Before the television was invented, most products on grocery stores were generic products. You had “soap” and “toothpaste” and “cooking oil.” Once the television was invented, advertisers were slow to jump on board. Radio advertising worked for some brands, but not for others. A few pioneering advertisers decided to try running commercials on television. These […]
Your product’s features, no matter how revolutionary, are not what will sell your product. Features are simply facts. They carry no emotional weight. If you want to sell your product, you have to translate those features into benefits. Benefits are features, translated into “what’s in it for me” statements. Instead of telling your customer what […]
What percentage of your work time is spent on productive activities and what percentage of time is spent on interruptions, distractions, time at the water cooler and so on? Most people drastically overestimate how productive they are. In fact, some studies show that as much as half of employee time is spent on non-productive activities. […]
If you want your website to get referrals, get people to come back and get people to buy, you need to make an emotional impact. Factual information on the web is useful for research, but not for making real connections. Emotions are what get people to act. Pain and desire get people to buy. Amazement […]
Don’t make the mistake of thinking you understand your customers or know what they want before you ask. Many of the world’s most successful companies get it wrong because they fail to ask. When Oreo cookies went to China, they just assumed that everyone would like Oreos. After all, it’s one of the best-selling cookies […]
Over the course of running a business, it’s very easy to lose track of your long-term goals. You get into the business with a crystal clear sense of what you’re trying to do. Then the day-to-day minutia gets in the way. A couple years down the line, you’re just running your business without a clear […]
Over the course of running a business, there are going to be many conversations that get procrastinated. These are conversations that you know you “should” have, but don’t. Perhaps you were a day late on a project and never apologized. Perhaps an employee did something wrong, but you never corrected them. Perhaps you and a […]
How is your business doing? The only way to truly know is to get a crystal clear grasp of where your finances are. Public companies have to release statements every three months letting the public know how they’re doing. Likewise, you should periodically gather all the numbers in your business to see how you’re doing. […]
One of the best ways to build customer empathy is through telling stories. Stories suck people in, keep people entertained and can help get your message across in a much more heartfelt way. When people listen to a story, they immediately put their guards down. People aren’t looking out for a sales pitch. Instead, they […]
Your systems are what make your business run. They’re the day-to-day processes that fit together to create effective methods of creating products, managing people, getting customers and so on. Your business systems may be clearly written out, or they may just be your day-to-day actions that you go through without ever consciously thinking about it. […]
