Seth Godin's Blog, page 229

First, make rice

Fledgling sushi chefs spend months (sometimes years) doing nothing but making the rice for the head chef.

If the rice isn't right, it really doesn't matter what else you do, you're not going to be able to serve great sushi.

Most of the blogging and writing that goes on about marketing assumes that you already know how to make the rice. It assumes you understand copywriting and graphic design, that you've got experience in measuring direct response rates, that you've made hundreds of sales calls, have an innate empathy for what your customers want and think and that you know how to make a compelling case for what you believe.

Too often, we quickly jump ahead to the new thing, failing to get good enough at the important thing.

Open conversations (or close them)

A guy walks into a shop that sells ties. He's opened the conversation by walking in.

Salesman says, "can I help you?"

The conversation is now closed. The prospect can politely say, "no thanks, just looking."

Consider the alternative: "That's a [insert adjective here] tie you're wearing, sir. Where did you buy it?"

Conversation is now open. Attention has been paid, a rapport can be built. They can talk about ties. And good taste.

Or consider a patron at a fancy restaurant. He was served an old piece of fish, something hardly worth the place's reputation. On the way out, he says to the chef,

"It must be hard to get great fish on Mondays. I'm afraid the filet I was served had turned."

If the chef says, "I'm sorry you didn't enjoy your meal..." then the conversation is over. The patron has been rebuffed, the feedback considered merely whining and a matter of personal perspective.

What if the chef said instead, "what kind of fish was it?" What if the chef invited the patron back into the kitchen to take a look at the process and was asked for feedback?

Open conversations generate loyalty, sales and most of all, learning... for both sides.

Which are you?

...competent, inspiring, passionate, obsessed, provocative, impatient, hungry, driven, adoring, inspired, an artist, a genius, someone who cares...?

With all these remarkable, powerful, important options available to each of us, why do so many of us default to competent?

"...but what really blew me away..."

A simple fill in the blank for creating a remarkable service, partnership or experience:

"I was pleased that I got what I paid for, that the food was properly cooked, that they honored their contract, that the roller coaster worked, that there was no trash on the ground and that the staff looked me in the eye. But what really blew me away was _____"

By definition, whatever goes in the blank is an extra, more than you had to do. But what you must do to be considered remarkable. (Remarkable is what we call something we remark on).

Marketing to narcissists

The self-absorbed are always in the market for a louder microphone and a shinier mirror.

They also have trouble distinguishing between interested and interesting. It turns out that the best way to appear interesting to someone who cares a lot about himself is to be interested.

And if you don't see that, if you're not so interested in what others are thinking about, it might be because the best way to market to you is to offer you a shinier mirror and a louder microphone...

Eliminating the impulse to stall

My friend and colleague Amit Gupta is fighting off leukemia and the twittersphere is lighting up with expressions of support.

But the support he really needs is for you to get a Q-tip, stick it in your cheek and mail it back. The process is free and you can sign up right here.

The extraordinary thing about marketing is that a million people might see something or hear something or be sold something and only a thousand will actually take action. Even if it's free.

When you look at the long odds on marrow donation, it feels like a bit of a sweepstakes, but backwards. It's easy to fix if we just get everyone (regardless of ethnicity) to register.

How about if we gamify it? Here's the deal: if you are a match for Amit and the marrow donation happens, I'll profile you or the project of your choice on the blog and send you a check for $10,000 for you or the charity of your choice. Winner take all, no purchase necessary... (Even if you don't win, if you swab we all win).

If I can be so bold as to suggest a hashtag: #IswabbedforAmit

Roads not taken

Kick yourself all day about the stupid thing you said, the bug you introduced, the promise you failed to keep. That's pretty common.

Perhaps you should think about the stock you didn't buy, the innovation you didn't pursue, the compliment you didn't give?

Way more productive, I think, to push yourself to be more in the world, not to encourage yourself to hide.

We respond to what we keep track of. Too bad we're not better at keeping track of how many failures we incorrectly predicted, how many innovations we failed to notice and how many apparently risky steps we failed to take.

A eulogy of action

I can't compose a proper eulogy for Steve Jobs. There's too much to say, too many capable of saying it better than I ever could.

It's one thing to miss someone, to feel a void when they're gone. It's another to do something with their legacy, to honor them through your actions.

Steve devoted his professional life to giving us (you, me and a billion other people) the most powerful device ever available to an ordinary person. Everything in our world is different because of the device you're reading this on.

What are we going to do with it?

Failures and the dip

Jorge wrote in to ask about the contradiction (it seems) between Poke the Box, which argues that you must consistently ship innovations to the market (and frequently fail), and The Dip, which argues that quitting a project in the middle is dumb, that the real success comes after the quitters have left the building.

I don't see a conflict.

The failures I'm talking about in Poke the Box are initial interactions with the market, about the ability and willingness to appear stupid in front of others.

In the Dip, I'm arguing that big successes happen when people with good taste see the failures, evolve and keep pushing anyway. The good taste comes when you know the difference between failures that are better off forgotten and failures that are merely successes that haven't grow up yet.

A single blog post is an example of poking the box.

Sticking with a blog for seven years is pushing through the Dip.

[Related: a reader asks if "Go, make something happen," is sufficient. After all, there's a lot of junk in the world, a lot of misguided, wasteful, mediocre junk. My argument is that the hard part is deciding to do something, anything. Once you've decided to move, at least you're going. Might as well make it worth the trip. People who care (and who are wiling to fail) will likely turn that effort into something worthwhile.]

Expanding the circle of 'missed'

Would they miss you if you didn't show up? Would they miss your brand or your writing or your leadership?

If you work at the local fast food joint or the local library and you don't show up for work, do they consider shutting the place down? If you're on the team at the ER and you have a bad day, would someone die?

Everyone is capable of being missed. Most of us would be missed by our family if we secretly moved to Perth in the middle of the night. The question, then, is not whether or not you're capable of being missed. The question is whether you will choose to be missed by a wider circle of people.

It's a risk, of course. You have to extend yourself. You must make promises (and then keep them.) More pressure than it might be worth.

Except when it is.