More Clients Memorandum

Do you have this problem too?

Posted byIan Brodie on November 15th, 2015.

The biggest problem I think I have with marketing right now is my ever diminishing attention span.

Perhaps you have the same challenge too?

Left unchecked it can really kill your productivity.

I've barely typed a few sentences in this email yet I've already checked my email inbox and the latest sports news.

These days it's just too easy to fill gaps by checking something online and getting a hit of “new”.

Whether it's from Facebook, Twitter, your favourite website, email, TV, a video game, doesn't really matter.

The problem is it turns you into a passive consumer of information. And the need for a constant buzz of external input wrecks any chance you have of concentrating to get stuff done.

It also damages your creativity. Creativity comes partly from external stimulus, but also from quiet, reflective times when your mind relaxes, neurons fire and make new connections.

It's an act of willpower to cut off that stimulation. Or simply to refrain from checking all the different input streams that it's easier to look at than to do the hard work of thinking or writing.

Luckily, it doesn't require huge willpower. At least not yet.

So simply being aware of the problem and deciding to ignore the urge to check stuff has meant I've typed the rest of this email interruption free.

It's probably taken me a quarter of the time it would have taken had I been flitting backwards and forwards to my online feeds or had the TV on in the background.

So for right now, my advice is simply to catch yourself being distracted and resolve to focus for 10 minutes. User a timer – it works.

Then up it to 15 minutes, 20 minutes or more. Make it a game.

Build your “concentration muscle” and you'll get much better results.

The biggest problem I think I have with marketing right now is my ever diminishing attention span.

Perhaps you have the same challenge too?

Left unchecked it can really kill your productivity.

I've barely typed a few sentences in this email yet I've already checked my email inbox and the latest sports news.

These days it's just too easy to fill gaps by checking something online and getting a hit of “new”.

Whether it's from Facebook, Twitter, your favourite website, email, TV, a video game, doesn't really matter.

The problem is it turns you into a passive consumer of information. And the need for a constant buzz of external input wrecks any chance you have of concentrating to get stuff done.

It also damages your creativity. Creativity comes partly from external stimulus, but also from quiet, reflective times when your mind relaxes, neurons fire and make new connections.

It's an act of willpower to cut off that stimulation. Or simply to refrain from checking all the different input streams that it's easier to look at than to do the hard work of thinking or writing.

Luckily, it doesn't require huge willpower. At least not yet.

So simply being aware of the problem and deciding to ignore the urge to check stuff has meant I've typed the rest of this email interruption free.

It's probably taken me a quarter of the time it would have taken had I been flitting backwards and forwards to my online feeds or had the TV on in the background.

So for right now, my advice is simply to catch yourself being distracted and resolve to focus for 10 minutes. User a timer – it works.

Then up it to 15 minutes, 20 minutes or more. Make it a game.

Build your “concentration muscle” and you'll get much better results.

The biggest problem I think I have with marketing right now is my ever diminishing attention span.

Perhaps you have the same challenge too?

Left unchecked it can really kill your productivity.

I've barely typed a few sentences in this email yet I've already checked my email inbox and the latest sports news.

These days it's just too easy to fill gaps by checking something online and getting a hit of “new”.

Whether it's from Facebook, Twitter, your favourite website, email, TV, a video game, doesn't really matter.

The problem is it turns you into a passive consumer of information. And the need for a constant buzz of external input wrecks any chance you have of concentrating to get stuff done.

It also damages your creativity. Creativity comes partly from external stimulus, but also from quiet, reflective times when your mind relaxes, neurons fire and make new connections.

It's an act of willpower to cut off that stimulation. Or simply to refrain from checking all the different input streams that it's easier to look at than to do the hard work of thinking or writing.

Luckily, it doesn't require huge willpower. At least not yet.

So simply being aware of the problem and deciding to ignore the urge to check stuff has meant I've typed the rest of this email interruption free.

It's probably taken me a quarter of the time it would have taken had I been flitting backwards and forwards to my online feeds or had the TV on in the background.

So for right now, my advice is simply to catch yourself being distracted and resolve to focus for 10 minutes. User a timer – it works.

Then up it to 15 minutes, 20 minutes or more. Make it a game.

Build your “concentration muscle” and you'll get much better results.

The biggest problem I think I have with marketing right now is my ever diminishing attention span.

Perhaps you have the same challenge too?

Left unchecked it can really kill your productivity.

