A business has never given me money

I've never had a business give me money! I've never sold anything to a business either. If you understand that it's people that engage with people and not businesses you may get different results.

How?

Write ads that appeals to the human needs and motivations, not just the dry boring death by powerpoint presentations full of bullet pointed business advantages, but get a little more creative. As a advertising example, why not also appeal to the purchasing persons agenda with "The money you'll save the firm with our products will assure your promotion" (probably a bit cheesey... That's why I'm not the creative in our firm) or "As an astute executive you'll save your company millions"

This could also form part of the sales process with the person face to face, instead of boring the pants off them with endless technical babble, language that only computers, accountants and analysists resonate with.... start with asking questions that reveal the person agenda or motive...if you relax and don't try and 'sell' you may end up having a satisfying conversation and a sale!

Just remember corporations are filled with humans!

 

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iPad dissatisfaction

In our house the iPad is the most desired reward (well, after lollies). Recently I gave Mckenzie this reward for doing the dishes. McKenzie did a great job and was totally motivated in completing the task, so she ended up getting almost 50 minutes. After her turn the other two children in the household also requested some time and being in a good mood I obliged giving them 10 minutes each. Mckenzie noticing this the next day requested some extra time, so not thinking I caved and gave her some extra time.

Two or three days later she appeared at the end of our bed one morning requesting extra time for her reward, stating the case that her siblings got time on the ipad for nothing, and so deserved even more time to set this injustice right! So in my infinite wisdom and wanting to win the best father in the world award, I pulled open the bible (on the iPad of course) and found the reference to the workers in the vineyard story (Matt 18:20-25). I paraphsed it for her so that it had its best chance of her understanding.... Now I would love to say that this strategy lead to Mckenzie seeing the errors of her way, falling down at her fathers Feet, recognising his great wisdom and his superior biblical knowledge ...nope, not at all! it only fuelled the extreme injustice that she felt, storming out of the bedroom slamming doors and calling me a poopy head (the ultimate insult in our family).

This interation with my eldest daughter gave me great insight to how some feel about the current issue of gay marriage, it may not take anything away from their own relationship, but giving others the same legal rights or access to the institution of marriage just seems very unfair to some. It also explains the anxiety many feel with their life, a life that has more comfort and material wealth than a 15th century king would have had and why? Well it has nothing to do with what we have but more about what others around us have that we may not, it could be professional success, fame, assets, good looks, cars, holidays abroad and the list goes on...

What can we do about this? You must understand the cause of your upset/anxiety before executing any strategy and this is the job of an experienced councillor or a proved program. Once you know what's behind the symptom, only then can any strategy be successful. Feel free to contact me alexm@psmm.co.nz for any guidance on whom you should council.

 

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Who can remember the Walkie talkie?

When I was a kid I dreamed of having a Wilkie talkie, and now I have one... Yee haaa! This app is one of the top ten out of the two hundred and fifty plus apps I have on my i-devices. This app is free and works on both the superior iPhone and the other sort of second run phones ;-) which means that you can communicate with almost anyone in this fashion...

Simple as to use, select a friend, just hit the big button and verbally rant away! When they get the rant it alerts them just like a text message and they can easily repond with their verbal rant.. If you have the app open you can bounce messages back and forward...You'll soon notice that we have a heytell voice (first coined by Andrew Smith of Surefire) but you'll soon become more natural using your voice to emphasis what you're messaging about.

Some great advantages of this app are listed below, but this is one of my funnest apps even heytelling Joey from my upstairs office requesting coffee/ food or quietness from the kids! Its one app that gets used on a daily basis, mostly for business use, setting up groups so that you have get collaborative conversations going (bit like reply all with email). It really can eliminate lengthy phone calls that distract us all (I'm the worst perpetrator)

1. Send messages while driving, safer and more legal than texting
2. Send short complex messages saving time on long texts and emails
3. Recorded thread for easy review of instructions sent or received
4. more fun than texting

Just jump into the app store and grab the free version first, the paid one takes away the annoying ads and you can set up the group option. Can't wait to get your hey tell...

 

 

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Why am I blogging

 

Every weekend myself and Joey get to lie in bed while the kids watch junk TV (like all great parents do) and while the kids are entertained we get to chat for hours about everything... It's a great aspect of our marriage that I love. So this weekend I was discussing the recent blog and how a business friend stood at a networking BNI meeting and promoted that everyone should go read it... I was embarrassed and a bit nervous... What would they think, would they argue with me, not accept some of my ideas... ? So while sharing this with Joey she turned to me and asked, why am I blogging? bloody good question...

