Differentiate

Use Your Senses

Use Your Senses

Garth Beyer

All Five Senses

The most lively writing I’ve written and read is when the author uses all five senses. The most remarkable inventions stimulate all five senses. The best stories incorporate all five senses.

Iscream is delicious tasting, but there’s something special about taking the label off the cone (touch) and to watching how the Iscream gets scooped from the tub (see). But there’s something lacking in the smell and hearing department. How could you change that? How can you appeal to all five senses?

  • Touch
  • Smell
  • Taste
  • Hear
  • See

Jinsop Lee has a great Ted talk about designing for all five senses: basically he answers why sex is so good.

The five senses are worth considering before you ship your next project. It might be what it takes to turn something great into something remarkable.

 

Stay Positive & The Senses Also Help You Differentiate Your Product

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The More Different You Get

Garth Beyer

the scarier it gets.

Weekly I sit down and chat with people carrying around bright, innovative minds. They pitch ideas and ask for my feedback. The majority of ideas are similar to ones already in existence. The trouble seems to be in differentiation or finding the hole, the angle, the niche of their idea.

The further away they get in our brainstorming session from what they already know exists (and works! [and is safe!]), the more scared they get and the quicker they dismiss the idea as “not as good of an idea as I thought it was.”

Niches are the creativist’s worst trap. Asking someone how they will differentiate their business is really asking them how much uncertainty and fear they can dance with.

Sometimes I wonder if what you decide to do with your business is not what differentiates you from others, but that you just do something with your business… that is what will differentiate you from others.

 

Stay Positive & Business Isn’t Like Sports, Oddballs Get Picked First

Before You Get Clientele

Garth Beyer

You obviously need to know what service you’re providing, what you can offer them and what you will charge them in return.

More importantly, though, you need to know what more you’re going to provide than what they are paying for. How will you manage to go the extra mile with each service you deliver?

It’s a hell of a lot easier to build the extra-mile into your strategy than to figure it out along the way.

 

Stay Positive & Think Of The Extra Mile As What Differentiates Yourself

No Matter Where You Are

Garth Beyer

You can be in the same market as other businesses, but you still need to differentiate yourself.

There are a lot of excuses not to: too busy, will wind up too far from the target market, tactics might go unnoticed.

Excuses, though, don’t lead to success. Let alone successful differentiation.

That’s why I’m writing this on my phone. That’s why some stores stay open and some closed on Christmas. That’s why you can look at your favorite business and say what makes them different.  

Being different is never safe. And that risk is what will get you noticed.

Stay Positive & What Will They Say About You?
Garth E. Beyer

Ignore A Pool Of Your Customers

Garth Beyer

No! Wait! Don’t do that! You’ll lose your business unless you accommodate their desires!

NOT

When you ignore your customers, you make their experience a memory they want to share. Take for instance every single local or hotel pool.

I have been in a myriad of pools in my lifetime, all of which were cold. I can’t recall one pool that was room temperature or warm, it was always chilly to where you need to keep moving to counter the freezing temperature. I’m positive that plenty of people have complained to hotel services and management that the pools should be warmer or at least more bearable. Why have they all refused our demands? Because a cold pool makes it an experience, a wickedly fun one.

Don’t tell me that after you touch your toes in the water and realize that the water is freezing – of course it is! – that you don’t lie to your friend or parent saying that the water is warm and to jump right in. For some psychological reason, the cold water feels even more cold when you jump in thinking it’s warm. What a laugh you get! Okay, okay, back on topic.

What would happen if every hotel pool raised its temperatures and made it a manageable temperature: no shivers, no rushing for a towel once you exit, no need to keep swimming just to prevent yourself from freezing. Sure, it may be a bit more relaxing, but it surely wouldn’t be fun. Imagine it. “Hey, jump in the water first, its warm!” – the person jumps in – “Yes, it is.” What a memorable experience! (sarcasm)

As it is with hotel swimming pools, every business needs something that creates a buzz, an experience, something that people talk about, remember, but also complains about. What does this mean to you? People complain a lot more than they talk about a positive experience and if you can give them something to complain about that goes right along with a positive experience, you have something truly remarkable, truly worth talking about; it’s about adding the complaint to their pool of experience.

 

Stay Positive & I Flat Out Thought This Was Awesome: Fake Swimming Pool

Garth E. Beyer