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Let’s Get Beyond Godin’s Less Annoying: Let’s Surprise and Delight Again & Slay Some Trolls.

June 1, 2009 By
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20060501-100558-starbucksWhat I’m after is an opportunity to amaze at the point of sale. Sonia Simone at Copyblogger hit it out of the park with a recent post on conversion killing.     People don’t have trust.  When they DO buy, that’s another time to make your systems work.  After you have that retail hit of euphoria that people get, what then?   You always feel a little let down.  I have that ‘this is it’ feeling when I buy stuff…especially after skilled internet marketers get me emotionally hooked.

What happens RIGHT after the sale is an opportunity.  Folks like Dave Navarro show some basic competence and good instincts by offering a truly good deal after that.  But, I wanna go beyond.  WHEN people buy…I want them to be amazed.  That instant.  Blown away.

Seth Godin talks about making things less annoying.  I don’t want to stop there.  I want to go far beyond, and overdeliver.  Every purchase–every job gets a package of goddies that you made to be super successful

See, people save their offers for securing the sale.  I want to put all of my ammo into securing lifelong trust.  I want people to feel smart and relieved when they buy from me, so the NEXT time they buy from me, they know that they’re getting a sweet, sweet deal.

I see all of these posts with things that offer $10,916 in FREE bonuses, and I’m insulted and squeemish.  I don’t want to be that guy.  I want to be the guy that does that for my customers.  There are opportunities to do this with everyone.

You could:

  • Give away your back catalog for new customers.
  • Develop a product/service MORE VALUABLE than what you sold, and give it way for free.
  • Deliver it in more & higher formats–if they bought a book, make it in an MP3, if they expect an MP3, make a video.
  • Package OTHER People’s good stuff on the same topic in an-i’ll-share yours-if-you-share mine.

Some of this is being done, but far too little I’d think is being done.  Once you secure a customer, THEN knock their socks off.  Overdeliver by an order of magnatude and then all the work you spent on getting that customer will be rewarded each time you sell something.

If someone has been treated amazingly well, then they’ll be back.  Again, and again.

One of the things that Starbucks used to (and I mean used to) have in its culture…was the ability to surprise and delight.  When you went, you’d get coffee and panache, a smart person would look you in the eye and try to do make your day happy.  Your Third Place, yada yada.   Ya go there now, and you trip over CD racks, and you feel used and monetized.    And, I was in recently and the place had the stench of greasy eggs in it.  I come for coffee.  Live by coffee die by coffee.  I come for coffee and public privacy, and the good pure smell of beans and hot water.

They used to give more for your $2.00 than you’d have a right to expect.  They fell when they wanted you to be monetized.  What if we did it  right–what if we committed to having an astonishingly good experience with FREE bonuses?

How would we work it out so when they bought they didn’t feel simply like you were shoveling out free stuff?

How would we work it so that it DID impress people that are cynical and bitter?

How would we work it so that, say 20-25% of people saw our commitment to being amazing?

How would we work it so that people were not let down after the purchase, but had stuff to do, had marching orders and felt great about what they just bought?

Then we’d be slaying trolls left and right.

Filed Under: Business Building, Start Here Tagged With: , , , ,

My Autoresponders are DISGUSTING

May 29, 2009 By
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disgusting_fishes_2-frilled-sharkWhen your autoresponders suck, it’s worse than not having them at all.   When someone trusts you with an email address, it’s the beginning of a relationship.  Letting them down is a problem.

Disgusting.  That’s What my auto responders are at the moment.  Foul and nasty and…just plain bad. I’ve gotta fix it this week, and I will.  Its one of those things that fell through the cracks.  Writing autorespoonders is not hard work. it’s not particularly time consuming.

But, mine blow.  I have not done the job I wanted to do because I haven’t REALLY decided what strategy I’ve wanted to execute.  I’ve kind of been in transactional mode because I have been working my ass off to get the IRS out of my life.  And that’s going to be something that I’ll do this week.

Autoresponders work.  I’ve set them up for many people.  Mine?  Won’t do anything but confuse people.  I have 3 set set up with a great plugin that Keith built for me.  Really slick.  Pulls people into aweber in a great way.  Then when they get there?  They hear nothing.

So it’s time to change that, and I’ll let you know what happens when I improve my campaign.

You’ll hear back from me Monday or Tuesday.

First:

A mea culpa to my list.

Then:

Notes that matter, and I’ll add the autoresponders to my daily tasks/tabs.

Filed Under: Products, Projects and Process Tagged With: ,

Getting Things Done (GTD) With Firefox Tabs: Setting Them To Have a Good Day

May 27, 2009 By
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firefox-logoI love GTD.  I fall off the wagon all the time, but I do love the promise, and it’s a great framework to go back to.  Since I make my living connecting with people in social media, and helping them connect, and since I’m still doing “project work” as I launch my businesses…I figured I’d show you what I’ve implimented as a practice to get started.

