Your customer wakes up, anticipating how whatever it is you do is going to change their life. They’re apprehensive, a bit worried, but more excited than anything. They’ve never interacted with your brand before, but they’re really hoping that you’re the right choice. They really need whatever it is that you’re promising.

Sure, price matters… and your glossy marketing veneer is going to get you somewhere, but their antennae are set dead-red on clearing up one feeling:

Are you treating this exchange as your everyday? Or are you respecting the fact that this is their once?

Once upon a time

This blog post started with the words “Every day”. It set the tone. Drudgery. You could almost picture the grey figures marching in unison as part of their daily grind.

Everyday is boring. We all know what everyday feels like.

Once, on the other hand, is special. Once upon a time. This one time, at band camp… Once is what makes a great story great.

Your Turn

How are you going to make someone feel like you (and what you’re trying to sell) is part of their unique story?

Serendipity just brought together two great points that will make any social media marketer think.

Electronista wrote about a report signifying a new trend among record labels: opting out of new subscription based services such as Rdio and Spotify. Long story short, a lot of plays is not being correlated with a lot of revenue. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.

My friend Paul from Black Lab (a great Indie rock band) recently wrote a post that sums up his arguments as to why the band’s music wouldn’t be available on Spotify. Once again – getting paid is important. Money lets you feed a family and have a roof over your head.

Then I saw a retweet from @FauxMusicSupe (a parody music supervisor account) that summed it all up. In this brave new world, where marketing metrics are indeed shifting, sometimes exposure is getting too much credit. Too much exposure, without actual business goals being achieved might fool you for awhile, but eventually it will kill you. You can’t eat air.

How are you capitalizing on exposure to actually make money?

With all of the digital tools at our fingertips, the field of Customer Relationship Management is exploding. Whether you’re talking about email marketing, social media, or cloud-based database systems, the value of relationships is sure to be at the forefront of the conversation.

I had two encounters recently, that clearly illustrate an interesting concept in relationship management. Both situations involved businesses that were very non-technical by nature; medical, in one instance, and brick-and-mortar retail in the other.

Situation A

Last year, I visited a local dental surgeon for an assessment about a fairly major (but optional) procedure. I was impressed with the home-like atmosphere of the clinic, the friendly faces, the smiles and comforting assurance.

After two visits, I was left with an armful of pamphlets, a medical insurance quote, and a major decision to make. I decided that, although the procedure was something I wanted to pursue someday, the timing wasn’t quite right.

During the last 12 months, the thought bubbled up from time to time. I read online forums, I spoke to others who have been in my spot. I’ve even mentioned it during several speaking engagements. For a big ticket purchase, I was exhibiting behaviour that I would imagine is typical for the buying cycle: I was taking my time.

Last week, I decided it was time to move ahead. This morning, I dialed the phone, feeling a mixture of nerves and excitement.

The receptionist took my name and paused. She broke a long silence with an unexpected response. We’ve marked your status as inactive – I’ll have to have someone dig up your record and get back to you later this week.

Situation B

I visited a local retail store five months ago, looking to make a fairly substantial purchase – not nearly on the scale of dental surgery in terms of cost or consequence; but still fairly expensive. The owner struck up a conversation, explaining the story of their family business. He gave me a card, took my name, and shook my hand. There were no comfy couches or crackling fireplaces, but the authenticity of the conversation achieved the same sense of comfort and familiarity I had felt in the aforementioned clinic.

I’m sure my name was never entered into a database.

I didn’t make a purchase that day, either. I chose something else, somewhere else and he never heard from me again.

Recently, I wandered back into the store. The conversation picked up where we had left off, many months ago. He knew my name, and he recognized that I had chosen to shop elsewhere after our first interaction. No problem – I’m so glad that gift worked out. I have a few things that I think you’ll love… let me show you.

Your customer owns the relationship

No matter how shiny or fancy your database might be, you never actually own any relationship. Any status you apply to a customer is ultimately just your best guess of their future actions; not a reflection of their true state.

