This month’s bulletin comes to you a bit earlier than usual, because we wanted it to coincide with the release of my new book, DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT, published today by Virgin Business Guides. It covers the 14 key principles of marketing and 100 case histories of people who did something creative to market themselves (and how you can apply their techniques). You can find it in UK bookstores or on the Amazon.co.uk site. It will also be available at the evening workshop in Central London on April 18 (see below for details).
I hope you’ll find the following useful and inspirational:
1. WHEN THINGS GO WELL—ASK WHY
When things go wrong, most of us do a kind of post-mortem to figure out what happened and why, so that we can learn from the experience. It’s less common, but equally important, to do the same when things go well. This can also apply to figuring out why parts of your operation work better than others. For example, here’s what Buz Mertes, VP of a major insurance company, told Fast Company magazine:
"We pulled six of our best reps off their jobs and analyzed their decision-making processes… We found that these reps had radically different styles [than the less successful reps]."
They developed a software program that helped the other reps use the same style, and the outcome was a success rate that leapt from 30% to 50%, with a 50% time savings as well. In the first 15 months, the financial savings were $15 million!
You can do the same even if you are a one-person operation. When you have a success, stop to look at what seemed to be the critical factors. Write them down. The next time you’re doing something similar, review the factors and make sure they are present again.
2. ARE YOU TOO NICE?
Whether we’re asking for a salary increase, hiring someone to perform a service, dealing with suppliers, or trying to get a five-year-old to go to bed, we’re all negotiators sometime. If you’re too nice, you may find yourself getting the short end of the stick in these dealings. Here are three tips:
* Make your opening offer higher (or lower) than your real offer. This seems obvious, but nice people think, ‘I hate all that haggling, I’m just going to go in and name my real terms.’ Great, if you happen to be dealing with someone who thinks the same way, but 90% of the time you won’t be. Haggling is part of the process for most people, and they’ll assume your opening offer is exaggerated, and will adjust theirs accordingly.
* When you’re inclined to accept the offer, say you’ll need to check with someone else. This buys you time to overcome the over-eagerness nice people have to get out of the discomfort of the negotiating process. Even if you don’t need to consult anyone else, say you do (your accountant, business manager, attorney, consultant, whoever). Give yourself 24 hours. If the terms still seem good, accept; if not, say that your advisor pointed out that the terms are not good enough.
* Don’t fall for the usual tricks. When I was shopping for a computer monitor recently, the salesman tried the old "we’ve sold twenty of these today and there’s only one left at this price" ploy. Others include, "There’s someone else very interested in this property/ item/ position, so if you want it, you’d better go for it now"; and "This is a one-time offer." All these tactics imply some kind of time pressure. Most of the time, if you respond by saying, well, I’d better go elsewhere then, the time pressure vanishes.
3. BE AWARE OF THE VARIABLE GRAVITY PRINCIPLE
If you feel like you’re fighting an uphill battle and are getting discouraged, remember that you may be nearing the point where gravity will suddenly change. Variable gravity is my name for the phenomenon that when you are starting out in any endeavor, it tends to be very difficult (e.g, starting a new business)—almost like gravity is pulling you down more than usual. The heavy gravity factors at this stage are trial and error (you’re not sure what works yet), lack of connections (you don’t know the right people yet), lack of skills, and lack of necessary resources.
The thing to keep in mind is that at some point this will reverse and you will suddenly feel like things are much easier than usual. When you hit a certain level of success, staying there or moving forward gets easier and easier, because people come to you, they offer you more money, etc.
In other words, the amount of effort you put in is almost never proportional to what you receive. At the beginning, it takes much more effort, but after a
while it takes much less. If you’re on the first part of the process, take heart, the shift may be closer than you think.
STILL SOME PLACES AVAILABLE ! Join us on Wednesday, 18 April, from 6:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. in Central London for an exciting workshop called DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT! These days, whether you work within a company or are a free-lancer or an entrepreneur or a writer, it’s not enough just to do a good job–you have to make people aware of who you are and what you’re offering. It’s something that does not come naturally to most creative people, but it’s something you can learn–and must learn, if you want to be successful in your chosen field.
In this workshop, you will get the chance to put into practice for yourself the valuable lessons behind the hundred successes chronicled in the DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT book. If you’d like to take part, please ring Sheridan Bolger on 020 7580 4997 to register. The fee is only £15, and you can use your credit card (Visa, Mastercard, or Switch) or send a cheque payable to Brainstorm, to, Brainstorm, 85 Ridgmount Gardens, London WC1E 7AY. We will send you confirmation and directions. Space is limited, so please ring now.
4. PUT A PRICE ON IT
It may be sad that we tend to put a money value on everything, but it’s generally true. It can also be used in a positive sense. Jean Hollands, who runs a centre for creating dysfunctional behavior, markets her services to companies by pointing out that, for example, chronic angry outbursts by a manager can cost a large company $250,000 in lost productivity and business over the course of the year. Looked at it that way, the cost of putting the exec through an anger-management progamme sounds like a bargain.
You can use the same kind of indicator when considering whether to invest in yourself. For example, how much more money could you earn per year if you were better at making presentations? How much if you were more skilled at time management? Or if you were better at marketing yourself? Compare these
figures to the price of books, training workshops, and other self-development tools, and the price of investing in yourself gets put into perspective.
Questions: What one greater skill would most impact your income? How much time/money would it take for you to be more skilled in this area? What can be one step you could take today to get started?
5. AND SOME WORDS OF WISDOM ABOUT FEAR…
"I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life and I’ve never let it keep me from a single thing I wanted to do." – Georgia O’Keefe
‘Til next time, Jurgen
(ps: check out our website, www.BrainstormNet.com, which now includes a "Do Something Different" section – and if you’ve enjoyed this bulletin, why not forward it to a friend or colleague?)
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