April 1, 2009

MARKETING

This month celebrates the beginning of my 5th year of writing this monthly blog on wisdom. In August of 2005 I published 50 "borrowed bits of wisdom". As my life has changed over the years and I've now completed my first year as a Director of Marketing, here are another 50 "borrowed bits of wisdom", but with a focus on marketing. Although the strict definition of marketing is to buy and sell in a market, the business of promoting sales of a product, business, or person is a better definition. As you have to "sell yourself" to others in most aspects of life, consider the following information to be market research. A special thanks to Roy Williams who wrote a great book entitled "The Wizard of Ads". For your reading pleasure, after checking out August of 2005, here are 50 more pieces of wisdom:
1) The risk of insult is the price of clarity.
2) Don't allow the dictates of public opinion to hamper your efforts.
3) Customers seldom pay attention so entice them.
4) Information is to intellectual as experience is to emotional.
5) The most powerful three letter word in the language is YOU.
6) Truth we have realized is the only truth we own.
7) Honest persuasion is the water that will put out any fire.
8) The human mind discounts the predictable.
9) Everyone acknowledges the audacious.
10) Successful companies don't teach their customers to wait for a sale.
11) A traffic driver that reinforces your market position is a winner.
12) Compromise can make even the best plan ineffective.
13) Everyone imagines themselves doing a thing before they do it.
14) Transferring imagined experiences to actual experiences is persuasion.
15) Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.
16) Brevity is never using two words when one will do.
17) Reaching 100% of the people and persuading 10% costs more than the reverse.
18) The ability to answer questions no one is asking has no value.
19) Intellect and Emotion are partners who do not speak the same language.
20) Time is the currency of this generation.
21) Ideas that fail are promoted by people who refuse to accept reality.
22) The only thing more expensive than training is NOT training.
23) Elevation of the anticipated price is environment, not advertising.
24) Value is the difference between the anticipated price and the marked price.
25) Massive success came to many with the audacity to say "everyone else is wrong".
26) Intangibles are the most honest merchandise anyone can sell.
27) People use intellectual logic to justify what their emotions decided.
28) Pious experts do a poor job of making people feel good.
29) Cheerfully embrace failures and count on successes to outweigh them.
30) Success is often the result of noticing what others overlooked.
31) It is management's job to make sure employee's needs are met.
32) Difficulties are things that show what and who people are.
33) Don't let the polite knock of opportunity become the relentless banging of obligation.
34) The preparation required to take advantage of opportunities is observation.
35) The finger of God never leaves identical fingerprints.
36) Vision is the ability to see the end from the beginning.
37) Risk the ridicule of those who say it can't be done.
38) Democracy recognizes there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.
39) Every successful father wishes he knew how to give his children the hardships that made him.
40) No great person has ever complained for want of an opportunity.
41) All success is a journey, not a destination.
42) Wealth is always a by-product of passion.
43) He who overcomes himself is mightier than he who overcomes others.
44) Geniuses are just regular people doing what they love.
45) Destroy your enemies by converting them to friends.
46) The only cure for birth or death is to enjoy the interval.
47) Intuition is the ability to come to the right conclusion without information.
48) It is always easier to be brave from a safe distance.
49) The lure of distant and difficult is deceptive as simple and close win.
50) Answers come easily when we embrace a new perspective.