One of the things that went wrong was the book I wrote.  I abandoned it because, well, I have acute IRS problems, and I can’t bonzai something to perfection when I need money now.  The thing is, I do and did have the time to get stuff done with regard to FT.   But I didn’t get things done because, largely, t wasn’t in front of me.

So I decided to fix that a couple of days ago.  I made some firefox tabs after my wife and I improved communication by sharing a Gdoc ToDo List (I know, I know, Remarkablogger is cringing as we speak).   But, I needed to do some easy things on an iterated basis.  And since I switched to FireFox 3.5.1b, Morning Coffee (a good plugin) ceased to work.  So, I made tabs:

Chase-  I check my bank balance every day, mostly to make sure I have not been levvied recently by the IRS.

Analytics- I’m just keeping an eye on stuff, and as my coffee brews, looking at numbers helps.

Twuffer: I have underused Twitter.  Twuffer help me keep current.  I do a mix of broacsast + connections, and it’s working.

GenuineChris – So I remember to post.

F#@% Therapy: So I remember to post.

Guerrilla.ME Again, so I remember.

LinkedIN: Answer whatever questions are in my wheelhouse, and look around for people to connect with.  I’ve been on LinkedIn for 2ish years, and have underused the site.  So it’s time to get after it.

Facebook: Kinda the same deal.  FB is more about broadcasting than any of the other sites I deal with, but yano, I need to pay more focused attention to my groups etc.

YouTube: I’ve not used this NEARLY as well as I can, and I need to make sure I’m actually making a video once or twice a day.

Then it’s my MDAs- Minimum Daily Actions,

My @todos and @projects

My family budget/expenses.

And finally, my Greader. I don’t keep up with feeds like I used to, which isn’t a bad thing.  I’m using reader now for alerts that I need to pounce on.

This gives me enough to do without being bored or distracted, and it is reasonably portable.   If you’re on the web, almost all browsers have home tabs these days that you can set, and this is a handy way of getting done.  Remember: GTD is mostly a collection of kludges and tricks that’s design is to make you better, faster, smarter.

[Time spent on blog post: 9 minutes]

Filed Under: Products, Projects and Process Tagged With: , ,

Gitomer Named to Chris Johnson’s Board of Directors

March 19, 2009 By
gitomer

gitomerJeffrey Gtiomer, Chief Executive Salesperson responsible for “helping people love to buy,” was named to Chris Johnson’s board of directors today.  He will mostly advice through his New York Times best selling sales books, although he may eventually see this post, be amused, and decide to call at 614-432-8758 and offer free advice in exchange for all of the adulation he’s recieved here from one of the fastest growing freelancer sales blogs in existence.

Gitomer writes approximately 4 #1 amazon best selling sales each morning, but his best book–and the one you should all buy right now–is the “Little gold book of YES! attitude.“  If you do what that says, you’ll find the energy in yourself to be enthusiastic about working your ass off.  It can be read in an hour, and everyone should buy a copy. If you’re making less money than $500,000 a year then you should read and study this book.  It is the ultimate concierge into personal development.  You should also read all  the books that it references, and then the books that they reference.  This, of course, presumes that you’re going to throw your TV away.

“If you executed about 30% of Gitomers’s advice, you’d have no money worries in about 60 days,” says Chris Johnson, “So that’s the standard to uphold.”

Gitomer’s philosophy is simply put to give value first, and without the suffocation of entitlement that happens when you do that.   He sets an example by writing “sales caffeine,” a free news zine that has mostly good advice…for sales people that goes out to who-knows-how-many people.  He will help remind Chris to give value as much as possible and Chris will do that through freelancer sales videos, free white papers and this blog.   The insane consistency that Gitomer has is also something to behold.

Finally, if there is any doubt whatever about Gitomer’s ability to sell, just take a look at his girlfriend:  jessicamcdougal

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , ,

David Allen Named to Genuine Chris’s Board of Directors.

March 3, 2009 By

[Two weeks ago, I told you that I was going to be doing a Board of Directors post once a week.  Here's the first one.]

David Allen Named To Genuine Chris’s Fictitious Board of Directors.   GTD’s David Allen, author of  Getting Things Done has been added to Chris Johnson’s board of directors.   David is the source of inspiration for Chris Johnson as he forms businesses that make money, and gets tasks off of his plate.   Through his books, David has provided astounding value to Chris Johnson  as he moves into the freelancer sales space.

“Productivity doesn’t happen by itself” David was quotesd as saying. “Form and Function must match for maximum productivity.”