It’s an odd juxtaposition: As technology has advanced for businesses to manage relationships, that same technology has put more power in the hands of the consumer; weakening any “ownership” that the business may have once had.

Your old signals might be broken

Once upon a time, a customer had to rely on the business for all information and consultation prior to taking the next step. Status was quite simple – the business owned the funnel, and could count the customers they had traipsing along the pipeline.

The game is different now, and the pipeline is full of holes. Your customer can look up any technical specs, access reviews, and comparison shop from the palm of their hand – on their own terms. Traditional signals of “inactivity” (aka: we haven’t heard from them in awhile) might not apply anymore.

Look for new signals

This is where our shiny new tools can come in handy. What’s the ROI of Facebook “Like”, Twitter Follow or Email subscriber? So often, people stumble here, debating dollar values. These asymmetrical, loose-tie relationships represent a juicy middle ground between the on-or-off customer status that businesses might have applied in the past. They symbolize I’m still here, just not quite ready. They allow you continue to educate. They also allow you to note new changes in a potential customer’s life; data that could very easily be factored back into a database system client status.

How are you equipping your potential customers to keep you on their radar? Do you have a communication plan for loose-tie connections, beyond “add them to email blasts?”. Be honest.

Open your arms for inactives

No one likes to walk into a room where no one knows their name. We like to fit in.

Perhaps, a less comfortable sensation is the thought that the room of people who once knew you might have forgotten you exist. We like to be memorable.

While Pareto might espouse the value of focusing on your top 20% of customers, you also need to pay close attention to those who might seem to be “inactive”. These represent relationships that are hanging on by a thread.

How do you welcome them back?

How do you make the next conversation feel like home?

Photo credit: alborzshawn

When you become moderately successful at something, there are two ways to describe your success:

It’s just easy to do.

It’s difficult, but I’m pretty good at it.

In the “it’s just easy” camp, you set yourself up for a situation where you’re expected to do well, so success is just status quo. But if anything goes wrong, you’ve failed to clear the lowest possible bar.

In the “it’s difficult” camp, you set yourself up to feel proud of your achievements, while also protecting yourself from becoming demoralized in the face of failure.

Easy commoditizes success. Difficult makes you valuable, while leaving room for continual improvement.

Some call them nerves, but I prefer butterflies. The fluttering, panicking, terror of potential. The sparkle of destiny hidden from our eyes behind the looming shadow of defeat.

Maybe fate is predetermined.

Maybe your future is random.

All you can control is your perception.

That feeling you have might be anxiety imbued by impending failure, ridicule or near-certain doom.

Perhaps it’s nothing more than pent up energy from wings you’ve never had the courage to use.

Photo credit: Jabiz Raisdana

Some things are impossible to plan for.

Use failure to plan

There’s a lot of talk about failure being a backhanded gift; a learning opportunity in disguise. This is true, but only if you take advantage of it. Want to maximize the learning? Use failure to plan.

Exercise physiologists have proven that there is an optimal window for refuelling your body after an intense workout. After about 2 hours, you can still get the nutrition into your body – but the effects won’t be as good. Failure’s kind of like that.

Imagine you’ve just taken the stage to give a presentation, and something goes wrong. Think about the rush of emotion, adrenaline, and chaos that starts to play out in your body. As you walk off the stage, the adrenaline gives way to a blur of thoughts. Sentences resembling why didn’t I…., I can’t believe I…., and If only I had… own the moment.

This is your window. This is the magic hour for doing better next time. This is where you grow.

Your mind will protect you from dangerous things

If you’ve ever experienced a traumatic event, if enough time has passed, you will recognize the mind’s ability to make things go away. Ironically, it’s not the actual event that goes away, it’s often the tiny details. As time passes, we protect ourselves from the anguish, emotions and corrective self-talk. We build walls so that we don’t feel the adrenaline anymore.

Failure is a traumatic event. So, once the post-failure window passes – damage control sets in. We unconsciously start to forget.

