Noise and Focus

Financial aces tell us that we should invest for the long term. “Ignore the daily ebb and flow of price changes,” they say. That’s not easy when every newspaper and TV station turns each minor ripple into Armageddon.

They talk each tiny blip and bump to death, promoting today’s random hop or drop into future riches or global doom. And then, moments after being told that hedge funds are not protecting you against anything, a broker calls to tell you that Northern Rock is, despite the bad press, going cheap and now is a good time to buy!

It’s not just the news industry. It’s your PC as well. It bleeps or blips each time any email arrives. It won’t pick the urgent emails out of the pile from your mates in Eastern Europe who have the solutions to your every physical need. You stop working to see what beeped. After an hour your inbox is empty, and its time for lunch!

There is a lot to be said for Timothy Ferris’s simple approach: leave the inbox alone for a month and see what happens. (Usually very little. To paraphrase Kahlil Gibran: Let your emails free. If they come back they’re worth reading. If they don’t, they aren’t.)

Of course, this weekly thought-let might be just as creaky. If it is, just click the unsubscribe link at the bottom and I will not invade your mental space again. It’s the quickest way to get rid of me!

All of this noise leads to some simple questions. How do we stand out in the midst of so much clutter? How will prospects find out about what we do or sell? The answer is simple, but you need to do some work to shine brightly when your prospect needs what you sell (or do).

Marketing is a big word that has a simple meaning. Everything that you do that with the aim of getting a potential client to approach you is marketing.

In my humble opinion getting potential clients to approach you is much more important than anything else you do. Nobody cares if you make the best Ostrich Pie on earth if they never get your request to enjoy some. And if nobody knows about your pie you’re wasting birds, pastry and electricity! Getting somebody to take that first bite has nothing to do with the quality of the pie at all. Getting enough people to take that first bite (and to ensure you have a business) is the result of your marketing, and little else.

The only time the calibre of your pie is important is when a piece of it is already inside my mouth! If it’s good, then I will buy some. But, until that first bite, I truly have no idea whether your last job was flipping burgers at MacDonalds in Parys, South Africa, or creating prize winning pastries at a five star restaurant in Paris, France.

So, how do you break through all the noise that infests our lives to reach that select group of folk that might like Ostrich pie? That’s what I will be focusing on this year. Along with how to guarantee that once you have found a Ostrich Pie gourmet, you never lose her. And how to do it inexpensively, effectively, and routinely.

Have an incredible 2008.