Permission is Not Up to You

Permission doesn't exist to help you (the marketer). It exists to help me (the customer). The moment the messages you send me cease to be anticipated, personal, and relevant, then you cease to exist in my world. -  Excerpt from Meatball Sundae by Seth Godin

Where Does trust Come From?

This is what every marketer wants to know. Without trust, marketers know that there are no sales. Trust means the prospect believes not only that the product being sold will actually solve his problems, but that if for some reason it doesn't, the company will make good on its reputation of performance.- Excerpt from Permission Marketing by Seth Godin

It Doesn’t Hurt to Ask

Actually, it does hurt. It does hurt to ask the wrong way, to ask without preparation, to ask without permission. It hurts because you never get another chance to ask right.

Instead of propositioning everyone within reach of your e-mail box, invest some time and earn the right to ask. Do your homework. Build connections. This makes the risk on your part a lot bigger because you’ve invested more than two minutes. Initiating when you have more to lose is often better than just winging it. – Excerpt from Poke the Box by Seth Godin

I Wonder What Would Happen…

Success-minded people have no trouble at all following proven instructions. We all would be happy to follow a map if the map came with a guarantee. There is no guarantee, though. There are no maps. They’ve all been taken, and their value is not what it used to be, because your competitors have maps, too.

Your opportunity lies in pursuing your curiosity instead. Curiosity can start us down the path to shipping, to bringing things to the world, to examining them, refining them, and repeating the process again. – Excerpt from Poke the Box by Seth Godin

Am I Panicking?

Quitting is not the same as panicking. Panic is never pre-meditated. Panic attacks us, it grabs us, it is in the moment. Quitting when you're panicked is dangerous and expensive. The best quitters, as we've seen, are the ones who decide in advance when they going to quit. You can always quit later - so wait until you're done panicking to decide. - Excerpt from the Dip by Seth Godin

The Reason We're Here

The Dip is the reason you're here. Whether you're lifting weights or negotiating a sale or applying for a job or lunging for a tennis ball, you've made a huge investment. You've invested time and money and effort to get to this moment. You've acquired the equipment and the education and the reputation... all so you can confront this Dip, right now.
The Dip is the reason you're here.
It's not enough to survive your way through the Dip. You get what you deserve when you embrace the Dip and treat it like the opportunity that it really is. - Excerpt from the Dip by Seth Godin

Is the Company Treating the Permission as an Asset?

Companies measure their assets everyday. The inventory in the factory or the amount of money in the bank is closely watched. Are you measuring your Permission base? Each marketer in the organisation should be acutely aware of exactly how wide and how deep this permission is.
Over time, this asset can be leveraged and increased. Both take an investment, but as with all assets, if that investment is measured overtime, the ROI can be computed. - Excerpt from Permission Marketing by Seth Godin

Trick or Treat

It doesn’t pay to trick people into giving you permission. The idea is to have a mutually beneficial dialogue, and the more you tell people about what to expect, the greater the anticipation you’ll be able to create. That’s important as you work to leverage it.

Basically, any marketer doing one-to-one or permission campaigns will dramatically increase profits not only by respecting privacy, but by becoming a zealot. As soon as the data is shared, its value decreases. By maintaining the privacy, the marketer enhances their asset. – Excerpt from Permission Marketing by Seth Godin

Target Market

Differentiate your customers. Find the group that's most profitable. Find the group that's most likely to sneeze. Figure out how to develop/advertise/reward either group. Ignore the rest. Your ads (and your products!) shouldn't cater to the masses. Your ads (and products) should cater to the customers you'd choose if you could choose your customers. - Excerpt from Purple Cow by Seth Godin

The Right Thing to do

I believe that if you’ve got the platform and the ability to make a difference, then this goes beyond the “should” and reaches the level of “must”. You must make a difference or you squander the opportunity. Wasting the opportunity both degrades your own ability to contribute and, more urgently, takes something away from the rest of us.

Once you’ve engaged with an organisation or a relationship or a community, you owe it to your team to start. To initiate. To be the one who makes something happen.

To do less is to steal from them.

Excerpt from Poke the Box by Seth Godin

Your Ability to Create Change and Learn from it

We send our kids to school and obsess about their test scores, their behaviour and their ability to fit in.
We post a help wanted ad and look for experience, famous colleges and a history of avoiding failure.
We in vest in companies based on how they did last quarter, not on what they're are going to do tomorrow.

So why are we surprised when it all falls apart?