I've barely typed a few sentences in this email yet I've already checked my email inbox and the latest sports news.

These days it's just too easy to fill gaps by checking something online and getting a hit of “new”.

Whether it's from Facebook, Twitter, your favourite website, email, TV, a video game, doesn't really matter.

The problem is it turns you into a passive consumer of information. And the need for a constant buzz of external input wrecks any chance you have of concentrating to get stuff done.

It also damages your creativity. Creativity comes partly from external stimulus, but also from quiet, reflective times when your mind relaxes, neurons fire and make new connections.

It's an act of willpower to cut off that stimulation. Or simply to refrain from checking all the different input streams that it's easier to look at than to do the hard work of thinking or writing.

Luckily, it doesn't require huge willpower. At least not yet.

So simply being aware of the problem and deciding to ignore the urge to check stuff has meant I've typed the rest of this email interruption free.

It's probably taken me a quarter of the time it would have taken had I been flitting backwards and forwards to my online feeds or had the TV on in the background.

So for right now, my advice is simply to catch yourself being distracted and resolve to focus for 10 minutes. User a timer – it works.

Then up it to 15 minutes, 20 minutes or more. Make it a game.

Build your “concentration muscle” and you'll get much better results.

More Clients Memorandum

You need this to be believable

Posted byIan Brodie on November 1st, 2015.

Most of the time we interact with clients we need to be believable.

That could be in our marketing, when we're talking to them about working together or when they're paying clients we're recommending a course of action to.

If clients don't believe in us, it usually won't be long before they're ex-clients.

And if they don't believe in us when we're talking about working together, then the chances are we never will.

Now there are lots of things you need in place to be believable. But one of the big ones that is often missed is simply that you have to believe in yourself.

I don't mean the rah-rah “believe in yourself” motivational stuff.

I mean that if you're offering to do something for a client you must be confident you'll be able to do a great job.

If you're not, the client will pick up on it. It'll “shine” through subconsciously in your body language, word choice, the tone of your voice.

If you're trying to promote a service and you realise in your heart of hearts that you don't fully believe you can do a great job then you have two choices.

The first is to convince yourself.

I don't mean kid yourself. I mean go out and get feedback from people you've done this service for before. There's a good chance you'll get great feedback that will help build your belief.

And if you don't get great feedback, that's a sign you should shift to choice 2.

The second choice is to back off. You might want to sell this service. it might be a very prestigous thing to do and it might make you a lot of money.

But if you're not super confident you can do a great job you should scale back and focus on something you are confident you can do a great job with.

Eithically it's the right thing to to. And marketing-wise it is too as your potential client will pick up on your lack of belief almost every time.

So scale back to something you can do really well and work on building the capabilities to do the thing you want to do really well too.

You might need to do it a few times pro-bono or do it as an extension for an existing client. But either way you need to build up your own belief that you can do this brilliantly.

Only then will you be able to transmit that confidence over to your potential client so they'll feel comfortable hiring you. 

More Clients Memorandum

Break out of this habit to get closer to clients

Posted byIan Brodie on October 25th, 2015.

There's a nasty little habit it's very easy to get into that can really damage your ability to make a connection with your clients.

It was brought home to me at a conference I was at recently. 

The conference had a lot of corporate marketing types there. Not normally folks I hang out with. And what caught my attention was the language they used.

To them it seemed perfectly normal to talk about people having “conversations with brands”. When what they really meant meant was people watching TV ads, reading articles or commenting on Facebook pages.

Nobody has a conversation with a brand. We talk to people.

And in most cases the activities they were describing weren't conversational at all, they were one-way consumption.

But much worse than the fact that their language is misleading is that it disconnects them from their clients.

Normal business owners and managers don't talk about having conversations with brands. But because this internal jargon was so commonplace amongst the corporate marketing types they used it with “normal” people, not realising how it sounded.

And, of course, it's not just corporate marketing types that put off clients because of the internal language they use. We all do it sometimes.

Online marketers are prone to talking about lead generation and funnels: words their clients rarely use.

Leadership experts talk about authenticity and engagement: leaders don't. (Well, they may talk about it, but those aren't the words they use).

Have a look at the phrases you use in your business communications. How many of them are internal jargon or cliquey words your profession uses rather than being something your clients say.

Because the more you use language that your clients don't, the more you feel like an outsider to them.

The more you use the exact same lanugage they do, the more you'll feel like one of them.