Have you done all the marketing you can? Are you sure?

Has every person in the world who could possibly benefit from your product already bought it? Wait, let's back up to an easier test. Has each one of them even heard of your product? If not, what have you done today to make sure that they hear of it?

Have you identified each potential user of your application? Not just a general description of the type of user, I mean personally identifying information. Do you have their email address? Why not? How do you plan to get it?

How many people have seen your sales pitch and not bought? What are their email addresses? How many of them would have benefitted from your product? Why didn't they buy it? How do you know?

What can you change in your sales pitch to convert more of those views into sales? How do you know?

What can you change in your product to increase the population of people who would benefit? How do you know?

This isn't black and white, where things either work or they don't. This is the squishy grey area filled with actual people, who may buy (or not buy) for reasons that they don't understand themselves. If you think getting this "right" (think about why I put that in quotes) is faster or easier than building your product, then you don't even know how much you don't know.

Naked cynicism

Sales is a tricky thing. If you've got a good product that you really believe in, you can make a fortune just by convincing people that you're right.

But sometimes, it's just a "good" product. Nothing wrong with it, but not so different from lots of others on the market. So why should people by your product instead of someone else's?

Good marketing beats good product development every time. Just look at Microsoft. That's what you're competing against. Even with a better product, you have to have better marketing to win. And good marketing is measured by one thing: Is it effective?

Is there a line between strong advocacy and manipulation? Between creative license and deceit? How long do you have to be in the business before you stop caring, and just go for naked cynicism?

That’s why characterizing your prospect as a ruggedly independent thinker — immune to "herd think" — is a very powerful selling technique indeed.

If you can position your prospect as a renegade, and your product as a symbol of that individualism, it can form a powerful buying motive.

Just be sure and let your prospect know there are other people who feel the same way.

Update: Looks like someone agrees. Scion's current ad campaign tagline is "United by Individuality." Okay then.

When newspapers are gone, will you miss newsstands?

Marketing guru Seth Godin asked the question today, "When newspapers are gone, what will you miss?" Before getting into the various sections and showing how the web covers each of those areas better, he offers this opinion:

Woodpulp, printing presses, typesetting machines, delivery trucks, those stands on the street and the newsstand... I think we're okay without them.

But are we?

The presses and trucks -- the machinery of creating and delivering the paper -- are transparent to most people. But the newsstand is a user interface. Any UI designer will tell you that the interface influences the type of interaction you have with the underlying system. What type of interaction do you have with a newsstand?

Newsstand in web terms

First, the newsstand serves as a "portal" to divergent news sources. It provides a rough snapshot of what the different publishers think is worth reading about today, all in one place. No matter what your interest, you can go to the newsstand and know that it's represented there.

Then there are the cases where someone discovers an interest while at the newsstand. The user who knows what she is there for, but sees the same screaming headline in 144 pt type on three different papers and decides she wants to see what's happened in the world. Or the user who wants to read something, but doesn't know what until he browses. This second type of user is very common in airports.

The newsstand also serves as a feed reader, always showing the most recent issue of periodicals and dailies, with older issues sometimes available behind the counter. Just as there are people who don't know or care about RSS readers, there are people who have been reading magazines for years who don't track when the new issues will be out. They just check the stand every day or so until they see something new they want to read.

Don't make me think

Both of these functions, the portal and feed reader analogues, are zero maintenance for the users. At most they might ask the proprietor to start carrying a new title. But the mechanics of delivery, storage, display, are all handled for them. With no subscription, no ongoing cost, and the incremental cost entirely under the user's control.

So Seth is right, we probably won't miss the newspapers. But will we miss the newsstands?

Being Useful Is Better Than Being Right

Being right isn't nearly as important as most IT people think. Understanding why that's true is one of the fastest ways to build trust and respect with the non-IT management in your company.

Let's try an example where it's better to be useful than to be right.

Suppose you find out there is a structural problem with your building. It is severe enough that the building could collapse at any moment.

Being Right

You look up the emergency notification policy in the employee handbook. There's a number to call. You call it and explain the details of what you've discovered. They start asking questions about evidence, as you get frustrated that they're not responding fast enough to this emergency, and why don't they get it?

Being Useful

You pull the fire alarm and everyone leaves the building.

Business Prefers Useful

Executives like to get things done. They got where they are by being good at getting what they want. The respect and respond to that trait in others.

So if you want to be recognized as someone who can get things done, you need to actually get some things done. If excruciating detail is what it takes to convince someone they should listen to you, then use detail. If a convenient metaphor will make your point more strongly, then use one. Of course it will gloss over important details, that's why we use metaphors. They simplify reality in a (hopefully) useful way.