Our economy is not static, but we act as if it is. Your position in the world is defined by what you instigate, how you provoke, and what you learn from events you cause. In a world filled with change, that's what matters -- your ability to create and learn from change. - Excerpt from Poke the Box by Seth Godin

Stop Being Ordinary

The first step to becoming extraordinary of course is simply to stop being ordinary. You’d certainly like to have remarkable returns as an organisation, wouldn’t you? And extraordinary rewards as an individual right? Then start behaving remarkably. So, where to begin? Here are five quick suggestions:

1.       Avidly collect first hand experiences- Be your own Sherlock Holmes. Take pains to observe and understand nuances from the front lines of your business

2.       Practice the principle of “Beginners mind” – People with a thirst for learning can momentarily set aside what they “know”. They’re confident in their knowledge, yet willing to challenge it when confronted with new information.

3.       Keep an “idea wallet” so you don’t lose momentary insights – Try recording ideas in real time-on your PDA, or even on a folded piece of paper you keep in your back pocket.

4.       Be a Proactive “idea broker” and practice continuous cross-pollination – Try to give equal weight to learning and collaborating so that you can be a conduit for fresh ideas.

5.       Embrace the power of storytelling to bring it all together – Storytelling has an emotional appeal that trumps all the raw data in the world. Reject routine and set your team on its own remarkable course.

Excerpt from The Big Moo by Seth Godin

What Happened to Excellence?

While millions of people have embraced the thinking behind Tom Peters work In Search of Excellence, too many are waiting for him to tell them exactly what to do. They don’t understand that Excellence isn’t about working extra hard to do what you’re told. It’s about taking initiative to do work you decided is worth doing.

Please stop waiting for a map. We reward those who draw maps, not those who follow them. – Excerpt from Poke the Box by Seth Godin

Flipping the Funnel

Every business has its 1 percent. Every business has a group of customers so motivated, so satisfied, and so connected that they want to tell the rest of the world about you and what you do.
Your challenge is to give these people a megaphone. To switch your view of the market from a vertical funnel (attention in at the top, sales out at the bottom) to a horizontal one, in which ideas spread from one prospect to another. - Excerpt from Meatball Sundae by Seth Godin

Your Ego and your Project

Somewhere along the way, ego became a nasty word. It's not.

When our name is on a project, our ego pushes us over the hump and drives us to do even better work. Ego drives us to seek acceptance, to make a difference, and to push the envelope. If ego wasn't a key driver in the process, then creative, generous work would all be anonymous, and it isn't.
It's okay. Let your ego push you to be the initiator. But tell your ego that the best way to get something shipped is to let other people take the credit. The real win for you ( and your ego) is seeing something get shipped, not in getting the credit when it does. - excerpt from Poke the Box by Seth Godin

Scarcity

Where does scarcity come from? It comes from the hurdles that the markets and our society set up. It comes from the fact that most competitors quit long before they've created something that makes it to the top. That's the way it's supposed to be. The system depends on it. - Excerpt from the Dip by Seth Godin

Average is for Losers

When faced with the Dip, sometimes we don't quit. Instead, we get mediocre. The most common response to the Dip is to play it safe. To do ordinary work, blameless work, work that's beyond reproach. When faced with the Dip, most people suck it up and try to average their way to success. Which is precisely why so few people end up as the best in the world. - Excerpt from the Dip by Seth Godin

Too Little Time

Interruption Marketing is the enemy of anyone trying to save time. By constantly interrupting what we are doing at any given moment, the marketer who interrupts us not only tends to fail at selling his product, but wastes our most coveted commodity, time. In the long run, therefore, Interruption Marketing is doomed as a mass marketing tool. The cost to the consumer is just too high. - Excerpt from Permission Marketing by Seth Godin.

Permission is a Process, Not a Moment

Interruption marketing is all about the moment. Impact counts for everything and the best practitioners of this craft are masters of impact techniques.

Permission Marketing, on the other hand, is a process. It begins with an interruption but rapidly becomes a dialogue. This dialogue is a lot like dating. If managed properly, the relationship flourishes. If not, the investment in the first interruption is lost and the dialogue ends. Permission Marketing cannot work overnight, it’s a continuous process. – Excerpt from Permission Marketing by Seth Godin

Focus on Quantity, Not Quality

Most of us think that we need to wait for that one big, killer idea to strike. In the process, we ignore or screen out a myriad of smaller, interesting, useful, clever ideas. But the truth is, they're all worth considering. You never know when a small idea will morph into a big one. So love them all. - Excerpt from the Big Moo by Seth Godin