Poetree

How is a poem like designing a landscape? Well, you can write your own metaphors, but the process of creating both is very similar. You take a bunch of inventory items: In the case of a landscape, that would be plants, paving, water, and the like; for a poem, words. Then you put them together. One of my favorite poems is Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken.” The last 3 lines are the best known:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Okay, let’s ruin it. Same words, different arrangement:

In all I took the wood
And a one that has traveled by the less difference.
I diverged and made two roads.

Huh?

A well-designed landscape is more like the original than the second one. Sadly, many seem content with landscapes that are more like the second than the first. Or worse–they can’t see the difference.

Sales and Customers?

I’ve blogged this before. Here are a couple more thoughts. To repeat a previous thought:

People do NOT like to be sold to. But they LOVE to buy!

If you call yourself a sales person, that is how you will be perceived: As someone out to sell stuff. However, if you position yourself as an adviser, you have a better chance of gaining your potential client’s trust. Of course you must also ACT as an adviser. If you really believe in your product (If you don’t, you’ve got other issues.), people will want to buy it.

Likewise, if you position your potential client as a “client” vs. a “customer,” that helps the whole mind set. In fact, if you can find a term for them that is NOT “client” or “customer,” all the better. A prime example: American Express has “members.” “Membership has its privileges.”

Disney does not have employees. They have “Cast Members.” Blue Cross Blue Shield has “Customer Advocates.” Many businesses use the term “team member” rather than “employee.” What does your company have?

Sometimes it feels as if I’m spitting into the wind when I put my comments out here. It’s a good place to vent. As they say, “fight the good fight.” Right?

“The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it.”
Woodrow Wilson

“Only the dead fish go with the flow!”
Unknown

Edit: Just got off the phone with a company whose sales people are called “Solution Specialists!” Nice. This was nice following a nearly 1.5 hr. phone call to Adobe in which I was passed around among 7 different people who all began by asking me for my customer number. It was an exercise in utter frustration. No solution. No specialists. Wouldn’t you think a software company would be run with software that made life easier for its customers?

Don’t Say It

How do you describe your business? It’s a tough thing. You need to say something about it, but if you say too much, it’s self-defeating.Maybe you disagree, so if you do, please speak up.

Here’s a simple example. The moment you describe something as “classy,” it’s tainted. The person describing it as “classy” immediately loses credibility as one who might recognize or be accustomed to “classiness.” Something truly “classy” needs no description or validation. To describe it as anything other than “very nice,” or “upscale” or in some other understated terms does it a disservice. Again, my view.

Consider your business. If you describe it as “professional,” does that help? Isn’t it assumed that if you are offering something for compensation that it is “professional”? How about “quality”? Same thing, huh? Consider a company called “Quality Widgets.” In your mind, is what they sell high quality, or is it a commodity?

If you are a design professional, and you describe your service, your company as “creative,” is that helping? Again, you may disagree, but “Creative Design Services” to me sounds like one step above the design department at a home improvement store. Nothing wrong with that, if that is what you are and the client you are after, but if you want to be perceived as “Classy,” “Creative” and “Quality,” don’t say it. Demonstrate it.