Copy This Practice

Earlier this month, my wife went out of town for a couple of weeks to help her company with a project in Denver.  Before she left, she asked if I would bring her car in to have some service done, to which I agreed, of course. 

As I called Teton Motors, our local GM dealer, to schedule an appointment, it occurred to me that the car would be listed under my wife's name.  When I arrived at the dealer a few days later, I let the gentleman behind the service desk know that I was dropping the car off for my wife, offering her name to help him easily locate the file in the computer.  Sure enough, he found it right away.

"My name is Bruce," he said extending his hand over the counter to shake.  "Please let me know your name, and I will add it to the records for this vehicle."

Immediately, I was impressed.  This gesture seems simple enough, but believe me, it is more complex than you may imagine.  Bruce identified an opportunity to use a conversation to connect with one of his customers, and he executed it very well.  Let me explain.

Know Thy Customer

I made the mistake today of Googling "Ten Commandments of Marketing." I wanted to know where "Know Thy Customer" ranked on the de facto online authority (as deemed by the highest search engine rank). Looking back, I know it was a dumb idea. I had expected that a dozen or so people would have posted their version of this fictional list of marketing dos & don'ts, but I had no idea that there would be more than 83 pages of results! That is more than 800 individual websites referencing some version of the Ten Commandments of Marketing. 

Ten Commandments of Modern Marketing

...Social Media Marketing

...Guerrilla Marketing

...Green Marketing

...Networking

...Better Networking

...Great Networking

Then things started to get weird...

...Ethnic Marketing

...Marketing for Chiropractors

...Marketing & Promoting a Horse Business

And my personal favorite: 

The Ten Commandments of Mafia Marketing

I also really enjoyed the Hip Hop Ten Commandments which really had very little to do with marketing, but almost made me fall out of my chair from laughing.

Listening to Guy Kawasaki

A couple of months ago I had the opportunity to hear Guy Kawasaki speak at a conference in Banff, Alberta. I was very excited to hear Guy live and in person, because I have seen his books in just about every airport bookstore I have visited, though I have never actually bought one. Of his, that is.