Successful Blog

Do YOUR Customers Really Want Innovation?

by

Is It Their Thinking or Ours?

1910ford-t

If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. — Henry Ford

A while back I sat in a presentation in which an evangelist from a huge corporation said …

Customers want innovation.

It was one of his PowerPoint slides too.

“Ah, no,” I thought. “Here I sit in a room filled with people who came to learn from him. Some of them, because of the man’s title, were bound to repeat that silly statement.”

Had I heard that sentence in my younger days, when I had less patience, I would have felt compelled to … um … handle it gently. His choice of words skews solid thinking.

Customers?
Every customer is a person.

The sentence changes when it becomes
People want innovation.

Do we? Do people want innovation. I suppose some folks put down hard earned cash for “innovation.” Personally, I’m not fully sure what innovation is until someone conceives it and shows me how it works. I certainly don’t go looking for it.

When I spend my money on what I need, want, or desire, innovation doesn’t make the list. Solving a real or perceived problem does.

Solutions make my life, easier, more fun, more elegant.
Solutions make me feel better about myself.
Innovation isn’t about me.
It’s about the person or people who came up with the idea.

What’s your thinking? Do your customers want innovation?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversation.

I’m a proud affiliate of

IKEA Shows a 30-Sec Spot Can Be About Us

by

cooltext443794242_influence

This beautiful 30-second ad commissioned by IKEA, produced by the Hamburg agency Grabarz & Partner shows beauty doesn’t have to be expensive. At a time when many brands are focusing on volume and discounts, IKEA has deliberately used a calm 30-second advert to showcase the power of the brand.

A great message for these times — a tribute to the humble tea light..

Click the video to play.

Tealights are a small item staple to IKEA’s offer in line with their philosophy that elegance and beauty don’t have to be expensive, boring, or pretentious.

‘You don’t need a great deal of money to make your world more beautiful, just a bit of IKEA – that’s the IKEA philosophy in a nutshell,’ explains Claudia Willvonseder, IKEA’s Marketing Manager. ‘The tea light is one of several IKEA icons, and is a small-scale reminder of everything that IKEA does in a larger context,’ she adds.

For more discussion about this ad read Coloribus

I find this ad worth watching again and obviously worth passing on.

What is a small scale reminder of everything that is your brand?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversation.

Register Now!! for sobcon-vmc

Want More Ideal Clients? Five Simple Steps

by

“Give Me Ambiguity or Give Me Something Else!!”

cooltext443809437_relationships1

A potential comes to you with a problem. The person you meet is your perfect “work soulmate,” but for some reason you don’t get the job. Why is that?

Could it be that you’re ambiguous — that you’re just not clear?

When it comes to hiring people, potential clients want to know exactly who we are and what we can deliver. They also want to whether their work will be safe in our hands.

That’s why it’s critical when people ask, “What do you do?” that we have a strong answer that invites them in to ask you more.

I say, “I use traditional and new media strategies to show micro and macro businesses easier, faster, and more meaningful ways to reach, connect with, and create thriving communities of brand-loyal fans — online and off. ”

Chris Brogan says, “I use social media and technology to show businesses, organizations, and individuals how to build authentic conversations between coworkers, customers, and even competitors.”

Do we all do more than that? Of course we do, but we’re clear, concise, and unambiguous about where our focus is. Potential clients know our work will always be founded upon what that statement says.

Want More Ideal Clients? Five Simple Steps

Ideal clients are partners that we select. The straightest line to them is to understand who will respect our thinking and value our work. To make long-lasting relationships like that takes an upfront investment of five simple steps.

  1. Write a single statement to describe your best work. What is the highest level result you deliver consistently? What quests and problems bring out your best thinking? What do people often ask you to help them with? Start with those. Read your statement and tweak it daily until it sounds exactly like what you want your business to be.
  2. Define your irresistible offer. Research it’s value to your clients. Find out what the work is worth in hard currency. Articulate in words how what you do takes a serious problem off the desk of your client group. Explain how what you do will make their life easier, make their work more efficient, and make them a hero because they let you do that
  3. Define the best client fit for your work. Develop a prototype of the ideal customer-partner. Know what every client value set must include. Know what every client match must be without. Be sure the definition includes “communicates openly and can afford to pay you.”
  4. Do your homework. Don’t be tempted to convert everyone you meet. . We can’t work with everyone. Not everyone is a match. Rather than trying to convince a potential client to think as you do, invest that time in identifying clients who want to learn how you do it.
  5. Keep asking potential ideal clients what they need most. Talk to the folks you’ve identified as the best fit about their goals. When you hear a way you might help, tell them what you do.

