I loved this article posted by Benjamin Riggs titled, Everything the Buddha Ever Taught in 2 Words. It’s an old one, but a good one. “The point of Life is Life, to participate in the melody. Melodies are streams; they are flowing. You cannot frame them or dam them up. When you do there is no flow. That is death.”
He continues to discuss “The only way to participate in the melody is through simple awareness. Simple awareness is fluid. A simple mind loses its sense of self in the music, whereas a self-centered mind keeps trying to pause the music. We are trying far too hard to hear what we want to hear, rather than moving to the music, living. We stand back as a spectator, a listener trying catch the beat. We want to grab a hold of it, own it, identify with it.”
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Our LinkedIn group to continue the conversation regarding designing awesome “first time use” experience. We’ve provided access to the material including Intuit’s design philosophy, Design for Delight, and how our team has applied it to QuickBooks on-boarding. You can download all four topics including: Jobs Framework, First Time Use Framework and worksheet, Customer Benefit framework and worksheet and access to our Discovery patterns.
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Video 1 – First Use – Three Strategies
Video 2 – First Use – Mapping the Journey
Video 3 – First Use – Delivering Innovation
You can find a digital version of the slides from the workshop
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Wonderful article about Theodore Levitt from HBR 2006
From Marketing Myopia (1960)
“Every major industry was once a growth industry. But some that are now riding a wave of growth enthusiasm are very much in the shadow of decline. Others that are thought of as seasoned growth industries have actually stopped growing. In every case, the reason growth is threatened, slowed, or stopped is not because the market is saturated. It is because there has been a failure of management….
The railroads did not stop growing because the need for passenger and freight transportation declined. That grew. The railroads are in trouble today not because that need was filled by others (cars, trucks, airplanes, and even telephones) but because it was not filled by the railroads themselves. They let others take customers away from them because they assumed themselves to be in the railroad business rather than in the transportation business. The reason they defined their industry incorrectly was that they were railroad oriented instead of transportation oriented; they were product oriented instead of customer oriented….”
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Penny App – Chat with Penny to track your spending and plan for a better financial future!
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Posting a recent article on Brad Smith our CEO at Intuit on building a design-driven company.
From the article, “Even before I became CEO, I’d been working to help our teams understand what makes a product experience delightful. Ease of use is important, but it’s not everything. We began talking about customers’ end-to-end experience, which includes shopping, buying, and customer support. I started asking employees about the products and services they encountered in their own lives. Why do you love a product? What are the drivers of delight? And we developed D4D (design for delight), which clearly articulated Intuit’s approach to design thinking, based on deep customer empathy, idea generation, and experimentation. D4D is vital because it provides the entire company with a common framework for building great products.”
]]>The Basics:
- Persuasion is NOT manipulation – Persuasion is the science and art of getting someone to do something that is simultaneously in their and your best interest. By serving other people you can get everything you’ve ever wanted.
- Persuade the persuadable – Prospecting the people that are persuadable and narrow.
- Context & timing matter – I can persuade anyone given the right context and timing. People need to be in the right state of mind to absorb the content. Check out the Stanford Prisoner Guard experiment. http://www.prisonexp.org/
- You have to be Interested to be Persuaded – At any given moment 90% of time you are thinking about the selves: Money, Love, Health The art of persuasion is the art of talking about the other person. “Never talk about yourself, unless you are asked.” When we say the things with our months about what the are thinking in their head, you instantly have trust.
- Reciprocity Compels – We are compelled to reciprocate once we accept something. ” It is part of our evolutionary DNA to help each other out to survive as a species.”
- Persistence Pays – Lincoln ran for office 12 times before winning his first office. The person who is willing to keep asking for what they want, and keeps demonstrating value, is ultimately the most persuasive. Think about the movie, “Shaw shank redemption”.
- Compliment Sincerely – Read “How to win friends and influence people.” The lessons work! We are all so positively affected by compliments, and we’re more apt to trust people for whom we have good feelings. 1. Make it habitual, 2. Be sincere, 3. Give a compliment they typically they don’t get.
- Set Expectations – Much of persuasion is managing other’s expectations to trust in your judgment. Think about the movie, “Life is Beautiful”. Persuasion is about expectation and how you deliver against the expectations. “The most successful persuasive people set expectation and then over deliver.“
- Don’t Assume – “Let them make the decision when you persuade, it’s your job to offer the value.” People will find the time and money to do the things they want. Don’t ever assume what someone needs, always offer your value.
- Create Scarcity – “People want things they can’t have.” Besides the necessities to survive, almost everything has value on a relative scale. We want things because other people want these things.
