Oct06

People Go Flat in a Data Stream. Get to the Heart of the Data Quick!

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Data is Interesting. People Are Irresistible

One evening at dinner, Rick Murray offered the most interesting insight into the state of marketing. He pointed to the moment that marketers started measuring everything as the moment when we lost the “art of marketing,” turning it into a science. It’s been a thought I’ve been thinking on for almost a year. To me, it seems a lot has been lost.

The numbers and data that we collect, plot, and analyze flatten out the people they represent. The time that it takes to build the surveys, administer and interpret them, and then discuss their various possible implications have taken away time once spent in more organic and natural conversation with people who help our businesses thrive.

Though those conversations are harder to quantify, they add to the intuitive detail that fills out the “personality” of our customers, the nuance of their motivations and intention, their yearnings and wants. Those numbers, charts, and graphs flatten the people we might be thinking about. That’s how we came to talk about living breathing human beings as users, eyeballs, consumers, anything but the people they are.

It’s important to sit silent sometimes with our thoughts about the people we serve. Who are the people who help our businesses thrive and what brings them to love what we do?

Numbers can’t explain your smile when you felt you were heard.

A check box doesn’t fully express the deliciousness of discovering a product feature that seems put there just for you.

A line graph doesn’t make my delighted response to a fabulous experience the same as yours.

Understanding the nuance of my loyalty and yours are what gets us each to find that company irresistible.

That only happens when the company has a mindset that were individual people, not numbers on a survey.

People go flat in a data stream and when we feel flat it’s hard to invest energy.

Every time you see data, get to the heart of it. Stop to think about the people it represents.

Be irresistible.
Liz Strauss
How can I help you be irresistible?

Buy the Insider’s Guide and Get your best voice in the conversation.

Oct05

An Irresistible Leader Builds an Irresistible Team

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Build the Best Team

Again this year, I’ve had the honor to be part of the Blogger’s Hub at the World Business Forum. The first speaker, Jim Collins, Author of bestselling business books, Good to Great and Built to Last, started what became a theme of the day.

The winner is the one with the best team. To achieve the best team, a leader has to

  • identify the right people who are the smartest.
  • put them in the right positions.
  • value, reward, and celebrate teamwork

Jim Collins sent a call to action to the audience with these words and this to-do list.

Those who change the world are enormously consistent in how they do it. The signature of mediocrity is chronic inconsistency.

Ten to-dos

  1. Do your diagnostics. Self assess.
  2. Focus on building a pocket of greatness at every step.
  3. Get to 90% key seats filled with right people.
  4. Double your questions to statements ratio over the next year.
  5. First question: How is our world changing and what are the brutal facts?
  6. Turn off your electronic gadgets – one day for every two weeks.
  7. Have the discipline to stop doing when you should.
  8. Get inside your personal hedgehog. Do work you’re passionate about, work that you deliver as the world’s best, and being useful at something that society values.
  9. Stop giving titles – titles name jobs. Instead give responsibility.
  10. Set a Big Hairy Audacious Goal.

Never, never give in. Never, never, never, never. – Jim Collins

Now I’m listening to Jack Welch speak about leadership … and the theme continues. His thoughts include …

Fear is a dead issue as a management tool. It worked once, not anymore. You have to have a vision for where you’re going, how you’re going to get there, who you want to take with you, and what’s in it for them, and always keeping that out there.

We know this.
Great leaders are open, focused, and invested in a cause.
And they seek and attract people who are the same.

Be irresistible.
Liz Strauss
How can I help your business be irresistible?

Buy the Insider’s Guide and Get your best voice in the conversation.

Sep29

If You’re Looking at Your Competition, You’re Not Serving Your Customers

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Stop Looking in the Wrong Direction

Last week I was invited to speak for a networking group of professionals and entrepreneurs about social media and business development. In response to my interactive presentation on irresistible growth in times of the Internet a savvy professional photographer pointed out that as she looked at what her competition was doing, she was finding it difficult to differentiate. Her question?

How do I come to my own irresistible value proposition?

The words spilled out of my mouth, “Why are you looking at the competition and not at your customers?”

Once we were stuck with only those who could reach us geographically via available transportation … feet, cars, bikes, trains and such. Now the Internet has opened the conversation to include anyone who wants a solution anywhere in the world. What does that mean? We can decide more clearly the kind of customers we want to serve by attracting them.

  • DECIDE. Look at the customer group you want to serve. What makes them light up? When geography limited us, we had to serve the folks who wanted who came into our shop. But now we can’t possibly serve the whole world well, nor would we want to. And should we try we’ll find ourselves lost in the noise of the undefined. By deciding that group that we love, we stand out and stand up for the people we find irresistible to us.
  • PROVE. Build your store, your website, your blog, and your samples to show them that they are the people you serve. Get to know that group better than any other and you’ll understand their problems, their yearnings, and what they love. It will show in everything you do and they will see it too.
  • KEEP YOUR EYES ON YOUR CUSTOMERS. If you’re looking at your customers, your competition will soon be looking at you. You won’t need to be looking at what they’re doing because your customers will be fiercely loyal to you.

Over and over, we get distracted by losing our focus. We only need to do two things to grow an irresistible business.

  • Keep offering products and services our ideal customers want to buy — so perfectly matched to them that they can’t quit talking about what we do.
  • Keep finding ways to give them more opportunities to buy, interact, and participate in what we offer them.

We slowly become what we look at most … don’t keep looking at your competition

I repeat … It starts with a decision to be irresistible to one specific group. Then we can move out slowly to the group that stands right next to them.

Strategy is a lot about focusing on the folks who love what we do.

Be irresistible.
Liz Strauss
How can I help you be irresistible?

Buy the Insider’s Guide and Get your best voice in the conversation.

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