So often the issue of business development is not one of what we can deliver, but how well we talk about it. When we have seriously thought through what we do best and where we best fit, the result is an irresistible offer that is clear, concise, and unambiguous. It’s easy to say and easy for fans and friends to pass on for us.

It’s much more fun to be able to say who we are and what we clearly offer to someone who is a perfect match for our work.

How will you move toward finding your ideal client today?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversation.

I’m a proud affiliate of

It’s True! Unlimited Paid Leave for Employees! Will It Work??

by

Change the Question

cooltext443809437_relationships

In an article in Business Week this weekend, Roger L. Martin and Jennifer Riel explored how approaching new ideas with an eye toward precedent and previous proof could be a killer. They told the story of a bank so risk averse it missed a huge opportunity and then held up the “abductive thinking” of Research In Motion who moved from a pager company to a smartphone contender.

In the mid-1990s, RIM was a modestly successful pager company. But Lazaridis saw potential in the idea of a portable e-mail device. He began to consider what it might look like, what it could do. He imagined something much smaller than a laptop but easier to type on than a phone. Laptops were already shrinking and bumping up against limitations on how small a QWERTY keyboard could reasonably get. Lazaridis stepped back to consider how a much tinier keyboard could be feasible—and he achieved a leap of logic: What if we typed using only our thumbs? He soon had a prototype and concrete feedback from it.

Asking what could be true—and jumping into the unknown—is critical to innovation. Nurturing the ideas that result, rather than killing them, can be the tricky part. But once a company clears this hurdle, it can leverage its efforts to produce the proof that leaders depend on to make commitments—and turn the future into fact.

Social Strata also saw potential and achieved a leap to a what if? of another fashion.

Unlimited Paid Leave for Employees?

Social media brings passionate people together in business relationships. And we look to them to show us how business might be if we work with trust and transparency. At Social Strata in Seattle, President Rose O’Neill, takes that idea seriously. Social Strata has recently surprised employees by announcing a revolutionary plan to offer its employees unlimited paid vacation benefits. At first the employees thought it was a joke.

There’s no maximum, but there is a minimum of two weeks.

From the Social Strata Founders blog post. Unlimited Paid Leave? Oh yes. :

… we decided that, if we have the “right people on the bus,” i.e., people who are passionate about what they’re doing, we don’t need to set artificial limits on the amount of time they can take off, or why they can take time off. Disciplined people will ensure that their responsibilities are handled, and still be able to recharge their batteries with time off. Undisciplined people who take advantage of the system will reveal themselves and be naturally sorted out.

Bruce Watson of Daily Finance points out that the plan relies on

  • an employee/employer relationship of mutual respect
  • and employees with a sense of responsibility to each other.

With those in place, Watson says could make for an energized workforce that feels appreciated and is inspired to loyalty and higher productivity. He also points out that in a workforce larger than Social Stratas 14-person, close-knit team, it might be hard to accomplish.

Here’s an interview Ms. O’Neill had with King5 News Seattle,

The environments we build often shape our behavior. Will this radical move bring the response that Social Strata is after?

What do you think needs to be there for this benefit to work? Do you think the plan is destined to falter at some future point?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversation.

Isn’t it time you registered for

SOBCon?

Develop strategies and tactics with the best of the Social Web for an entire weekend.

Win a FREE SOBCon Weekend — $2000 Value !! AND Get a Discount Code to Explode Your Network!

by

150 People to Fine Tune Your Web Presence

sobcon-vmc

Suppose you could take a weekend retreat away from the noise of the Internet …

  • to focus entirely on your business
  • to work with the support of a mastermind team
  • to get quality time to interact with the top people in social media
  • to get the best information AND time to discuss how you’ll apply it
  • to work with sponsors who are doing the same thing
  • in a room limited to 150 people — all focused in the same direction
  • without worry because the food and the wireless are outstanding.

Imagine a weekend work retreat with these people totally invested.

