GarthBox

“Just as I expected.”

That’s the goal for a response when a customer is asked how the interaction went.

Get there first. Then you can work on the surprising and delighting.

 

Stay Positive & Run Before You Leap

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Consider the number of interactions you’ll have over your lifetime.

Not the number of times you’ll interact, total, but the number of times you’ll interact with the same person.

Now consider these facts:

• The most successful businesses are the ones with regulars.
• Those with the strongest friendships are those who see the same set of friends on a steady basis.
• The entrepreneur who convinces her investors is the one that shows up to meet them every day (invited or not).
• The leader with the best employees is the leader who greets, inspires and impacts his employees–persistently.

And let’s not even get started on love and how important those consistent interactions with one person are.

When you thoroughly consider the number of times you’ll meet each person again… Burning bridges looks less appealing. Complaining to whoever is to your left doesn’t seem so smart. Not waking up to give a damn about those you saw yesterday and will see again today (or maybe tomorrow or the next day or a year from now), well, that’s just a waste of a morning.

 

Stay Positive & Set Yourself Up For Success Now

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The root of any marketing flop is in the lack of understanding about the target.

So how does one go about getting to know the target better?

1) Go where they shop and watch how they do it. Who are they with? What do they pick up and then put down? Why? Even if you’re not selling grocery products, you’ll learn more about the target there than in any other space.

2) Talk to them. Ask how their closest friend would describe them. Ask them what they wake up giving a damn about in the morning.

3) Talk to the target’s friends. Confirm what the target thinks they would say is actually what the friends say.

4) Invest the four or five hours to learn how to use online forums and use them. It’s incredible how open people are online and what they’re willing to say about themselves.

5) Break out the colored pencils and start drawing exactly how you think the target looks. Is she wearing flashy jewellery? Why? Is her hair curled? Why? Is she wearing wedges instead of high-heels? Why did you draw those on her?

Turns out you know more about the target than you think you do… if only you’d take the time to think about them instead of how to get in front of them.

6) Get outside. Not at your computer. Outside. It doesn’t matter where.

7) Don’t simply ask what the target thinks about your product. Let them use it, feel it, be with it and watch. Most don’t know what they really think about something until they make it part of their life.

It’s not a clean process. Nor is it easy. But it’s a starting action-list for learning, understanding and selling to the target. Who would have guessed that all you needed to do is take a proactive approach to listen to the target?

 

Stay Positive & Now You Know

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If your brochures went away, your website shut down, your neon signs outside were tossed…

Would anyone know you still exist?

It’s possible to overestimate the lead-generating power of mediums that allow you to tout.

The more important action is to focus on giving a megaphone to those who you’ve worked with.

Increasingly, the number of of sales that are made, rooms booked, mobile apps purchased comes from one friend telling another about it, not because they saw your bus wrap.

 

Stay Positive & Amplify Amplify Amplify

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The influencers on Instagram were some of the people who created an account before it was popular. Same for Facebook business pages, Snapchat, YouTube and all other social platforms.

Makes you wonder then, if becoming an influencer is less about what you do and how you do it, and more about being willing to take the leap into something new and learn along the way.

 

Stay Positive & Be The First To Leap

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There are very few stories that exist for everyone, and even then, they still read the stories in a different tone, are impacted differently by them or share them to a different degree than other stories.

So when you see an ad for an airline that pampers babies while they are on board, how you feel right now is different from the others who are reading this–and you haven’t even seen the ad, you’re just reading a description of it.

When writing and telling your story, it doesn’t need to be to everyone, it only needs to be to someone.

 

Stay Positive & Tell It The Way They Would Want To Hear

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It’s unlikely you bring the same background, attitude and hopes as the one before you.

Simply because “it” worked for them, doesn’t mean it will work for you.

And that’s the beauty of any mentorship, idol or guru-student relationship; you weren’t in the same condition as they were so you have to find the twist. What makes your condition better? How will you use your past to shape your future differently, all the while succeeding the same as those before you?

Your conditions are different, but that’s what makes success yours.

 

Stay Positive & Up For The Challenge? (There Is No Map)

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