How to Stand Out in Any Crowd

Seth Godin likes to give things away for free. He’s built his career on it. Take, for example, the promotion for his first book. He offered a third of its contents online to anyone who sent him a simple email, no strings attached. He captured no information and sent no message other than the one requested. Nowadays this kind of promotion would make a publisher very, very nervous. But, as Godin points out, online didn’t mean very much to anyone in 1999.

He got 175,000 responses. “Some of them read two pages and said, ‘This is garbage,’ and deleted it,” says Godin. “Some of them read the whole thing and said, ‘Okay, I’ve got it.’ But most of them read 10 pages and said, ‘This is cool, but I hate reading it on the screen,’ and they clicked the link built into the page and bought a copy.”

The phenomenon made the book a year-long bestseller, and Godin wrote about the concept (“free ideas spread faster”) in his next book, Unleashing the Ideavirus. To prove the point, he offered this book entirely for free online, and it got downloaded more than two million times. Zero sales.

“But then something amazing happened,” Godin says. “People wanted to own a souvenir edition; they wanted to hold it. It went to number five on Amazon and became number four in Japanese translation. We sell the rights in 15 countries. I made more money on the book I gave away for free than the book I charged for just two years earlier.”

Trust Me

Of course, giveaways aren’t a revolutionary new way to introduce customers to your products and get them talking about you. But Godin’s giveaways are more than just advertisements; they’re endorsements of honesty. Truth leads to trust, and a customer’s trust is more valuable than any money to be made from a sale.

“Professionals understand that the third sale is far more profitable than the first sale,” Godin explains. “It’s about recognizing the value of an asset and taking care of it as opposed to burning the asset to make a quarter.” The minute your audience stops trusting you, they stop listening – and they’re stingy with second chances. “It’s really easy once you have even a little audience to sell out.”

Consider this: Godin is the author of seven best-selling books (the eighth hits stores this month). His blogs attract more than half a million readers each month. He packs in audiences at companies like Google and Disney. In sponsorships alone, Godin could be making a killing. Yet he has no sponsors, no consulting gigs. He owns no stocks. He doesn’t sit on any board of directors.

“I say the things I do because I feel like it, and not because somebody paid me,” he says. He’s never sold his email lists, or sent any unsolicited mail to people who request his free materials. To this day, you can still download those two books on his Website at no cost.

“We all know people who are frauds,” he says. “And we know it in a minute.”

Stop Interrupting Me

Since 1995, Godin has been decrying spam, but even he didn’t know how bad it would get, and what profound effects it would have on anyone trying to market a product. “I didn’t at that time know what it would feel like to try to be productive and have 250 pieces of spam to carve your way through. Or that you couldn’t check your email with your kids in the room because who knows what they would see on the screen.”

Godin calls unsolicited advertisements and messages “interruption marketing.” Interruption marketing is the pop-up ad for toothpaste when you’re online looking for a seafood restaurant. It’s the kind of message that says “buy now or go away.” It’s an old model, based on interrupting as many people as you can afford to interrupt. Godin calls it a form of hunting, designed for the immediate kill.

It used to be that persistence might get you a foot in the door (on a good day). But the game has changed. Consumers today have more choices than ever, and more options mean more power. You don’t need a salesperson to buy a car, because you can go online. If one item disappears, you pick another. If you don’t want to watch commercials, you don’t have to. There are a million messages in the marketplace, and consumers are tired of wading through the clutter.

“Cold calling is dying,” Godin says. “In the old days, if I got one or two cold calls I might take them. Now I get ten cold calls and twenty pieces of junk mail. So I ignore all of it.”

Tell Me More

There are three kinds of people:
1. People who don’t need what you sell.
2. People who need what you sell but are already buying from a competitor.
3. People who are ignoring you.

You’ll never get the attention of the people in the second and third categories if you interrupt them, says Godin. Instead, have them come to you. How? Start by creating something amazing, something people will love and want to talk about. Something remarkable.

“If something is remarkable, someone is going to talk about it,” he says. “Starbucks is a fine example. They sell coffee. Different coffee. Coffee that some people found bitter, some people found exceptional. But what they really did was sell couches. When Starbucks opened, they opened a ‘coffee shop,’ a ‘café,’ a place with couches. So, Person A would say to Person B, ‘I’ll meet you at Starbucks.’ And that setting is Starbucks’ entire marketing strategy. Because the first person loved Italian coffee, and they were willing to seek it out. But the second person came to see the first person, and that is where the remarkable thing comes in.”

The opportunities for remarkable experiences are everywhere, but many companies fail to see them. Recently Godin went to a spa to redeem a gift certificate for a free massage. The busy receptionist looked up and asked Godin if he was there for a haircut. Godin is bald.

Oops.

“It could be the individual sales rep who goes the extra mile,” says Godin. “Eighteen years ago I sent a proposal to 20 printers asking for a price quote on a project, and 10 of them sent back proposals. One printer called me and asked me why I wanted to print a book that has one hole drilled in it. She said, ‘Don’t even tell me. I need to buy lunch for you so you can tell me.’

