bwagy, the blog of Ben Young

Small matters.

Enough said.

In my wind down from Tom Peters yesterday, the underlying theme was that small matters, it matters more now than ever before.

Focus on small things that result in behavioural differences.

For example he gave the case of:

“Docs, nurses make own checklists on whatever process-procedure they choose, Within weeks, average stay in ICU down 50%.  Source: Atul Gawande, “The Checklist” (New Yorker, 1210.07)”. (from Slide 74, download below)”

The next five years are going to be our defining legacy.  It is what we did during this time that we will remember.  

Download the slides from the Tom Peters blog, dig through them, print them out, there are lots of gems in there.

Today I have the privilege to be live blogging from a Tom Peters Workshop, I shall be updating on the Results blog.

Check throughout the day and on my twitter at @bwagy

If you have any questions for Tom post them here I hopefully will have an interview with the man himself this afternoon.  I shall post a summary on friday of the day.

And off we go.

You can come from anything anywhere and be what you want to be, which is you.

If you put the hard work in you can pull yourself out of any situation and get there.

The opportunities are there, the funds are there, you can just nail it and do it.

This is a bit obscure.  But really…

Equality is getting closer and closer, the internet is only flattening hierarchies,  I am fortunate enough to be born in New Zealand where it truly is a case of if you want it you can get it (believe me I know).

Just a riff about the world we live in today and in admidst the turmoil it is getting better.

I am a bit of a Physics buff so always keen to read up on the latest experiments taking place.

One I saw late last year was on our perception of time.

As part of fight or flight response to a stimulus our body will shut off certain functions to divert energy and focus to other vital functions.

This most commonly occurs as flow or tunnel vision, where you hold a lot of focus on a task such that you lose track of time.

This particular experiment had a guy dropped from a large height onto a big net.  On his wrist he had a watch like device that was flashing a number at a high frequency that you cannot normally view it.

As he fell the idea was to see if he could see the number.

And he could everytime.  That is during a heightened response his ability to perceive his surroundings was much better than normal.

In fact you can watch the video here: Free Fall Experiment

I thought this was pretty neat especially in how it ties into Marketing and in particular usability. 

If you can change your customers perception of time through stimulating flow or enjoyment you create a strong customer relationship with your product & service.

(Extras for experts read my research on Live Search’s inability to create a compelling experience. )

Actually I fib, it’s Tuesday.

TGIF

People look forward to fridays, end of the week, the weekend is looming.

We also regret Mondays.

This can be good or bad depending on your perspective. I say flip it.

How can you make your employees long for Monday to get stuck into their project and begret fridays? What does it say about your workplace?

Tonnes of businesses unlock the flesh in a market, Google Adsense unlocked the flesh in the online advertising market, Ebay in secondhand goods, Skype in phone calls.

By reducing the flesh consumers benefit from a competitive marketplace.

Although there is a lot of competition in online advertising I still think there is a lot more flesh that can be unlocked.

Companies like Google Adsense, Kontera, Commission Junction will have millions on their books from the earnings of users who do not reach the payment threshold (which is a reasonably common occurrence).  

Their terms usually dictate they hold onto the cash till you cash out or your forfeit it within a certain amount of time.  You are never likely to recover those earnings.

My idea is for a charity or potentially Kiva to setup a programme whereby users donate their past earnings for these programmes.  

They then group these together and cash them out.  Alternativelly it could be a business opportunity, similar to the tax refund model, give us your account details we will get your earnings out and take a 25% cut, as hey if you didn’t do it you get nothing otherwise.

However I think companies are more likely to co-operate with a charity, great pr move for them, users feel great AND charity benefits. Win/Win/Win.

What would you like your customers to be excited about?

Are they?

Why not?

I got an impatient email “When is the book coming out Ben?”.

I explained the hold ups but if you step back a second.

How neat is that that someone is excited enough about it to send me an email about it?

Think about the passion Apple fans have for their product do you have that? It is a worthy goal.

How can you improve yoru communications such that your customers can’t wait for your latest revision?

You have an idea but are afraid to pursue it.

What’s the worst that could happen?

The worst is never as bad as you think.

Today I coin a new word.  A breed of new entrepreneurs.  
The Marketrepreneur.

Sure you can already think of a handful, Richard Branson, Donald Trump, Robert Scoleliser, Seth Godin, Steve Jobs.

Marketrepreneurs are astute entrepreneurs who understand marketing begins at day zero and build it into EVERY part of the organisation.

Being innovative isn’t enough.  Especially if no one knows about it.

The world is seemingly getting bigger and bigger every day.

This leads us to think we should start our businesses going global day dot.

Yes you should.

But remember to get off the ground you need cashflow, and local business is the best business to get for a startup, you hold a location advantage over your competitor, which is gold especially for a new business with unproven success.

So exploit the local opportunity then use this core base of users to then go global.

Remember that:  go local, think global.

 I think much is to be gained by looking at particular business scenarios through a different lens.

The perception that businesses need to be using in the current market is answering this question: How can I help my customer in a way that delivers additional value to them?