It wasn’t so bad. I survived. Whatever. .

Build your action plan now

Nothing ever goes exactly as planned. There’s always room for improvement; so for a minute, let’s be pessimistic and say that everything we do contains some element of failure. Optimistically, this means everything we do contains some potential for learning. Take advantage of it.

Here are some things that have helped me:

• Build and rehearse a procedure now (before you’re full of adrenaline and emotions), that you will use every time you have a post-event learning moment. Whether its a notebook, a voice recorder or a trusted friend that you talk to – make sure you know where you’re going to catch those corrective thoughts when they start to fly.
• Schedule it – Book the time now, so you won’t run away and hide from the moment. I often take 30 minutes to jot down notes about a presentation within an hour of it being over.
• Structure it. Use a template or a common format to force yourself to put down positives and negatives. This way you don’t gloss over the bad parts, and you force yourself to find good things.
• Let it go – Once you’ve documented all of the what-if’s, you can park them on paper. Once they’re out of your mind – the danger is gone, things are taken care of, you’ll be able to sleep at night. And when you wake up, you can start taking action.

A perfect example? I was supposed to moderate an important webinar today. The technology completely fell apart. After 15 minutes of struggle, we threw in the towel and rescheduled.

In the moment, it sucked; a lot.

In the aftermath, my mind was flooded with if only we had…. But now after a structured time to reflect, we’ve circled the wagons, made the strategy more bulletproof and we’re ready to go again.

This strategy works well for me – how about you?

Photo Credit: Realworldracingphotog

How often do these words rattle around in your skull?
It’s all been said before

Sometimes the words are the building blocks of a good excuse. I use this all the time with blog posts and ideas for books. Some might call it writer’s block, Merlin Mann would call it an excuse: I can’t possibly write anything new… it’s all been said before..”

Sometimes, the sentiment is a reactionary damper on an idea that struck you as revolutionary; a manifestation of deep-seated disbelief in our own abilities. There’s no way I came up with that; I’m sure someone has already done that before.

Sometimes, it’s an opportunity.

You don’t have to dream it up every time

I was recently chatting with some folks who specialize in leadership education. As we went through leadership topics, from Lifehacker to Zen Habits to Gretchen Ruben’s Happiness Project – we encountered a recurring theme. Little of this is new information. It’s all been said before! And It’s true; many of the realizations from The Happiness Project were already summed up by Dale Carnegie – decades before Gretchen ever realized she was sad.

Does that make her book any less valuable to her readers?

Does that make it any less valuable to her as a New York Times best-seller?

Or did she make it new by saying it in her own way?

I’ve often looked at Malcolm Gladwell and wondered if he’s ever had an original thought in his life. But, now I realize I’ve been falling for the trap of it’s all been said before. Does Gladwell simply tells stories, facts, and figures that were already told by other people? Certainly. But does he make it all new by saying it in his own way? The sales of his books seem to indicate he does.

If Seth Godin were to read about the cage of it’s all been said before, he’d likely attribute it to the lizard brain; a vestigial apparatus on our brainstem designed to protect us from taking big risks. And he’d probably be right, after all, he did write a book about it. But guess what – that’s all been said before too. Steve Pressfield wrote about this extensively in The War of Art; and Paul McLean discussed the different parts of the human brain as early as the 1950′s.

So if it’s all been said before, what are we supposed to do?

That’s the secret

Don’t worry about it.

I remember a discussion I had with a singer about a song on his latest record. “It’s one of the best songs I’ve written in years,” he said. “I worked on it for a week, until I had it just right. And then, I realized, parts of the melody sound like something I released 5 years ago”.

You know what he did? He released it anyway. And no one noticed. The new song had new lyrics, new emotions, and new melodies on top of a familiar sound. It was a new experience.

Whether you’re building marketing campaigns, writing a novel or building a website – stop worrying about whether it’s all been said before.