After some time examining the reasons and motives... I settled on this one, it's for me! If you enjoy my writing, that's fantastic. I hope you do and I really love to hear your feed back and encouragement (notice I left out criticism ;-)

My initial motivation was inspired by my two cycling mates Hans and Arron while drinking coffee, they pointed out that it's a great way to order thoughts, arguments and apply more discipline to any opinions. So I'm now into my third month and really enjoying the process.

Malcolm Gladwell talked about the 10,000 hour principal, an observation that anyone that masters anything usually has spent about 10,000 hours refining their skill, so I've got 9,990 hours to go.. Or you have about 1,000 blogs to read ;-)

 

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Where do great kids come from

Let's start with a disclaimer "Yes I have a view of this billboard .... And no I won't discuss that view today"

I've driven past this billboard many times and I'm confused (as a marketer) whom the target market is and what the intended recipients should do?

Let's look at some possible target markets :-

1. A person with a great marriage; Would this ad reinforce their good marriage and the good job they're doing with their kids? What should they do, or what action are they to take?
2. A person with a crap marriage; Would they feel good after seeing this? Would this promotion motivate them to change the situation surrounding their marriage? Would they be motivated to find out about the sponsoring promoter?
3. A single parent with a family, would they resonate with this message or would they feel insufficient and excluded! And what actions does the billboard owners want this group to do?

So, I'm left wondering whom the ad is for and what action they should take.... being curious I went to their website to learn some more and I discovered that they're a non political family centred organisation with two options of joining or donating. These are valid options and if the ad resonated with you then you may support their cause...

Conclusion, the marketing seems to be targeted, wanting to attract like minded individuals to grow the movement. So it's achieved it's goal, but how many more people did it alienate and does good marketing have to do that? ... Bet you thought I was going to diss it ;-)

 

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To stream or not

To me there are two different music lovers, the first is format focused and the other is artist focused. Now I know that you're different you're a bit of both, but you're probably driven by one first. So my weekly blog this week I would like to review two apps, spotify and tunein radio, I have tested both and depending on your predominate music driver will prefer one to the other

Tune in radio, streams 1,000's of Internet radio stations from all over the globe, in my favourites I have smooth jazz, swing, big band, cafe, blues jazz stations, I love this as I'm in the mood for s certain format of music I'll dial up the stream and listen away for hours. The benefit of this app over all the other streaming radio apps is the ability to record up to 8 hours of music for offline listening pleasure later. It easily hunts down all the local radio stations in NZ that I could never listen to (bfm in Auckland) and make available any station no matter where. The other thing worth noting is the data usage, it's really not that bad with the most you'll use is 60-80meg and HOUR, that's all so even on expensive or restricted data plans you can listen to any station anywhere in the world!

Spotify, is my most recent trial app that I became aware of after being at a friends place. Now, my preferred way to listen it music is not artist centric so this one has had less use time than tune in radio, but saying that, for only $10 a month (U.S) it's a great deal! I do enjoy listening to some artists and now I can with out having to buy expensive CD's to racks of iTunes that fill up my valuable space on my idevices. Just a note, even though I find the $10 a good deal I've not yet signed up....?

 

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How not to worry

Just when the knife is ready to fall something comes along and saves your bacon! As the saying goes 90% of what we worry about never evetuates and the other 10% of the time works better! And on reflection my anecdotal experience reinforces sets this.

So if we know that most things turn out ok, then why do we continue to worry so bloody much and is there any remedy to the problem of worrying?

Ok here's the bad news, psychologists tell us that as humans beings, we are all prone to worry, no one is immune. They do acknowledge one thing and thats we all experience different levels of worry. So, maybe the question to ask, is not how to stop it all together, but how do we go about reducing the level of anxiety with the worry.

My personal strategy that works for me is my one step philosophy; take one simple step or action to reduce/solve/understand the worry you have... That's it! My strategy...

As an example of how this can work, I'll use this particular blog article as an example, I've now posted three or four blogs over the last month and now I'm suffering from writers block. I'm a day or two late even posting another blog and it was niggling at me, so 15 minutes ago I sat down at the table while waiting for Joey to cook my dinner and stated that all I'll do is start with one sentence...15 minutes later I had somehow created this article, read it to Joey and made some minor grammatical adjustments ... Result, I feel complete, the anxiety has gone, dinner is ready and I'm proud of my first draft (you're reading the edited version now).

 

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