Seth Godin's Blog, page 212

Three masters

You can focus on serving your existing customer base by keeping your promises, understanding their needs and organically growing your constituency.

You can focus on acquiring another customer base, on making a different promise to a bigger or more attractive group.

Or you can focus on serving your muse, on making the song in your head real, regardless of who wants to hear it.

Worth noting that you can successfully choose among the three, as long as you're consistent in your actions and goals.

Fear, scarcity and value

The things we fear are probably feared by others, and when we avoid them, we're doing what others are doing as well.

Which is why there's a scarcity of whatever work it is we're avoiding.

And of course, scarcity often creates value.

The shortcut is simple: if you're afraid of something, of putting yourself out there, of creating a kind of connection or a promise, that's a clue that you're on the right track. Go, do that.

Why lie?

"We've decided to hire someone with totally different skills than yours..." and then they hire someone just like you, but more expensive and not as good.

"We're not going to buy a car this month, my husband wants to wait..." and then you see them driving a new car from that other dealer, the one with the lousy reputation.

"I'm just not interested..." and then you see the new RFP, one you could have helped them write to get a more profitable and productive outcome.

People lie to salesmen all the time. We do it because salespeople have trained us to, and because we're afraid.

Prospects (people like us) lie in many situations, because when we announce that we''ve made the decision to hire someone else, or when we tell the pitching entrepreneur we don't like her business model, or when we clearly articulate why we're not going to do business, the salesperson responds by questioning the judgment of the prospect.

In exchange for telling the truth, the prospect is disrespected.

Of course we don't tell the truth--if we do, we're often bullied or berated or made to feel dumb.

Is it any surprise that it's easier to just avoid the conflict altogether? Of course, there's an alternative, but it requires confidence and patience on the part of the seller and marketer.

Someone who chooses not to buy from you isn't stupid. They're not unable to process ideas logically, nor are they unethical or manipulated by others. No, it's simpler than that:

Given what they know and what they believe, the prospect is making exactly the right decision.

We always make our decision based on what we know and believe. That's a tautology, based on the definition... a decision is the path you take based on what you know and believe, right?

The challenge, then, it seems to me, is to realize that perhaps the prospect knows something you don't, or, just as likely, doesn't believe what you believe. Your job as a marketer is to figure out what your prospect's biases and worldview and fears and beliefs are, and as a salesperson, your job is to help them know what you know.

If you keep questioning our judgment, we're going to keep lying to you.

My first recommended book list of 2012

I think that books remain the tool of choice for changing the discussion and for impacting the way people think. There's really no better way for an individual to speak up with authority.

I hope you find something on this list that resonates with you.

And if you haven't read it yet, don't forget to download my new free ebook, Stop Stealing Dreams. After a week, it's been tweeted more than 4,000 times, with over 100,000 readers and more than 22,000 search matches.

Finishing well

It's not enough to finish the checklist, to hurriedly do the last three steps and declare victory.

In fact, the last coat of polish and the unhurried delivery of worthwhile work is valued all out of proportion to the total amount of effort you put into the project.

It doesn't matter how many designers, supply chains, workers, materials and factories were involved--if the box is improperly sealed, that's how you will be judged.

Sight reading

When I played clarinet in high school, I never practiced. I blamed it on my dog, who howled, but basically I was a lousy music student.

At my weekly lesson, though, the teacher would scold me, guessing that I'd only practiced three or four hours the week before. I was so good at sight reading that while I was truly mediocre at the clarinet, I was way better than anyone who had never practiced had any right to be.

We often test sight reading skills, particularly in job interviews. In that highly-charged encounter, we test the applicant's ability to think on her feet. That's a great idea if the job involves a lot of feet thinking, but otherwise, you're inspecting for the wrong thing, aren't you? Same with a first date. Marketing yourself to a new person often involves being charismatic, clever and quick--but most jobs and most relationships are about being consistent, persistent and brave, no?

Ashamed to not know

Society changes when we change what we're embarrassed about.

In just fifty years, we've made it shameful to be publicly racist.

In just ten years, someone who professes to not know how to use the internet is seen as a fool.

The question, then, is how long before we will be ashamed at being uninformed, at spouting pseudoscience, at believing thin propaganda? How long before it's unacceptable to take something at face value? How long before you can do your job without understanding the state of the art?

Does access to information change the expectation that if you can know, you will know?

We can argue that this will never happen, that it's human nature to be easily led in the wrong direction and to be willfully ignorant. The thing is, there are lots of things that used to be human nature, but due to culture and technology, no longer are.

Leap year meditation

Once in four years, just once, perhaps we could:

Forgive, forget, relax, care, stand out, speak up, contribute, embrace, create, make a ruckus, give credit, skip, smile, speak truth and refuse to compromise--more than we usually do. Pick just one or two and start there.

Hey, it's just one day.

Careful, though, it might become a habit.

Fade or gain?

An idea introduced to a population almost always fades away.

Send 1,000 people a coupon, and perhaps 20 use it. To get more usage, you either need to ping the audience again or find a new group of people.

This explains why marketers are always in search of new people to reach, and also insist on frequency of messaging--it maximizes the percentage of the group that is reached and minimizes the fade of the idea.

There's an important exception to the rule of fading ideas, though. Every once in a while, an idea starts with a small population and actually reaches new users, people outside the population. Instead of the idea fading, it gains traction as it spreads. Imagine a cold getting started at an elementary school but soon the cold infects parents, teachers and the co-workers of those parents...

Eventually, even these viral ideas fade away (if they didn't, then every single person on Earth would know about LOLcats and be into slacklining.) But before that happens, an idea spread by an excited tribe can have huge reach, particularly if it's digital.

One mathematical cause of this viral spread is the outlier who becomes quite active in sharing the idea. This superuser might tell a hundred or a thousand or more other people about it. Using his own pulpit, reaching his own tribe, the superuser raises the average (the R0 value) to over one, causing the idea to continue spreading.

Monday's publication of Stop Stealing Dreams has exceeded my expecations for feedback and impact. While a typical bestseller might sell 2,000 copies a day, this free manifesto was downloaded and shared more than 60,000 times since yesterday. I've gotten comments from around the world, and it's clear that the manifesto has struck a chord--and that's exactly why I wrote it. (Translations in two countries are already underway... I'll post them on the download page as they become available).

And now the moment of truth--will the people who read it, share it? Will they take the file and email it to 5 or 50 of their peers? Will they use it to start a conversation among parents or teachers or, best of all, students?

Thanks.

"It's not prime enough"

"That number is too even... can you make the next one even odder?"

The thing about math is that it's right or wrong, on or off, yes or no. Seven is a prime number, there's no improving it.

The thing about life/business/culture and the things we make and do is that they are not math.