Here is one of several checklists that I find helpful:
Knowing, understanding, and caring about your customers is … Rule #1
Always put your people first
… they ARE your business.
Being genuine and honest is essential to being likable. No one likes a fake. People gravitate toward those who are genuine because they know they can trust them.
It is difficult to like someone when you don’t know who they really are and how they really feel.
Likable people know who they are. They are confident enough to be comfortable in their own skin.
Be a talent hound
… put the priority on finding the best people.
If you can’t specifically define what you are looking for, you have little chance of finding it! This definition is both in terms of the job description and the profile of the individual most likely to be successful in that role.
If you can’t define what you’re looking for, you shouldn’t be looking.
Everyone is a marketer and … everything is marketing
If you are going to generate marketing campaign designs, you are going to have to create an interesting copy. And, oh, by the way, it must be more interesting than the millions of other advertisements out there. Now that is a daunting task, isn’t it?
Creating ‘WOW’ customer experiences
It creates the best marketing.
Who doesn’t notice a value that shows how clever it can be. The Ladders is a career site specializing in high income ($100k+) job placement.
It’s value proposition, “Move up in your career” is a clever play on what they do (upping your salary and helping you advance in your career). The play also includes the desire of the visitor to do these things.
Establish and maintain clear value propositions
Creative value proposition ideas tell prospects why they should do business with you. That is opposed to doing business with your competitors.
They make the benefits of your products or services crystal clear from the outset.
Be social and create conversations with customers.
… it’s all about customer relationships.
The most positive people we know are the ones who make friends easily and work to build deep, meaningful relationships.
Be adaptable
… be a change agent … anticipate and embrace change.
Life is about change; don’t fight it and just go with it. Learn from your mistakes; it is your best source of learning and growth.
Let go of things you can’t change. Learn to adapt to change. Win, lose or draw, life will go on, and you’ll get another chance to start your life over if things haven’t gone according to plan.
Make listening, observing, and continuous learning the centerpieces.
… your team’s core competencies
Galileo once said that “All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.” Great marketers uncover those obvious, but unexpected truths to win consumers’ hearts and sell products.
Keep it simple … in everything you do.
Build on these enablers and you will find success … status quo is most often your greatest danger.
Make the audience aware that they have a gap in their knowledge and then fill that gap with the answers to the puzzle (or guide them to the answers). Take people on a journey of discovery. And this journey is filled with bits of the unexpected. This is what keeps the journey moving forward.
The bottom line
Since as much as 90% of what we learned in a life-time always come to us via visual cues, we should constantly enhance our perceptual sensitivity to the environment, according to information scientists.
So, more than 500 years ago, Leonardo da Vinci was right when he said, use all our senses, especially our sense of sight. Our power of observation and imagination depends on it. Productive thoughts often have their origins in the combinatorial play and dynamics of sensory inputs from environmental cues.
In my view, our thinking cap is often governed by how far we can stretch our power of vision and imagination.