“She was the only person who took interest. She was more expensive than any of the other printers by 20 percent. And she’s printed seven more books for me. Hundreds of thousands of books.”

When you add value, you create an opportunity to talk with your customer or prospect. The print rep didn’t argue with her office about how to make the proposal cheaper – she found a way to build a relationship. “All printing is basically the same,” Godin says. “But she made the experience remarkable enough to get the sale.”

Tell a Friend

A remarkable experience opens a dialogue for what Godin calls the anticipated, relevant, and personal message. “If my lawyer calls me, I will take her calls because we have a relationship and I trust her to call me when it’s important to me. If she calls me and tries to pitch me something that’s good for her and not me, she’s not going to be my lawyer for very long.”

Forget the sales funnel, says Godin. Take the funnel and flip it. “When you turn a funnel on its side, it becomes a megaphone,” Godin says. “Hand the megaphone to the people who already love us. Now they’re all chiming in about how great the sales guy is at this Dodge dealership, or how wonderful the salesperson is at that hospital treatment center, and suddenly the warm leads start to multiply.”

The new era isn’t about hunting targets, says Godin. It’s about becoming farmers. “You get the customer to spread the word for you, which is much better than putting up a billboard in a place no one wants to see it. It’s having a happy customer talk to a prospect over lunch when you’re not even there.”

With a megaphone, you spend less time making cold calls and more time figuring out how to provide services that will get your customers talking to each other. The head of sales at one consulting firm made deals by inviting a dozen CIOs at Fortune 500 companies to a breakfast seminar. “Somewhere along the line, the 15 people started talking to each other about their problems,” says Godin. “Two of them were clients, and they had nothing but nice things to say about the consultant. So he ended up with 13 people who wanted to talk to him about how he could help them solve their problems. So, it wasn’t about him at all. He enabled these people to have a megaphone so they could talk to each other.”

The white headphones on Apple’s iPod are megaphones, says Godin. “Look around the subway, look around the gym, everyone’s got white headphones,” says Godin. “So, you may have a conversation with these people, and when it is time for you to buy an MP3 player you pay three times what you need to, to get the headphones. And the iPod just comes along for the ride.”

The Story of Sales

So, if the customer is selling and the sales reps are focused on the next remarkable experience, what has happened to sales?

When we buy something, we’re really buying a story, says Godin. A salesperson’s job is to tell the story. For example, last year alone, Americans bought six billion dollars worth of bottled water. What happened to tap water? Did tap water start to taste bad? No. When we buy bottled water, we buy a story about freshness and cleanliness. It’s not about which brand we like best, because essentially all bottled water is the same. It’s about stories.

“The word ‘brand’ is used so often that it doesn’t mean anything anymore,” Godin says. “It’s really shorthand for a story. Something sold at Starbucks is worth more than the same item sold at Dunkin’ Donuts, because of the story Starbucks tells about their products.”

The most skilled salespeople understand that the story is not about the product or the company, but about the customer. Different customers are looking for different stories, and the salesperson’s job is to figure out which story they want to hear.

“The salesperson has the chance to embody the story, to feel out the worldview of the person they’re talking to and tailor the story, an authentic story, to that particular person,” says Godin. “Very few people are going to give $100,000 to a university on the Internet. You need that development officer to show up. And when she does, she’s telling a story. That story might be about your legacy, it might be about your kids, it might be about what you owe yourself.”

When Godin recently went shopping for a mattress, he noticed right away that without the signs and prices, you can’t tell one mattress from another.

“It’s 100 percent about selling,” he says. “It’s not about brands. And I spent four hours in Queens talking to an amazing sales guy about how he sells mattresses. You can learn an enormous amount, because customers are buying stories.”

Maybe the customer wants to hear a story about how he’ll sleep better. Maybe he wants to buy the mattress that’s half off, and believe he got high quality at a reduced price. Maybe he wants the best mattress ever made, because he deserves it. Maybe he wants a mattress made with space-age technology. “The customer comes to exchange money for a story, and they’ll believe the one that best matches their worldview,” Godin explains. “If you tell the salesperson your back hurts, you’re saying, ‘Please tell me a story about the very best mattress that will help my back.’”

The tires on a Hummer – designed by Nike – aren’t going to get you around any better than any other tire, but, as Godin points out, neither is a Hummer. People buy Hummers for the same reason the people buy jewelry at Tiffany’s. “Tiffany’s gives the jewelry away for free!” Godin exclaims. “The box is what they pay for! It says you care enough to pay five times more than you should have.”

That doesn’t mean the customer is losing out on value, or being tricked. On the contrary, says Godin. “Tiffany’s doesn’t pretend. They say, if you pay this much, you get the blue box. You buy the story, the message. That’s the thing we pay for.” Remember, however, that customer relationships are delicate. You need to tell honest, authentic stories, or customers will stop believing you in a hurry. “The minute a company asks you to sell out your customer, to charge more than you should, or bring them a product that’s no good, you need to think hard about sacrificing that thing you own, because that relationship of permission – your reputation – is everything.”