—

GTD was a godsend to me.  Last may, I was still a mortgage broker, I was starting my journey as a freelancer, and managing a few projects.   I had no clue, and I didn’t know ‘what next,’ about anything.   I started reading http://lifehacker.com right as it was turning into what Greg Swann calls a venderslut area. (I don’t fault them for it, it’s an AWESOME site, you just have to wade through a load of crap to get the good stuff).  They kept talking about GTD, and so I was naturally intrigued.

I got the book. I started rocking a moleskeine.   This was sometime in 2006ish, and it changed my life.  I handled more tasks better, I had more enegy, and the overwhelm was no longer there.

Organize.

Process

Review

Do.

I boiled it down to that, enough for massive improements.  And David Allen’s enlightened common sense approach helped me with that in a big way.  So, like everyone else, he’s on my “board of directors. “  It’s a totem ,a kludge, but I’ll tell you what, my office is organized.  More than it would be anyway.  And, for those of you that haven’t done this, please read the book today.

More to come, as I have to process stuff.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Making A Blog More Popular Using A Few Easy Tools.

December 1, 2008 By

I’m not a huge fan of twitter.  I use it, but I have a highly filtered stream that I mostly ignore (except–of course–when they are talking about me).  But…since I’ve been playing with some feeds for Tim and Julie, using the “Feed WordPress” plugin for what I want to do.

Simply put, I already use “twitter tools” to auto post blog stuff to here and Facebook.  Works fine, if not perfectly.  It’s one thing I don’t have to do and it seems to have increased my Twitterer Followers and FB follwowers in my virtual dick waving contest to collect people.  I don’t ‘try’ that hard, but I want ot think it through.

Since Josh says to me that comments beget comments, and I happen to agree, why not use Feedwordpress + Twitter tools to beget yourself some comments.

Here’s what I’ll be doing, and this may be a kudge on a kludge.

I’ll set up a blog @ comments.genuinechris.com, and I’ll feed it with the comment stream of approved comments.  I’ll make sure all nofollow tags are removed.

Then, I’ll install twittertools to that.  And each time I get a comment, it’ll show up in my twitterstream, inviting more people into my house to have a ‘spirited debate’ with me, to tell me I’m full of it, or to tell me what’s what.

This should not take long at all–it’s on the list for tomorrow.

Filed Under: Products, Projects and Process, selling/marketing Tagged With: ,

Tension in the Creative Act.

May 28, 2008 By

My muse–what I want to create for the world–is hard to create.  To make something that didn’t exist before, out of nothing but the building blocks that everyone has at their disposal requires a distillation of insanity, presumptuousness, faith, and joy far beyond that which modern society considers healthy.

I was at Starbucks yesterday meeting a possible business partner, and I was in a great mood, exuberant and full of energy.  The ‘barista,’ there asked me what I was on, why I was so happy.   Wasn’t the first time someone asked me that.  What a damning indictment of human society if being joyful is such an aberration that it requires mention (and if truth be told, I was being reigned in to her level of misery).   That worked for a moment, my brain ruminated on this, and my blood pressure went up.  How dare she piss on someone for being cheerful?

Then I realized what had happened, I kicked that thought out of my head.  I won’t let strangers dictate the experience I’m having any more.

Creating something is the fulfillment of our individual soul’s greatest desire while it is an affront to our collectivist society.  Julia Cameron says that it’s an insult to God not to create.  Those that don’t create–she calls ‘crazymakers’.  They tell us that what we’re doing isn’t good enough, novel enough, unique enough.  And the spark that challenges their own sloth they work to insidiously extinguish.  This ‘they’ is all of us.

Every great creator–both artist and businessperson–has been attacked by the collective itself, even as the Collective benefits from the  spark.  There is some reversion to mediocrity that Leviathan wants.  Watch the reactions to starting a business.  Watch the reactions to moving towards a state of joy.

Watch people that wish to create get mollified by money and security.

Watch as people seek the approbation of what one friend called ‘stylish losers,’ to the point where they cease to recognize their own contributions, genius and talent.

There are any number of ways to run off course.  It might be easy to create, but first you have to drown out the cacophony of the world and it’s desire to assimilate all of us into the shuffling gray mass of mediocrity.  People seek to tear it down, even those that ‘love’ you.

This is what causes tension in the creative act, because it holds people accountable for their lack of contributions.  Scott Gingsberg says “but you didn’t,” when people call him to task for the notion that anyone coulda done what he did.

This is advice to myself.  I’ve known I find this behavior in myself; when I really am on the path to something that I believe in, I question the joy, I want to undersell myself and roll my eyes at the creative act. I find ways to sabotage my belief in my ability, my mind, and sometimes the end product that I created.  Because being earnest, guileless and sincere is sometimes pretty hard.

So I’m going to keep on creating what I know to be good and right.  I want you to do the same thing so the bar gets raised.

Filed Under: Achieving Goals, Start Here Tagged With: , ,