Would you write a blog post to get a chance to win a FREE SOBCon Weekend?

An Expense Paid Ticket!! AND the Return of The BlogIt EarnIt Discount

I’m delighted to announce that Terry and I get to make this offer …

We had such fun last year with the SOBCon “BlogIt, EarnIt” discount. We’re bringing it back again. Again this year, we’d like to hear from you — this time about what “The Virtual Meets the Concrete” means to you. We want to celebrate how our relationships online help our lives and businesses online and off.

Tell us why online and offline relationships and strategies matter.

Here’s how to qualify for the discount and enter to win

1. Write a blog post about a person (or people) online who has (or have) made a difference in your life. Celebrate how they have made your life easier, better, smarter, more productive, more meaningful.

2. Then let us know by tagging your post #SOBCon2010 and leaving a comment on this post. Include a working email with your comment and as a thank you for sharing your story, we’ll send you a special code to take $250 off the $895 FULL conference rate – that’s over a 25% savings! (We won’t use your email to spam you.)

We’ll also tweet your blog post so that we can celebrate the folks we all think make us stronger.

Get your posts up before Noon EST on February 14th, 2010, and noon EST pm the next day (February 15th), to kick off a special SOBCobn2010 Webinar with Chris Garrett, Chris Brogan, Amber Naslund and Liz Strauss (details coming soon), we’ll put all of the entries in a random drawing and choose one lucky winner who will receive:

  1. a free ticket to SOBCon2010 – $895.00 value
  2. airfare and three nights at Hotel 71 – up to $1105 in hotel and airfare

A total package value worth as much as USD $2000 – nontransferrable, nonrefundable

Blog your thoughts, share it, link it back to this post, and broadcast it on Twitter (hash #blogitearnit). We’ll also encourage you to link to the SOBCon blog for others to see and learn. And remember as a thank you for sharing your story, we’ll send you a special code to take $250 off the $895 FULL conference rate – that’s over a 25% savings!

Or, if you can’t make to SOBCon2010, you could “pay it forward” and pass the discount on to one of your friends — or offer it back to us as a gift for us to pass on for you.

We’re doing everything we can to bring you all the value, the experts and expertise, and the time to work and network that you need to make your business outstanding and extremely profitable in 2010.

What could you do with a weekend of the time, expertise, and support you need to focus your business?

We’re all coming for the same reasons.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Register for SOBCon2010 NOW!!

Make the investment.

SOB Business Cafe 01-29-10

by

SB Cafe

Welcome to the SOB Cafe

We offer the best in thinking — articles, books, podcasts, and videos about business online written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the titles to enjoy each selection.

The Specials this Week are

Colleges and Universities
Here is a list of 100 blogs that will help you improve your writing by providing inspiration, motivation, creativity and new techniques from experts, freelancers, and editors from every genre.

Misadventures with Andi
I did find a few blogs to read, but this activity also left me with the overwhelming need to share a piece of basic web usability advice.

Thomas Clifford
Pink definitely motivated me to rethink how organizations might use multimedia in ways beyond traditional corporate communication methods. Let’s look at one idea from the book and adapt it for our purposes.

Stephen Smith
How can you not generate big ideas every day? Some of them will not be good ideas, but that is okay. Get them out of your head.

Good ideas come from doing something differently, an unusual experience, an unexpected inspiration. Seek these experiences intentionally. Listen to a radio program that you disagree with, or music that you do not like.

45 Things
Mute.

In today’s workplace, I think a lot of people long for a “mute” button. Unfortunately, not only do we not have the option of tuning everything out, but the increasing stress levels have made it just a bit too loud — in all kinds of ways.

Cube Rules
Meetings have many purposes. One of the purposes is to get a decision made about something so people can move forward in their work.

Yet, few would say that meetings produce decisions. Many, if not most, people will tell you the vast majority of meetings are a complete waste of time.

John Haydon
What if you could cut down on the number of social media sites that you’re posting content on? Posterous allows you to do just that – entirely by email.

Related ala carte selections include

Social Media Examiner
In this video I interview Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer for the 358,000 member organization MarketingProfs.

Sit back. Enjoy your read. Nachos and drinks will be right over. Stay as long as you like. No tips required. Comments appreciated.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

I’m a proud affiliate of