Turn Your Story into a Purple Cow (apologies to Seth Godin)

I opened my email and I came across a brilliant little letter from cdbaby.com where I had recently purchased music online. The purpose of the email was to tell me where to go if I had any problems with the download. It could have easily read: Dear Sir/Madam, Thank you for your purchase. If you have any
trouble with it then please look here for our FAQ section.
Simple concise and it gets the information across. It is also as boring as watching paint dry. It is the same as every other email from any other online purchase outlet I buy from.
Instead I got a well crafted email from the fictional “e-gnome emissary” who resides in cyberspace and had “overseen” the shipment of my package. It told me how the whole cyberworld was so excited to see my electronic delivery go out and if I had any problems to check out the FAQ or contact him.
It was brilliant, and made me want to run back to the site to make another purchase just to get another email (I would happily put the whole text of the email up but rather go buy your own and get the pleasure of your own email).
Seth Godin affectionadoes will recognise this as a “purple cow”; something so exceptional that it stands out from the norm. To summarise Mr Godin, we all know what cows look like and as long as you look like other cows no one will ever notice you, but be a purple cow and everyone will notice how exceptional and amazing you are because you stand out.
The email was so unexpected and so different that it has made an incredible impact on my day, imagine if your product did the same thing to all your customers.
Music videos used to be boring shots of the band playing the songs with the odd flashing light, having stemmed from shows like “Top-of-the-Pops” they were not much to look at. Then Michael Jackson arrived on the scene and turned the music video into an art form. The first music video that involved dance and a story line left lasting impressions and the music world has never been the same.
People are drawn to what stands out. Watch a choir and you will either look at the person with the biggest smile or the person picking their nose in the second row. Great or revolting we notice the extremes.
Extremely bad happens naturally most of the time we don’t need much help there, extremely great takes deliberate effort and intention and an in-depth understanding of your market. Cdbaby sell independent music and not mainstream labels. They know that there is a small group of people who will take the time to find and buy indie music and the email they crafted caters to the “out-of-the-norm” type of customer they attract. They know their market.
It probably was not the first email that got drafted either. It may have been the first idea, but I doubt it. Deliberate, intentional planning and rewriting would have taken place to get just the right effect. You are aiming for the “Holy cow . . . Did I just see that” moment in your clients. The type of service, communication, product or experience that makes them tell everyone else about it. How can you make your product stand out?
Make your story exceptional and it will be remembered and retold.
Standing out takes effort but hit the right note and everyone will notice. There was a time when all you got in most Harare restaurants was sponge cake (throw back from the British influence) then one coffee shop started serving a richer German-type cake. People flocked to try it and soon nearly every other coffee shop had something similar on its menu.
So one last thing on the purple cow, sooner or later everyone else may start to copy your idea, then you have to create something even better to stand out.

Celebrate Young: Found Love

As a follow up to the previous post with the exceptional music video...Zimbabwe's inspirational Rock band "Celebrate Young" album titled
"Found Love" download the full abum here.
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/celebrateyoung

This Place: Celebrate Young

This is what can be done with passion, drive and realising that a limited budget is no hinderance to making something great happen.

Relationships matter

Today I go to celebrate a friend's wedding. Weddings...a time of celebration and joy. The formalising of a union and the making of vows. Above all though it is about a relationship. Relationships are key to life, they are the building blocks which we use to colour our world. Without relationships we are poor souls, alone and cut off from contact. Relationships should be treasured, worked on and worked out. A broken relationship tears at the heart of who we are. Business or simple friendship-relationships count.

Permission Please

Wow blogger changed their user interface (the back end of writing this that you do not see). No warning, no option just change. Not very cool if you are a user and suddenly cannot find anything. But that is the price for using a free platform...or should it be, despite the fact that I am not paying for this service should I be given the option to decide if I want to use a potentially better interface or not? Food for thought.

How to Sell Your Product With Passion

THE people who read newspapers on a regular basis can be divided into two main groups. There is a small group who read everything in the paper from cover to cover, often over a gently cooling cup of tannin infused water. The second, more larger group breeze through the paper looking for headlines that appeal and only read articles that they think are worthy of scrutiny.
This group of individuals makes up the larger percentage of your market.
They will not religiously examine every product on the shelf before making their choice (you are smiling because in your mind you can picture the person you know who does just that), rather they grab the one that has headlines that scream the loudest at them.
This is the same with salespersons or business owners; your voice needs to scream loud and clear if you are to effectively sell your product.
Twitter’s success astounds me. If you told me 10 years ago that allowing people 140 word posts would be a successful communication medium for any length of time I would have laughed at you.
Yet everyday people headline their stories to whoever will listen. Everyone has a story to tell, and amid the billions of stories being told each day yours has better chances of being read if it stands out.
Here are three pointers on making your story the best one possible. They apply to your investor pitches, your staff training, and your consumer interactions.
Firstly, you need to let people know that your product will make a difference to them.
It should be a real difference that they will appreciate. You need to ask yourself why your range of jam is better than the glowing, imported version next to it on the shelf.
What problem will you solve for your consumers? At the end of the day you need to answer the question “Why should people care about what you have to offer?”
You may be selling a steel-reinforced, prefabricated, storage location for vehicles, but what people want to hear is that you are offering car security at a click of a button.
As a customer I do not need to hear you tell me that our well-trained (possibly over trained) staff are on hand to assist you with anything you want at any time of day you want it.
Even though you may have the most amazing staff education programme, what I want to hear is something like “Finally, 24-hour shopping with minimal fuss”, or “Open 24 hours a day — a real convenience store”. Sell a difference people can appreciate.
Second, headline it. Try to tell your story in one sentence. Create a Twitter account and see if it fits in the little “tweet” box that counts down the number of letters you have left to use.
Now remember the first point while you do this, if you can tell me how your product will change my life in one, short sentence I may give you permission to tell me more about it, or, even better, show me how it actually works.
Finally, tell it to me with passion. If you do not believe in your product and the difference it will make then I am not going to believe in it either.
To me this is one of the biggest differentials in business today.
Zimbabweans are just not passionate about what they are selling (perhaps that is because we have been through 10 years of merely trading other country’s goods that we had no hand in creating).
A friend of mine sells hair extensions, he can tell at a glance the type of weave at a hundred yards, whether it is artificial or natural, and if it came from his factory or not.
To see him in action is fascinating, I have sat with him at coffee as he chats to a waitress about the pros and cons of her current style — free advice to make her look better.
He has a passion not just for the hair product, but for the effect it is making in the lives of his clients.
Be excited about what you are selling — not just the product but the revolutionary change it will make to someone.
Many restaurants have daily specials and waiters will regurgitate this information in a rapid monotone as they guide you to your table.
Ask a waiter which cake he or she thinks is the best to have and watch the change in his or her eyes as he or she extols why they enjoy it so much. Passion makes a difference.
The emotion you have for your product needs to be contagious enough to reflect in your staff.
You need to get buy-in from them as to the change you are making in your peculiar pocket of the universe.
If it does not filter down to your salesman then the results will be the same.
How do you sell it to your staff, the same way you sell it to me — sell the difference, keep it short, and tell it like it matters. At the end of the day, the best story wins.

Celebrating Each Other

Has the world forgotten how to celebrate each other? We have to bring our own cakes to work on birthdays. Perhaps Humpty Dumpty had it right-unbirthdays are worth celebrating-celebrating the random, quirky and unusual things that make us, well, us.