7 Signs You're Mediocre

The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.

— John Stuart Mill

Nobody dazzles safely.

Nobody dazzles accidentally.

Nobody dazzles lackadaisically.

Nobody dazzles cost-efficiently.

Nobody dazzles by copying.

Nobody dazzles by committee.

Nobody dazzles by appeasement.

So why keep claiming you do?

Maybe you weren't designed to dazzle.

The Sure-Fire, Can't-Lose, 100% Guaranteed Way to Troubleshoot Every Computer Problem You'll Ever Encounter

Computer problems are maddening; troubleshooting them, more so.

Googling for solutions merely heightens your frustration, spewing masses of inscrutable and useless results.

But my hack lets you cut through the palaver straightaway, to get to the answer you need.

Here it is:

Type a description of the problem—no matter what—and add to it, inside quotation marks, the phrase "piece of shit."

I assure you the solution to your problem will appear in the top one, two or three Google results.

For example:

Excel will not print odd-numbered pages "piece of shit"

or

Lightroom freezes when I save file "piece of shit"

I guarantee my hack works, every time.

By the way, where does hack come from?

The word, meaning "a tool for chopping," dates back to the 14th century and derives from the German Hacke, meaning "hatchet."

But the sense in which we now use the word originated at MIT in the 1950s. Students called any practical joke that employed technology (like welding a public trolley car to the tracks) a hack.

How to Make Moments Customers Remember

How do you create an experience customers will remember?

That's the question Chip and Dan Heath answer in their forthcoming book, The Power of Moments.

You'll recall the brothers' skills in science-based storytelling from their previous best sellers, Made to Stick and Switch.

The Power of Moments repeats those performances.

The Heaths call memorable experiences "flagship moments" and claim they're made from four ingredients:

• Elevation (flagship moments clearly rise above the rest)
• Insight (they rewire our thinking)
• Pride (they catch us at our best) and
• Connection (they bring us together)

It isn't easy to engineer a flagship moment, else every marketer would do it. Few do.

If you want to acquire the skill, the Heath Brothers advise you to "think in moments" and pay particular attention to three:

• Milestones (regular occasions like holidays, anniversaries, birthdays, etc.)
• Transitions (ritualistic events like bar mitzvahs, graduations, weddings, etc.) and
• Pits (moments of downtime like waiting in a line, undergoing a medical procedure, etc.)

The astute marketer not only spots these moments, the Heaths say, but shapes them, by blending some or all of the four ingredients that yield a flagship moment.

And their recipe is simple: "Transitions should be marked, milestones commemorated, and pits filled."

The Power of Moments' 300 pages are packed with examples of moment-making artistry, and make the book worth reading.

You probably know Disney distracts you while you wait in long lines, Southwest clowns around during the flight-safety announcements, and Starbucks honors your birthdays with a free-drink coupon.

But you might not know that all Pret a Manger employees can give away free food, based on how much they like a customer's looks; that Sharp Healthcare, by bringing all of its 12,000 employees to a convention center for an annual pep talk, keeps patient satisfaction in the ninetieth percentile (unheard of); and that John Deere welcomes all new employees on their first day with banners, gifts, lunches, and personalized videos.

The Power of Moments will give you plenty of ideas for "turning up the volume on reality" and delivering experiences your customers will remember. And you don't have to settle for only the examples in the book. The Heaths will soon offer free podcasts featuring more.

Why Event Organizers May Lose Their Shirts

An old joke goes:

Two partners are arguing over their shirt-retailing business.

"Sol, how can we go on buying shirts for $4 and selling them for $2?" one asks.

"Mort, don't worry!" the other answers. "We make it up in volume."

B2B marketing has long resembled Mort's approach.

But a trendy new form of B2B marketing, account-based marketing (ABM), throws out the "volume-based" approach to lead-gen, concentrating the marketing spend instead on a finite set of prospects.

And—unless they begin to help ABM practitioners—event organizers will soon find themselves losing out to digital channels.

Why so?

Because, for decades, events have always been, more or less, about volume.

Set up an exhibit. Wait for a ton of traffic. Meet and mingle. Rinse and repeat.

But ABM represents different thinking.

ABM means a "shift from volume to engagement," says Cindy Zhou, an analyst with Constellation Research and author of the white paper Why B2B Sales Success Requires a Holistic Account-Based Strategy.

By "engagement," Zhou means targeting "ideal buyers" with "personalized content."

At events, she says, ABM practitioners need to attract specifically targeted accounts to their booths, and present them content designed to convert them—quickly—into customers.

Tirekickers need not apply.

"Organizations adopting an ABM approach see higher conversion rates and deal sizes and an increase in cross-sell and upsell opportunities," Zhou says.

Zhou also say that 9 out of 10 B2B marketers she's in touch with have adopted ABM.

Yet event organizers remain clueless, refusing to provide the data exhibitors need to zero in on ideal buyers.

Case in point.

I recently asked the organizer of a large manufacturing show to allow my client to target accounts on his registration list with pre-show phone calls designed to attract them to the client's booth. Not his whole list (that would have been foolish); merely a select group of attendees.

His answer was a resounding, "No!"

"If I did it for them, I'd have to do it for every exhibitor."

Duh. What's wrong with this picture?

Event organizers are sitting on a mountain of data. Exhibit marketers—9 out of 10, if Zhou's followers are representative—need a bit of it. Why not help them?

If you won't, they may abandon events in favor of digital channels, which provide more data than they need.

What, you expect to make it up in volume?

HAT TIP: Thanks to Cindy Zhou for inspiring this post and providing a free copy of her white paper.

Doctor, Doctor

Why do 7 in 10 B2B marketers say events are the very best marketing channel?

The answer's simple: ROI.

Events routinely deliver big brands 5X ROI; small ones, 3X to 5X ROI.

"In-person events simply have more impact than all the social media posts and email newsletters in the world," says Michael Brenner, CEO of Marketing Insider Group.

Events allow you to generate leads and close sales; connect with buyers' emotions; expand your community; drive social media engagement and website traffic; and create months' of newsworthy marketing content.

But as importantly, Brenner says, events let you diagnose the cause of buyers' pain.

For inquisitive marketers, chatting with buyers over coffee, recording their comments at conference sessions, or conducting surveys through your event app may be just what the doctor ordered.

"You may discover a problem with your product or service that is the root of unexplained customer churn," Brenner says. Just as likely, "You could uncover strengths you didn’t realize you had."