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Service in this country is so bad that you can offer above average service and still stink. By definition, the odds are that you’re average. Assume your service is bad. It can’t hurt, and it will force you to improve.
Ask: Who is setting your standards—your industry, your ego, or your clients?
Ignore your industry’s benchmarks, and copy Disney’s.
Remember the Butterfly Effect. Tiny cause, huge effect.
Big mistakes are big opportunities.
Write an ad for your service. If after a week your best ad is weak, stop working on the ad and start working on your service.
Marketing is the brains of service marketing. If the brain fails, the heart soon will fail.
Don’t just think better. Think different.
And everyone’s focus for marketing for the year immediately will turn to “How do we sell this?” Instead, everyone should start at ground zero. They should ask, “Is this viable anymore? Is this what the world wants?”
Always start at zero.
Stage one companies offer their clients the accepted product. In stage two, competitors enter. Differentiation of this core product becomes vital. Enter the marketers. They listen and make the refinements the customers ask for: more colors, an ashtray so that drivers can smoke, and later an AM/FM radio. Answering customer needs is the driving force during stage two of an industry. Stage two is market-driven. Stage two companies offer their clients the desired product.
Stage three, as a result, is imagination-driven, and a company in this stage offers the possible service.
Create the possible service; don’t just create what the market needs or wants. Create what it would love.
Marketing is not a department. It is your business.
When companies discuss their problems, they talk about themselves. It’s not ego at work. It’s just that people talk about what they know, and what people know is their company. But what people really need to know—what you really need to know—is your customers and prospects.
Don’t open a shop unless you know how to smile,” says an old Jewish proverb, and that advice applies to everyone in your company. The fastest, cheapest, and best way to market your service is through your employees. Every employee should know that every act is a marketing act upon which your success depends.
Every act is a marketing act. Make every employee a marketing person.
In planning your marketing, don’t just think of your business. Think of your skills.
Find out what clients are really buying.
But most prospects for these complex services cannot evaluate expertise; they cannot tell a really good tax return, a clever motion, or a perceptive diagnosis. But they can tell if the relationship is good and if phone calls are returned. Clients are experts at knowing if they feel valued.
If you’re selling a service, you’re selling a relationship.
Before you try to satisfy “the client,” understand and satisfy the person.
Go where others aren’t.
Make technology a key part of every marketing plan.
What are we doing to make a phenomenal impression at every point?
Study each point of contact. Then improve each one—significantly.
Be professional—but, more importantly, be personable.
You never know. So don’t assume that you should. Plan for several possible futures.
Third, don’t plan your future. Plan your people. Outstanding people who fit your basic broad vision will tend to make the right decisions along the way, not by following a plan, but by using their skill.
Execute passionately. Marginal tactics executed passionately almost always will outperform brilliant tactics executed marginally.
Do it now. The business obituary pages are filled with planners who waited.
If a shark does not move, it cannot breathe. And it dies.
Act like a shark. Keep moving.
intelligent people have one absolute favorite use for their formidable intelligence: telling other people, with total conviction and logic, why other people’s ideas will not work.
Mistrust “facts.” And don’t approach planning as a precise science. Planning is an imprecise art.
Beware of focus groups; they focus only on today. And planning is about tomorrow.
On the answers of which people say they are totally—100 percent—certain, they are right only 85 percent of the time. In other words, 15 percent of the time you think you are absolutely certain you are absolutely wrong. In most services, that 15 percent error—those wrong but widespread assumptions that everyone in the company is making—is the most leverageable part of your business.
There’s little point in killing an idea by saying it might fail. Any idea might fail. If you’re doing anything worthwhile at all, you’ll suffer a dozen failures. Start failing so you can start succeeding.
The value of an “expert”’s experience is dubious for another reason. Every experience in life is unique.
Don’t look to experts for all your answers. There are no answers, only informed opinions.
Common sense will only get you so far. For inspiring results, you’ll need inspiration.
Take advantage of the Recency Effect. Follow up brilliantly.
People do not look to make the superior choice; they want to avoid making a bad choice.
Forget looking like the superior choice. Make yourself an excellent choice. Then eliminate anything that might make you a bad choice.
people with little time—almost all people today—are more apt to make first impressions as snap judgments, and then base all their later decisions on them. The smart marketer must be aware of this strong tendency. First impressions have never been more critical—they take hold very quickly, and they become the anchors to which you and your success are tied.
They remember the first and the last items but forget the middle.
Yes, build the quality into your service—but make it less risky, too.
The more similar the services, the more important the differences.
To broaden your appeal, narrow your position.
Halo Effect. Say one positive thing, and you will become associated with many.