- Create Urgency – “People think about what they want to do today, you need to create urgency today.”You have to be able to instill a sense of urgency in people to want to act right away. If we’re not motivated enough to want something right now, it’s unlikely we’ll find that motivation in the future.
- Image(s) Matter – “80% Most of us are visual learners”. Great example is drug commercial, the images are beautiful, but the words are terrible “instant brain explosion”. What we see is more potent that what we hear.
- Truth-Tell – “Look a person in the eye and tell the truth.” Sometimes the most effective way to persuade somebody, is by telling them the things about themselves that nobody else is willing to say. The mindset is “What are you pretending not to know”. Especially if it’s from a mindset of love and support.
- Build Rapport – We like people who we are like. This extends beyond our conscious decisions to our unconscious behaviors.
Learn more about Neuro-Linguistic Programming http://richardbandler.com/ For example, it’s mirroring and matching them. (e.g. If they cross their leg, you cross their leg)
- Behavioral Flexibility (Gives you Control) – “The best example of this is your kids”. They have a plethora of options to flex (e.g. Crying, holding breath, etc). It’s the person with the most flexibility, not necessarily the most power, who’s in control.
- Learn to Transfer Energy– “People that are persuasive gives energy to others” (e.g. Look in their eye, smile, touch a person hold for 2 second longer, then say the persuasive message). Some people drain us of our energy, while others infuse us with it. “Don’t be an energy vampire.”
- Communicating Clearly is Key – “Less is more, be simple and clear.” If you can’t explain your concept or point of view to an 5th grader, such that they could explain it with sufficient clarity to another adult, it’s too complicated.
- Being Prepared Gives you the Advantage – “Be prepared, know your audience, specific stories and information. ” Your starting point should always be to know more about the people and situations around you.
- Detach and Stay Calm in Conflict – “Disassociate from emotion, don’t let people get you angry.” In situations of heightened emotion, you’ll always have the most leverage by staying calm, detached and unemotional.
- Use Anger Purposefully – Most people are uncomfortable with conflict.
- Confidence and Certainty – There is no quality as compelling, intoxicating and attractive as certainty. It is the person who has an unbridled sense of certainty that will always be able to persuade others.
Find all the details: Forbes, 21 Principles of Persuasion
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonnazar/2013/03/26/the-21-principles-of-persuasion/
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from Wikipedia: “Viriditas (Latin, literally “greenness,” formerly translated as “viridity”[1]) is a word meaning vitality, fecundity, lushness, verdure, or growth. Kim Stanley Robinson used it non-theologically to mean “the green force of life, expanding into the Universe.”
In the Mars series a new belief system is created called the “Areophany“. The system is devoted to the appreciation and furthering of life (“viriditas”).
I’d like to think we as designers have a Areophany about design and want to further the most delightful experiences as possible.
About Rhonda – USA Today columnist and entrepreneurship expert, Rhonda Abrams shares common issues for small businesses and advises on do-it-now action items to set your business up for success.
http://www.planningshop.com/rhonda-abrams/
Key issue: Good business plan “You can’t reach a goal you haven’t set it”
- Overall business plan
- Annual business planning
- Quantifiable, specific goals
- Estimate resources – time, money, people
- Set deadline
- Get real
Have a BIG IDEA journal (when you get an idea), write it down, then overtime review and assess. The most important piece of planning is what NOT to do.
Key issue: Marketing “Repetition, repetition, repetition”
- Market
- Message
- Method
Major methods, think of it as creating leads for you.
- Social media, pick the one that works for you.
- Online SEM/ads
- E-Newsletter, has about a 20% rate, which is way better than direct mail (which is 2%). It has to be relatable and thoughtful content.
- Networking/word-of-mouth, critical. Nothing beats face to face marketing.
- Traditional (meh!)
- Collateral (e.g. business card “what you do and a call to action)
Key Issue: Team “You can’t grow alone.”
- Determine your needs. “They don’t need to be on your payroll to be a team member.”
- Figure out a budget, “Are you growing a job or growing a business.” Make a choice. A business requires scale (e.g. Employees, contractors, etc)
- Start slowly, “is hiring employees really the best first start.”
- Make the mental learning “What are the job you are doing now, that are keeping you growing. Is it something you can outsource. (e.g. Administrative things)”
Key Issue: Mobile “Go mobile or go home.”
- 94% own a cell phone.
- 64% access internet on phone:
- 34% primary internet access
- 10% only internet access
What does this mean for you:
- Mobile enabled websites
- Get found
- Accept mobile payments
- Run your business in the cloud
Great list for a HOMEWORK assignment:
- List one or two niches you can /do serve
- List your specific goals for the coming year
- Define or refine your core message
- Identify skills you need to grow your business.