Business as Usual Means Oblivion

Attracting customers and enlarging the basket of the customers who are attracted is critical stuff.  Those are two really big and really different things.  Our marketing, our mission, our activities revolve around these primaries.
Witness the enormous Thanksgiving day newspaper packed full of enticing ads designed to lure us into the businesses and spend our Christmas funds once again.  How many disappointing experiences though awaited the shopper when we got there because it was business as usual and the reason that we hadn't frequented the establishments since this time last year.
Show me something different (in a good way), show me something better, or show me something cheaper.
Thats' it.
When I get there you must stand out.  There is too much noise, too much competition, for business as usual.  You have to be different, or better, or cheaper than the rest.  (And cheaper isn't any fun, by the way.)
Choose different.  Or choose better.  Then set about doing those things that really are.  Excellence really is about doing things in a certain way.

An Aspirin for the Pain

The Heath brothers, of Made to Stick fame, amaze and delight me.  This article reminds how the customer decides what they need.  It is our job to get to know them, to uncover what their actual needs are so that whatever it is we have to offer is a must-have, not a nice-to-have. 
Think of every time you've made a purchase.  The ones you are happy about are those that fill a need you have defined.  You are mad at yourself when you buy something that you realize you don't really need, you never use, you wish wasn't there to remind you that someone else thought you needed it and you believed them only to realize otherwise later.
Think of every time you couldn't close a sale.  It's because you were pushing something you thought they needed instead of offering something that perfectly fit their own described need.
A word to the wise is sufficient: you've got 2 ears and only 1 mouth.
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