My Mistake

Godin’s ideas represent a radical departure from the traditional focus on weekly, monthly, and quarterly sales, but he is firm that there’s more value in the long-term investment. Companies are usually reluctant – if not downright opposed – to adopt bold new approaches to sales, because with experimentation comes mistakes. But the only way to grow is to make constant changes. “Mistakes are extremely profitable. They show you what not to do. They expose something you never would have thought to do. If you want to add a body of knowledge, you empower sales forces to do things that might be seen as mistakes.”

Every new step is an opportunity to learn. When Godin ran his own Internet company, for example, he asked his 17 salespeople to record their phone calls for a week and bring their favorites in to a meeting, where they played all the tapes. “Each of them had experimented a little, and that experimentation got multiplied by 17. Think about how much learning went on in that one hour. Everyone got better.”

Think about the last 10 sales calls you went on. Did you try anything new or do something dramatically different? Most of us are hesitant to step outside our familiar routines. “I think the magic word here is ‘guts,’” Godin says. “I think almost everybody has innovation in them. In first grade they sure did! Where did it go? Well, it got covered up by fear. It got covered up by the need to fit in.” It’s a natural instinct to leave well enough alone – especially if what you’re already doing is working pretty well. If you keep doing the same thing, however, you’ll never learn what might work better, and propel you to the next level. The path to growth is not finding new customers for your existing products, Godin says. It’s finding new products for your existing customers. If you’re running a supermarket where people come to buy food, it’s not much of a stretch to assume most people would also fill prescriptions there if they could. Find out what your customers need, and then find a way to give it to them.

“Most real estate brokers sell a $700,000 house to someone they never see again,” he says. “This person just gave you more money than they ever gave anyone in their life,” Godin exclaims. “They trust you. And they’re about to spend money buying insurance and all kinds of things. So why can’t you be the broker of solving the problems that go along with owning a house? Why can’t you recommend someone who does a really great job at lawn care?”

Happy Customers Are Your Worst Enemies

Why are happy customers your worst enemies? Because they won’t teach you anything. “Satisfied customers are unlikely to radically increase your sales. Satisfied customers are unlikely to push you and your colleagues to stay ahead of the competition.” If you don’t listen to your unhappy customers, someone else will. Look at Yahoo!, which ignored the customers who found the home page cluttered and confusing. Then Google came out: simple, clear, and easy to understand. Yahoo!’s best customers stayed loyal, but everyone else flocked to Google in droves. “Google said, ‘Not only is everything now free, we’re going to give you a mailbox 20 times the size of the mailbox our competition gives you,’” Godin says. “That was an innovation that anyone could have thought of.”

In today’s market, success isn’t about incremental improvement. It’s about bold, fundamental differences. “You can’t achieve rapid growth by being just a little bit better than the competition,” Godin stresses. “It’s not enough to get people to switch. You’ll be ignored in favor of the incumbent. At best, you’ll grow as fast as the market does – no more.”

Success, says Godin, is at the edges. Don’t be tentative. Be extreme. “It’s about saying, ‘All the other Korean restaurants in town are open 12 hours a day. We’ll be open 18, 20, 24 hours.’ It’s the most! Go to the edge, whatever the edge is.” When Godin published Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable (Portfolio Hardcover, 2003), he followed his own advice and made a list of 400 edgy ideas. The one he used was to package the book in a milk carton. He sent two-page excerpts of the book out, and anyone who paid five dollars for shipping received a copy of the book – which arrived in a milk carton with a stamp on it. “A lot of people kept the milk carton on their desks,” says Godin. “So, Joe comes in and says, ‘What’s that?’ Now, if there was a book on the desk, they’d say nothing. But the milk carton was worth talking about.”

“Lincoln Mercury spends thousands on ads because they make average cars for average people, and they spend their money hyping it,” Godin says. “BMW has a marketing department called engineers. They keep making stuff that people choose to talk about.”

Godin says none of his ideas are secrets; they’re things people already know, organized in a way that gives people permission to invent something they wanted to invent all along. In fact, his next book, Small is the New Big (and 183 Other Riffs, Rants, And Remarkable Business Ideas) (Portfolio Hardcover, 2006), is designed to inspire readers to do what they already knew how to do in the first place. It’s not hard to come up with ideas, he says. What’s hard is finding someone to champion the idea and take action. Going to the edge, creating something remarkable, letting go of the sales funnel – these acts require extraordinary courage. Most people simply linger somewhere in the middle. “A lot of people are always worried,” says Godin. “They’re worried they’re wearing the wrong suit, worried they said the wrong thing to their boss, worried that they’re going to get fired next week because of the way they acted at lunch yesterday. And that is no way to live.” •

To order a copy of Small Is the New Big,
go to smallis.com. To read free excerpts, go to squidoo.com/smallis.