Dr. Michael Gerharz, Autor auf The Art of Communicating

The of course effect

Of course a tablet turns on instantaneously. Yet, before the iPad came out we were used to minute-long wake-ups from computer laptops. For many users, finding their device ready to use the instant they turned it on was a revelation.

Go through your office or your house and you’ll find dozens – if not hundreds – of these “of course” product features. The kind of feature that when you’ve used it even just once, you ask yourself how this could not have existed before. Why had no one thought of this before?

Many companies chase the wow effect in their marketing – a spectacular decoration of the product or a breathtaking story they can tell around the product – but overlook the fact that the down to earth “of course” effect is often way stronger.

What’s yours?

The practice drug

In a world of get-rich-quick advice it’s an eye-opening journey to explore the realm of world class musicians who practice an insane amount of time to get to the level they’re at.

Tosin Abasi is one of them. He’s the lead guitarist of Animals as Leaders and you probably haven’t heard of him (their music is at times hard to digest for some). His unique technique is crazy and he does things on the guitar that even experienced players wouldn’t even consider possible.

When he was asked if he indeed practised 15 hours a day and why, he replied:

What happens is there’s this revelation that if you put in work on something you can’t do at first, eventually you can do it. And the first time that happens it is kind of like an addiction. You want it to happen again. And the more it happens, the more you’re confident that it can happen. So you start chasing your potential.

For Abasi, practice is a drug. A drug that provides him with the feeling of achievement and possibility.

Through practice he is able to turn the knowledge that something can be done into the ability to do it. At the same time, by pushing the boundaries of what he’s able to do, he also pushes the boundaries of what he knows to be possible.

You might not be willing to invest 15 hours a day practising your craft. But if there’s something you can’t do but see others doing, it might just be that they have been willing to invest the time to practise.

Knowing that something can be done is quite different from being able to do it. The former can be achieved by reading inspirational blogs or watching YouTube, the latter often requires practise.

Fear of missing o…

A couple of things that FOMO, the fear of missing out, helps us with:

What if the world is going crazy about a tennis player who wants to travel to Australia but is refused entry to the country and we don’t know about it.

What if a new word puzzle sets the world in addiction mode and we’re the last to hear about it.

What if a friend has just commented on my picture on Instagram.

What if another friend has just posted an update on her morning routine.

What if someone just sent me a snap.

We better don’t take the risk of missing out on that. So, let’s just quickly check our phone to catch up on things, shall we?

Rather than speak with the person sitting right next to us. Make a personal connection. Embark on a conversation about a topic that’s so much more exciting than we thought as it turns out the person sitting next to us is a real expert in that field.

Fear of missing out is a major component of the fuel that social media brews to hook us up. They brew it so masterfully that they convince us to miss out on a lot of other opportunities without the same level of fear – such as the things that happen offline in the space we’re at right in that moment.

When I enter a workshop room, it’s not uncommon that I have a dozen brilliant people sitting in front of me and not one is talking to the other but all are staring on their phone.

The offline world is not at all good in brewing the same addictive fuel of missing out. Apparently, we fear so much more what we miss out on online that we overlook what we miss out on offline.

It takes conscious effort to act on this.

On the surface

Google’s search engine is incredibly complex inside and incredibly simple on the surface – basically a search bar and that’s it.

Many startups take a different approach. Rather than hide complexity, they surface it.

They want us to appreciate the complexity. To see the brilliance of their solution. They want us to be as obsessed about the nitty-gritty-deep-down-dirty parts as they are.

They want us to get it.

Google understood that that’s not what we want. We want our struggles solved. We’re happy to trust you in being the expert so that we don’t have to. We don’t want to become an expert in your field because we have our own passion that we’re the expert in.

We just want a solution.

The simpler, the better.

The irony is that that’s what we recognise as being brilliant. The simpler you make it, the less we have to deal with the complexity, the more we appreciate it.

(That’s why the “I’m feeling lucky” button is still present on Google’s homepage.)

Speaking up on their behalf

When Simon Sinek or Brené Brown tweet a sentence, it gets them 1000 likes and 100 retweets in a matter of minutes.

When you (or I) tweet the same sentence, it doesn’t work that way.

So, why do people love these words when Sinek or Brown say them but not when you do?

Because you’re a stranger while Sinek and Brown are not. In fact, for many in their audience they are heroes. And as such, they speak up on behalf of their audience. They say out loud their audience’s thoughts.

The appeal of their tweets is not that their audience agrees with the celebrity but the other way around. For the audience, it feels like their hero agrees with them.

And this is why it matters whether you’re a stranger or not. Because nobody cares for when a stranger agrees with them. They don’t know you and so you haven’t earned the right to speak on their behalf.

It’s been the same for the celebrity when she wasn’t famous, yet.

The safest way to earn the right to speak on their behalf is consistency. Show up consistently, speak the truth consistently, capturing your audience’s thoughts consistently. And have a little patience.

The brilliance of salespeople

“Look, you’re not so brilliant. But don’t worry because I am.”

That’s, in essence, the approach of a certain breed of salespeople: To play the high status game. There’s a matching breed of customers who that works for. They are ok with someone else taking the lead.

The opposite approach is the low status game which is all about doing whatever the customer wishes for regardless of how useful that is. There’s a matching breed of customers who love that kind of relationship.

For the rest of the customers, a third approach might work a little better: “You’re brilliant in what you do. We’re brilliant in what we do. Let’s so something brilliant together.” It’s a balanced relationship in which everyone gets to shine in their respective field.

Error without consequence

“The essence of training is to allow error without consequence.”
Ender’s Game

The great thing about training is the safe environment.

It’s like taking a risk but without the actual risk. You can try out ideas and approaches that you would never have tried out for real. Or it can lead you to find yet another path that does work but would have been impossible to see without taking the risky route first.

But the one thing that you won’t get in training is tension. The tension of that it matters now. The tension that this is the moment and you absolutely have to give it your all. Which might be way beyond everything that you did in training. Simply because in training, you didn’t have to.

And also the tension that errors actually do have consequences at times.

That is an experience that no amount of training can give you. You can gather a vast range of experiences, you can get ever closer to the real thing. But eventually, you’ll have to go out there. And face the consequences.

It’s better to be well-prepared when you do. But it’s also essential that you don’t hide from it.

Is it a product?

Is it a product? Or a bunch of features?

Can you say why it exists without saying how it does what it does?

Can your customers?

For great products, the features are there for a reason. They serve a cause. That cause sparks a story and that story can be told and retold.

For bad products it’s the other way around. The features are the reason the product exists. There is no clear and concise cause and therefore, there is no simple story to tell.

This is usually the point at which a marketing agency is hired to come up with a story. Which they do. And it might be a good story. Or it might not. In which case, it becomes really hard to sell the product.

I’d suggest starting with the cause so the story is built into your product. It simplifies the whole marketing.

Here’s to an open mind

A mind is like a parachute. It doesn’t work if it is not open.
– Frank Zappa

Unlike parachutes, though, an open mind might actually accelerate your journey.

Trusting your customer

Let’s suppose your customer knows what you know. Would you trust them with the decision to buy from you?

If not then why not?

Is it because you don’t trust in your offering or because you don’t trust in your customer to make the right decision?

If it’s the former, fix your product.

If it’s the latter, try empathy. How does the right decision look like for your customer? Why wouldn’t they choose you? Could it be that they are right in not choosing you? Or could it be that they would choose you but you won’t believe it until they actually do?

The best marketing starts with trust in your customer. If you lack that trust, the best investment is to figure out where that lack comes from so you can adjust accordingly.

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