Seth Godin blogs once a day, and for a good long while I was able to keep up. I noticed though that I had 93 unread posts by him in my feedreader so I spent the 90 minutes it took to go through them. Here are the chunks of text that struck some sort of chord.

  • Winning on the Uphills –
    The best time to do great customer service is when a customer is upset. The moment you earn your keep as a public speaker is when the room isn’t just right or the plane is late or the projector doesn’t work or the audience is tired or distracted. The best time to engage with an employee is when everything falls apart, not when you’re hitting every milestone. And everyone now knows that the best time to start a project is when the economy is lousy.
  • “All I do is work here” –
    If you’re not proud of where you work, go work somewhere else. You don’t get the benefit of the brand when it’s hot without accepting the blame of the brand when it’s wrong.
  • Willfully Ignorant vs. Aggressively Skeptical –
    If you want to change what your boss believes, or the strategy your company is following, the first step is to figure out how to be the best informed person in the room.

  • The modern Talking Pad –
    Now, when you make your presentation, sit next to the person you’re meeting with and go through the booklet page by page, writing directly on each page. As you work your way through the ideas in the booklet, the two of you can talk about what’s in front of you and mark it up.

    It’s not a brochure, it’s the outcome of a working session. Leave it behind when you go.

  • Competing with the Singleminded –
    When you have someone who is willing to accomplish A without worrying about B and C, they will almost always defeat you in accomplishing A.
  • Spare No Expense –
    It’s certainly possible to build a brand without going to (c) [spare no expense] (witness the way Google almost never gets embroiled in special cases or even answers the phone–I know that they’re certainly not eager to fix my imap problems), but once you’ve trained your customers that (c) [spare no expense] is an option, it’s awfully hard to scale back.

  • Chai Wallah – Or you can be a wallah. Someone who does only that one thing.

    When you go all in, it focuses your attention and effort, doesn’t it?

  • Things to ask before you redo your website – What is the goal of the site? (This was first in the list. Everything else hangs on being able to answer it.)

  • Win the Fight. Lose the Customer -If someone thinks they’re unhappy, then you know what? They are.

    Trying say this to yourself: I have no problem acknowledging that you’re unhappy, upset or even angry. Next time, I’d prefer to organize our interaction so you don’t end up feeling that way, and I probably could have done it this time, too. You have my attention and my empathy and I value you. Thanks for being here.

    If you can’t be happy with that, then sure, go ahead and fire the customer, cause they’re going to leave anyway.

  • Launching Brands In Public – You can’t control what people are saying about you. What you can do is organize that speech. You can organize it by highlighting the good stuff and rationally responding to the not-so-good stuff. You can organize it by embracing the people who love your brand and challenging them to speak up and share the good word. And you can respond to it in a thoughtful way, leaving a trail that stands up over time.
  • Sell like you Buy – If it’s not good enough for you as a consumer, why should it be good enough for you as a marketer?