Unless you were given a photocopier instead of a mind – remove the phrase from your vocabulary. Take whatever thoughts come to you, apply it to the context of your world, paint it with your brushes, in your colours, and let it go.

We’re not always blessed with world-changing new ideas, but apply your context and your spin, and your story can make all the difference in the world.

And when you do have one of those rare ideas that no one has ever had before? Maybe, if you’re lucky, someone, someday might give it new colours, new life, and make it resonate differently with an entirely new audience.

Originally written in 2006, but realized long before… I stumbled upon this tonight and realized, at least partially, why I love to work late into the night.

I have always thought that 2 am is the perfect time of day. Each night, I go to sleep, hoping to wake up at 2 am. I lie awake and stare at the stars on my ceiling, knowing no matter what happened the day before, or awaited me on days yet to come, 2 am is always invincible.

Nothing can touch you at 2 am; deadlines lose their looming, failures fail to fail. If you lost everything, had nothing left to your name, you would still have 2 am.

When are you invincible?

Image Credit: Renan

His name was Paul DiPietro.

Moments of attention, frozen in time

I’ve written before about how autographs are nothing more than souvenirs from moments of individual attention. This is a story about how that single moment can shape a relationship forever. This is a story about remembering the little things, if you’re lucky enough to become a big thing.

Hearing the name Paul DiPietro, will invoke dusty memories of the early 1990′s for hockey fans. The kid blazed into the league and sparked the Canadiens to a Stanley Cup victory in 1993; scoring twice in the championship clinching game.

Kodak Moments

I was probably one of the first fans to send him a letter asking for an autograph.

I know this, because there was no hockey card to send; he hadn’t been around long enough to have one.

I know this, because the response came back in a matter of days; he obviously wasn’t getting a lot of mail.

I know this, because the response I got was real: a hand-written letter folded around a photograph. A 4×6 photograph, signed with ballpoint pen, printed on Kodak photo paper – as if freshly developed from a roll of film (I’m sure it was).

It was so fresh, so real, so exactly what a sports-crazed-kid wanted. As we grew up, my friends went through phases of sports heroes; jumping on bandwagons, following trends. Although he disappeared from the spotlight as soon as he entered it, my favourite hockey player was locked in.

That photo hung on my wall for the next 10 years.

We were all rookies, once upon a time

There’s more here than a romantic tale about boyhood heroes – a lot more.

Let’s take a trip down memory lane; back to your rookie season doing whatever it is you call your job.

Think about your first sale. Think about your first satisfied customer. Think about the first email you received; your first phone call; your first opportunity to make someone’s day.

Think about what it was like when you were hungry; when everything was new, and every single person mattered.

Are you still there? Or has the daily grind transformed you into a grizzled veteran, with shortcuts to get things done faster, content just knowing the cheque is coming at the end of the month?

We desperately need more rookies. Keep your eyes open for the next potential kodak moment. You could gain yourself or your organization a new fan for life.

Did you know that Spanish contains 20% more words than English? I didn’t. Not until it was too late. Not until my translators let me know – with a slight hint of frustration in their (out of breath) voices.

I had just completed my first speech with simultaneous translation, at an incredible event in Mexico City. I thought it had gone pretty well (and it had), with the majority of the room giving all of the usual signs of being on board: heads nodding, eyes and mouths smiling, notes scribbling; all happening at the right times.

But for those who weren’t quite able to speak my language, I had presented them with a situation where they could have potentially missed one out of every five words. Lesson learned.

Say 20% Less

Think about how often you communicate with audiences who might not be fully fluent in your language. For marketers, this happens a lot. If you’re trying to teach someone about a new product or service – there’s always going to be elements of your communication that are foreign to them.

By saying 20% less, you give them more time to think about what you’re saying.

• You give them more time to write things down.
• You give them space to ask some questions.
• You give them less information to process and remember before they ask you for more.
• You give the conversation room to breathe.

I’m taking this into account for all of my future speaking and writing. How can you communicate more by saying less?

Photo Credit: Julius Mourlon