) as the buyer of last resort, once again creating an environment where your approach determines what's available to you.

The alternative is to respect and to communicate. After all, you're here to buy something--I'm guessing that's because you think it's worth something more than you're willing to pay for it. So value the judgment and taste of the seller. Be clear about what you like about it, be honest about the value that's been created. Even better, instead of coming in high and then figuring out ways to bully and lower your offer, come in low and enjoy the process of bidding it up, making the seller root for you and look forward to hearing from you. (This is particularly useful when making an investment where you want management to be happy with you after the deal is done).

In a fair market, it's entirely likely you'll end up paying precisely what you would have paid using the other method, but you'll be offered more works, more stuff worth paying for, and your reputation will reflect that. Most of all it's important to understand that we're not talking about bushels of wheat. Very little is a commodity, and the method you use to buy your expensive item may be even more important than how much you pay.

"I was just kidding"

The haute couture designer who brings out a few designs that look like they came from a truck stop.

The fancy chef who sends out a chocolate-dipped Oreo as part of dessert.

The book designer who uses Comic Sans as the type on the cover of a prize-winning novel...

In each case, they can get away with it because we know they're capable of so much more. In each case, the irony is apparent, they're not hacks--they're only pretending to be hacks.

Before your digital work is shipped, you need to understand whether people will look at your blog or your lens or your ebook or your landing page and say, "hack," or "wow." It takes a while before you can claim your LOLcat or bizarre tweet was just a joke, not the acme of your taste.

The end of the diva paradox

Great surgeons don't need to be respectful or have a talented, kind or alert front desk staff. They're great at the surgery part, and you're not here for the service, you're here to get well (if you believe that the surgery part is what matters). In fact, gruffness might be a clue to their skill for some.

Great opera singers don't have to be reasonable or kind. They sing like no one else, that's why you hired them, and why they get to (are expected to) act like divas. Get over it.

So the thinking goes.

The traditional scarcity model implied some sort of inverse relationship between service and quality. Not for service businesses like hotels, of course, but for the other stuff. If someone was truly gifted, of course they didn't have the time or focus to also be kind or reasonable or good at understanding your needs. A diva was great partly because, we decided, she was a jerk.

I think that's changing, possibly forever, for a bunch of reasons:

The state of the art is now easier to find. Word spreads about behavior and service faster than ever. As a result, customers quickly become aware of what a raw deal they're getting from this supposedly gifted individual.

It's so much easier to deliver better service (Dr. Diva, please send me an email if you're running late!) that we're far less forgiving.

Since just about any intelligent and caring person can use technology and a bit of humility to deliver better service (see above), we start to wonder whether that diva provider actually is intelligent and caring. And if he isn't, it doesn't really matter if he has some sort of skill, because uncaring hands are worth avoiding.

With fewer great gigs available (even in opera), it's not so easy act like a jerk (or be insulated and uncaring) and still get work.

Don't give up (you're on the right track)

Wrestling with a puzzle, a project or a problem, the likeliest reason to give up is the belief that it can't be done. What's the point of persevering if it's actually impossible to succeed?

"It can't be done," we say, throwing up our hands. Not "I can't do it," or "It's not worth my time," but "It can't be done."

In the year after Roger Bannister broke the 4 minute mile, the record was broken again and again. Once people realized it could be done, it wasn't an impossible task any longer. And that's why there's a flood of tablets on the market, many from companies that had what they needed to build the first one, but didn't until Apple showed them the way.

Two things you might take away from this: First, there's solace in finding someone who has done it before, whatever "it" is you're trying to do. Knowing that it's possible and studying how it was done can't help but increase the chances you'll stick it out.

Second: huge value accrues to the few able to actually do a thing for the very first time.