GarthBox

One of the most important marketing questions to ask when figuring out how to market a product or service is: what does the customer want to do?

The problem isn’t that one gets flustered by the question. The problem is that the answer gets longer and longer.

“The customer wants to try something new and be included in a group of linkminded people and go home to share the product with others and feel good waking up each morning knowing that they have the product and can feel secure about it not breaking for a while and maybe they can even pass it on to their kids and…”

This story could go on, but the best marketed products don’t.

They acknowledge a single problem and devote energy to being that single solution.

Smart marketers let the customer tell the rest of the story themselves.

As a marketer, if you try to extend the story too long people begin to call bullshit.

You can’t be everything to everyone.

 

Stay Positive & So What Exactly Does The Customer Want To Do?

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If you consider what persuasion is, it’s not manipulation or an improper use of control.

Persuasion is really communicating the meaningful.

You persuade by relaying emotional benefits and explaining how what you have to offer impacts an existing worldview.

Persuasion is about being human, vulnerable and showing that you don’t just know, but actually feel how the other person feels, what challenges they’re facing, what motivations they have.

The facts and details and the “what” of what you have to offer matter, but not to start.

 

Stay Positive & To Start, Show You Can Wear Their Shoes

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The quickest way to grow your team is to encourage them to teach one another.

Not through lunch and learns or organized meetings to recap something that was done. These events make others aware of knowledge that is out there, but it doesn’t contribute to the experience of the team.

At work we’re focusing on a cycle of learning, doing and teaching. Most organizations rock at doing, it’s what each employee is employed to do. Learning is often done on the go, out of desire to grow individually, and to gain an advantage over other businesses. The weakest link is teaching.

The strongest action you can take is to ask someone if they want to learn something new. To walk them through an action; not to recap it in a group setting, but to repeat the doing in a 1-1 environment.

You may be a rock star, but what are you doing to teach others to be?

 

Stay Positive & Your Workplace Needs You More Than You Know

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The shoes of success are always larger than the entrepreneurs feet.

If the shoes you’re wearing now fit your feet, then there’s no room to grow.

The entrepreneurs secret to success is that she always wears shoes two sizes too big.

It’s uncomfortable. Tough to walk in. People notice and may make fun of you.

That is, until you grow into them.

 

Stay Positive & You Will Grow Into Them

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All remarkable work is criticized at first. Great work is shunned. Real art and the creators of it are always castigated by the naysayers when their work is first shipped.

Those who are now famous, successful or just plain happy with their lives are so because they didn’t wait to be told they were great.

They kept performing after being boo’d off stage, they kept creating after one art gallery said their art wasn’t good enough, they kept brewing even after one beer connoisseur sent a video of them dumping the brewery’s beer down the drain.

These moments suck, but why let anyone stop you from doing your best again and again?

Perhaps, next time you’ll do even better. In fact, it’s certain you will.

 

Stay Positive & Ignore The Naysayers

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The next step, level, raise, promotion, situation will always be uncomfortable.

It is always a bit risky to make progress, and with that risk comes fear.

Fear of not being good enough or not being able to handle it.

Remarkable thing is, you always can.

 

Stay Positive & Keep Moving Up

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When there’s downtime, you may want to relax, keep to your comfort zone, maybe your lizard brain motivates you to clean your inbox and complete some busy-work.

That’s no way to get better.

Nor is looking to others that are on or near your level. Doing what they do, offering to help them with their workload since you’ve completed yours keeps you from getting better. You may be able to do your work quicker and stronger, but you’re not doing bigger more remarkable work.

One seamless path to getting better is to look to what those way ahead of you are doing and do that. If you see them going to meetings with potential clients to talk about their business, schedule some yourself.

If you see them crafting a message strategy for a big brand, craft one too and run it by them. “Hey, I saw you were working on a message strategy for the local brewery. Here’s something I came up with in my downtime.”

The only way to get better is to

1. Do things you’ve never done before
2. Take actions that scare you
3. Play outside your comfort zone
4. Use downtime to get better

By all means, if someone asks you for help, do the right thing. But if you’re wondering what to do with your downtime, don’t spend it doing what you always do. Invest it in something different, something better.

 

Stay Positive & Don’t Wait To Be Asked, Pick Yourself

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