Not in a fake way, a legitimate way that improves the life of your customer.

Some of you may say hang on I’m an employee this doesn’t apply.  Yes it does, act as if your employer is your customer, this is going to make you infinitely more valuable.

For example:

• Apartment Rentals, install an espresso machine & communicate the value, save your clients $40/week or $2000/year spent on espresso coffee, have many apartments? bundle all their utility accounts together and negotiate better discounting, give each new tenant a big hamper to welcome them in, follow up a bottle of wine after successful inspections.
• Daily Paper, offer a daily exclusive section on your website with the access code printed in the daily paper,  offer the paper dropped off at the office by first thing in the morning or by mid morning break.
• Knowledge  Worker/Employee? Take an extra hour a day for a week to figure ways to use technology to automate your office systems, upskill yourself, figure out tasks that do not add value and suggest you drop them, find out the key issues affecting your companies clients and ways you can help them, this will make yourself invaluable.
• Contractor? Offer a monthly newsletter delivering relevant information for your clients, write up some documents saying how you prefer to work and how they can help you work more efficiently for them, ask your clients what their problems are maybe you can help or know someone that can.
• Petrol Station, (see previous Monday Ideas post on petrol stations) offer $2 speed service, free espresso with fill up, lunch packs for the kids, paper, I could go on all day with this one.
• Cable Tv, offer a bundle pack with netflix (or equivalent dvd rental service) get both and save $10/month, better deal on a second decoder, you choose movies, that is offer options of blockbuster movies and viewers can vote.

What services are you considering cutting?

How do you think they could improve under this view?

What can you do to help your customers?

(I would love to heard your responses in the comments.)

Today I celebrate 9 months of blogging.

Yay! It’s another notch in the belt persay.

I like to celebrate the small wins, so thought I would update my Commanding Time post.

Since I’ve started the blog I have garnered 636,230 seconds of attention or 10,603 minutes or 177 hours of attention. Wow.

That is staggering, and guess what I’ve love every minute of input I’ve put into this, and I still get rewarded! Neat huh?

Again (like I asked 6 months ago) what would you pay for that kind of attention?

Shopping is not my favourite pastime.

Especially with inept sales peoples.

If they offend me I have a tendency to leave.

I can  come back later or go elsewhere to shop.

The typical conversation that you experience is:

I wander into a Clothing Store and

• Staff Member 1: (Usually positioned on the door) Hey, can I help you?
• Me: No thanks.
• About 90 seconds later once your looking at clothes.
• Staff Member 2: (Usually lurking around a vertain clothing area) Do you need a hand?
• Me: I’m fine thanks.
• I’m sure many of you have experienced this.  

Some like it, many answer automatically.  Why’s that? Because as soon as they ask, your barriers go up, hang on they’re trying to sell to me, no thanks.  Even if you want help your more likely to say no than yes.  I know what you’re thinkign you have done xactly that huh?

There is a simple fix.

Change your language! Be interested in me and what I want.

Some different approaches:

Acknowledging the customer is a person:

• Staff Member: Hey there, Im Ben whats your Name?
• Me: Alexander
• Staff Member: Well hey Ben my job is to help you if you need it, so be sure to let me know or one of our other staff members would be more than happy to help.

Light Hearted:

• Staff Member: Gee this weather is mint huh? or Yuck outside glad to be inside?

Help the customer:

• Hey, I just wanted to let you know, we are having a sale on jeans 25% off this range. (Keep it unadvertised, so that people have to engage to find out specials in future.)

Ther are many ways, remember to acknowledge the person, try and build a repoir and then help them.  Like the doctor if your good I’ll be back.  

If you work in a clothing store (or any other consumer goods store) do not use the typical sales pitch, they are average and will lead to average results.

Be different remind yourself its all about the customer.  You will also learn more about your customers and will need a different approach for each and everyone of them.  If you can do this you will easily excel 🙂

When the cut comes to the chase we get things done.

And we also naturally flesh out work to fill the time before completion (Parkinsons Law).

Just as creating scarcity in your industry creates value,

Limiting your time input each day forces you to prioritise, challenge yourself and be more effective.

(As your time has become more valuable)

Its too easy to work over time but much more rewarding to work within time and complete everything.

Building in a time constraint ensures you become innovative with your own activities.

I think once you can accept you can’t do everything you will really see the value in this

Over the holidays I stopped in a small town on the way to my destination (6 hours driving).

I pondered over the success of these small towns to capture people as they drive through.

Some are small art shops, fruit and various other sites.

However most are missing out on an opportunity.

There is no ‘the best’ or ‘remarkable’ stops.  

Come on! You have a monopoly, everyone who is heading to a a destination has to drive past you.  If you play your cards right you will reap the benefits over and over and over again.

On any big road trip there are three things that are needed:

• Food
• Petrol
• Toilets

So everyone needs to stop for these on a decent trip.

I suggest being the best of one of these three, the nicest toilet, the best food, the best petrol service.  

Do something that makes you the best.  Everytime I make the repeat trip, where am I going to stop for one of the above three? At the best of course.