Bought some stuff at the Container Store yesterday (this is a true story, btw).
The clerk bagged the items.
Then decided she had used too big a bag.
So she took the items out, carefully refolded the bag and grabbed a smaller bag.
Bagged the items.
Decided that this was good, but that new bag might not be sturdy enough.
So she took a second bag and put the first bag into the second bag to reinforce it.
I finally had to grab the stuff out of her hands, stifling her screams for more time, more time, and ran out of the store, even though she was concerned that the ‘paid’ sticker on the oversize item was a little crooked.
Sure, she was an annoying nut. But she was passionate about containers, certainly. Smart hiring goes a long way.
June 16, 2006
My previous post on traffic for your blog placed tongue in cheeck and described more than fifty ways you should change your blog if you want traffic.
But what good is traffic if it gives you laryngitis?
For most bloggers, the point of blogging is to find your voice, to share your ideas, to let the world hear what you have to say.
But if you need to conform, to fit in, to follow the rules, you may very well find that you’ve lost the reason you had for blogging in the first place.
And the delicious irony is that those that conform often don’t get more traffic. They often get less. Because following all the checklists can make you boring.
Safe is risky.
June 15, 2006
Yesterday on the plane, a couple spent the entire flight badmouthing the JetBlue staff. I mean significant profanity and personal attacks. They should have had the cops waiting at the runway, imho.
What fascinated me was that this couple didn’t seem to mind that their beef was trivial (they didn’t get to sit together in row 10, as they hoped. They could either sit together in row 20 or sit separately) but that they were willing and able to go nuclear with total aplomb.
It struck me that this would have been inconceivable for sober people just ten years ago.
Would it be okay for JetBlue to blacklist this couple? To say, "you guys totally crossed the line, you can’t fly with us any more?"
As consumers gain more power and anonymity starts to disappear, I think this might happen a lot. And not just on airplanes. What happens to the person who builds the "I hate McDonald’s blog" and spends his life ranking on them? Does she end up banned from the fast food she loves to hate?
June 14, 2006
The only reason to go this page: Apple – Support – MacBook Pro is because your new Mac is not working right. So, how many people want to read:
So kick back, have a look around, and stay awhile…
Webpage words are free in that they don’t cost anything to write. They are not free, though, because they keep the user from what they really need, and increase the chance that they’ll just leave.
If you’re not sure what to say, say nothing.
June 13, 2006
A t-shirt with…packaging. Oddica Loves Me.
Room service just arrived, and my insanely complex OCD breakfast was exactly the way I ordered it. This was possibly a first.
Then I discovered the reason. The person who brought it to my room was the very same person who assembled it.
Boy that was obvious.
It costs many millions of dollars to open a Broadway show. If it doesn’t run for months or years, investors get creamed.
Yet one or two bad reviews can crush a show, impacting attendance so seriously that it never recovers.
The obvious answer is to make a show review proof. You do this by intentionally scheduling a short run and stocking the play with big stars.
Big stars, though, likely require you to modify the show so that it’s not so good–at least not so good by Broadway standards. (Julia Roberts is a star, her show was not well respected). Result: You sell a lot of tickets (in fact, The Odd Couple sold out before it opened). You are review-proof. And you train the audiences who attend that Broadway shows aren’t so great.
The new Superman movie will cost more than a fifth of a billion dollars to make. Perhaps the same strategy will cross their mind?
As the stakes get higher, it’s easy to play it safer. And when you play it safe, more often than not, the very plight you were seeking to avoid becomes more likely.
In response to my post about Nisus and fear, Charles Jolley writes that most people don’t care.
Actually, I think it’ s more accurate to say that most people don’t care enough.
The enough is critical.
People didn’t used to care enough about coffee, or gas mileage or ski bindings or Darfur. The challenge of marketing is to get people to care enough… because deep down, most people care. Just not high enough on their (your) priority list of life problems.
June 12, 2006
I wonder if the sales call has a lot of life left in it.
Before you faint, let me get my terms straight: I think a sales call is a meeting (in person or on the phone) when a salesperson endeavors to sell something to a prospect, and where the prospect is doing the salesperson some sort of service by being there.
Today, though, with streamlined organizations, there are plenty of people who no longer have the time to politely listen to a sales call in order to not offend a b2b salesperson.
And with so many shopping options available, I’m not sure many consumers have the time or desire either.
Instead, I think we’re seeing the rise of the buying call.
I have a problem. I’m willing to talk to a buyperson (okay, bad neologism) to help me solve it.
My factory needs to be more efficient. I want to buy a solution. I call a salesperson.
My publishing company needs to grow. I’m eager to have a meeting with an author who will show me a new book that will help me do that.
What changes more than the words is the posture. If you ever find yourself in a meeting, arms folded, barely paying attention, waiting for the salesperson to leave, the right question to ask yourself is, "Why did you bother wasting your time by going?" If you’re going to go to a meeting with a salesperson, the new expectation is that you’ll come armed with questions, eager to learn what you need, ready to buy the moment you find the right solution.
An unprepared salesperson should be shown the door. What about an unprepared or unmotivated buyer?
When a salesperson gets asked, "Hey, are you trying to sell me something," the best answer may be, "I sure am, and if you’re not here to buy something, we should both be somewhere else…"
So, there’s no version of Word optimized for the new MacBook. In
fact, my copy keeps crashing my crash-proof machine. I just switched to
Nisus.
Let’s see, it’s faster, cheaper, compatible, more reliable, optimized
and friendly. And yet, almost no one with a MacBook has switched.
The other day, my family saw the supersized version of Scrabble, which comes with a bigger board and more tiles. We played once. We hated it.
Just because something is newer or better or bigger doesn’t mean you should switch. In fact, one of the big fears people bring to the table is investing the time to figure out if it’s worth it (the other fear is that switching will just wreck everything.)
Getting someone to switch to super-sized Scrabble is hard. Getting them to switch word processors is almost impossible. Fear is a huge barrier, no matter what you’re selling.
June 11, 2006