Find a good balance betwee rightness and usefulness, and you will take control of your career like you never imagined you could.

You can't unplug a book

The first printing presses were used to print bibles. And porn. That's not a value judgement, just an observation.

The internet was first used to distribute scientific and academic papers. And porn. It seems man hasn't changed much in the last few centuries.

The printing press and the internet share some other features. Like the impact they had on society: education, communication, freedom. Plenty of people have written about the similarities. Some have written about the differences. But I haven't seen much conversation about one important difference: Books can't be turned off.

Why this matters is that writing is something that can be entirely learned by each person who uses it. There is no risk of being unable to use the technology.

I’ll grant that large-scale printing presses are far beyond the reach of individuals, and even whole cultures. But the base concept of printing is so simple that it could be easily duplicated, and scaled up by anyone with basic mechanical aptitude.

Computation is a whole different animal. The utility of "pervasive computing" is explicitly the pervasiveness. The smart chip in my credit card is useless without a reader. Or a computerized register to attach the reader to. Or an internet connection between the register and the VISA system. Or … or … or …

Look at any major urban blackout. Commerce comes to a complete standstill within minutes. You can literally turn the technology off, and society grinds to a halt.

If you smash a printing press, everyone who already had a book still has it. If you burn all the books, people still know how to write.

But disable the networks that allow us to engage in commerce, and suddenly the grocery store shelves go empty. And we don’t have local farms any more to fall back on.

I’m not suggesting that we’re likely to face a protracted breakdown in the current system. But the impact of such a breakdown is certainly on a new scale.

Emboldened by Ignorance

Fans and followers of Tim Ferris are already familiar with his concept of the low information diet and selective ignorance. The basic idea is that there is so much information in the world, and so much news coverage, that you could spend your life keeping up-to-date and never have time to do anything for yourself. By cutting down on the amount of news you follow, you regain time for yourself.

But there's another benefit of selective ignorance that might be even more powerful. If you look hard enough, you can find a good (sounding) reason to not try anything:

• Don't record a blues album, no one listens to the blues.
• Don't travel abroad, terrorists have threatened the airlines again.
• Don't self-publish your book, they never sell.

If Brunonia Barry had known what she was doing was impossible, she never would have gotten a seven-figure book deal when she finished. According to her husband Gary Ward, "We were emboldened by our ignorance. We knew just enough to get going, but not enough to stop us."

He encouraged Brunonia to self-publish her debut novel "Lace Reader". They brought un-bound prints of the book to local book stores and clubs and solicited feedback.

That just isn't how books are published. Authors submit manuscripts to publishers and wait for an offer. Then the publishers tell the authors when, where and how the book will be marketed. But Ward and Barry didn't know that.

Had they known how the publishing business works and, more importantly, had they "known" that what they were doing wouldn't work, there's a good chance no one would have ever heard of "Lace Reader". Instead, reprint rights have been sold in 20 countries and Barry is in discussion for a movie deal.

Bold doesn't mean stupid

The danger of ignoring your critics is that sometimes they're right. When Simon Cowell tells someone that they can't sing, there's a good chance he's right. He's an expert.

That's not the person you want to ignore. The ones to tune out are the naysayers who tell you, "That can't work. No one does it that way."

Every great thing was once the new thing that no one did. Until someone ignored the critics and did it anyway.

So listen to critics. Pay attention when someone has done exactly what you're trying and has valid feedback. But if all they have to say is, "No one does it that way," maybe that means you'll have the field all to yourself.

How To Tell When You're Being Lied To

If you've ever watched more than 30 seconds of a late-night infomercial for a real estate selling "system" you've seen some version of the exact same pitch. "Do what I tell you on the tapes and you'll be rich." But the only people making money are the ones selling the tapes. No one ever gets rich actually following the advice on the tapes.

It doesn't matter what the tapes are about: real estate, home cleaning products, debt consolidation. They're all a scam, because the real money is in selling the system, not in using the system.

The new wrinkle in this is that the scammers have gone "meta". The system they're selling now is the infomercial. Instead of claiming their system will tell you how to sell real estate, they claim their system will tell you how to make your own infomercial. Which can be about real estate, or it can be about ... well, making more infomercials. And making them on the web. See, it's different!

You would think that eventually someone has to get something of value out of the whole arrangement. With the real estate scam someone allegedly gets a house out of it. But with the new racket the only thing that ever comes out of it is a "business" of selling more ads.

If you're too young to know about it, they have a name for this arrangement: Ponzi Scheme. The only people who make money are the people who know that's what they're doing.

So here's how to tell when you're being lied to. If what you're doing is a Ponzi Scheme, are you the one doing it on purpose? If not, then you're being lied to.