At the end of the day, what ever product you sell or service you provide, you are selling an emotion.

Apple is a great example of this. You are emotionally sold when you open their deliberate packaging. When you interact with their friendly software. When your problems are solved at the Genius Bar. You get to experience wonderful emotions over and over.

If you are a consultant you sell emotion through your integrity, when you show up early, or fished a project under budget. These are all emotional wins and you are selling them constantly.

Saving someone money. Making someone money. Offloading work for someone. A firm handshake. Listening with intent. These are all emotional wins.

It is you job to find all the places and moments in time where you can provide emotional wins.

I was at Target the other day picking up some vitamins when a group of teenage kids started popping open boxes of diet pills and cramming the bottles into their jackets. Shouting, literally throwing the empty boxes around, just causing a scene the entire time. All right near an employee filling shelves at the other end of the asile. I informed him, but he just shrugged. I informed another employee who aimlessly pointed in the direction of a manager. So I gave up.

If a business doesn’t care, imagine how little a customer cares.

When caring becomes no ones job things start to fall apart. Soon quality suffers then customer service. Then a business will scratch their heads wondering why they’re failing. Everything will be undone, and it can happen overnight.

People generally do not like confrontation and will go out of their way to compliment you even when you have totally screwed up. The easiest place to catch yourself doing this is after a mediocre meal. I’ll too easily let the owner know “it was great” when in fact the meal was a barely edible.

It is critical to be honest with yourself, how you run things, and the product you push out to customers. Whether it is software, physical goods, or a service, never blow smoke up your own ass. Listen to the negatives. You know where most of the rough edges are, which ones to keep and which ones to round out. But there are hidden ones, which is why secret diners are such a great way for restaurants to truly get to the problems they never knew existed.

It is hard to learn form the positives. One, because you accomplished something you already knew. But more importantly, you will actually be paying attention when a negative is brought to your attention.

People who are openly negative are rare, but honest. Listen and determine whether action is required or not.

Work used to mean doing what your told. You had a boss and he told you what to do in a very literal sense. You always knew where you stood, what was coming down the pipeline, and when you would be done.

Work is no longer that simple. Work today means figuring out what needs to be done next. And figuring out what needs to be done next is incredibly difficult because the pipeline still exists. So when you are done with the obvious things, making calls, taking meetings, updating your website, you can feel restless, wondering what to do.

This is the struggle. This is where real growth and change can happen. If you can figure out what to do next, you’ll win.

Critics no longer matter. People no longer need to look to professionals to tell them where they need to eat or what movie to see. We all just flock to the things we love and spread what we love.

Negative critics popup, but loyal followers will always drown out those few. It just no longer matters.

What matters is having a voice and an opinion that does not fall in the middle. The middle is average. Average means the critics will win because they will be right.

They are generally, if not always, a really bad idea. Right now physical retailers are rightfully shaking in their boots as they continue to lose money and attention to e-commerce businesses. Amazon gets the most attention since they are so agressive with their customer offerings, things like same day shipping.

Physical retailers are trying to play Amazon’s game and it is not driven by competitive competition, but desperation and fear. Why cut in to your thinning profits in the hopes that things will change in your favor? It is a thoughtless way to run an organization, but people construe such decisions into being thoughtful with such logic as “we benefit from all their research and hard work!” or “it will bring us more business!”.

Companies like Best Buy really need to look at why they are on the path to extinct-dome. And it is not because they are Amazon’s showroom or have physical locations to pay for.

The problem with design is that it keeps the focus on the surface, what is projected outward. Things like personality and the image or tone you want to reflect. It doesn’t necessarily reflect the inner qualities of a business.

What is lacking are things like integrity and quality of relationships. I am not saying personality or design doesn’t matter. It does. Just that one’s focus on design can sometimes be too great and should not be the core of any business.

It’s way too easy to idealize design and personality, while integrity, something in desperate need in the world, cannot be manufactured.

Back when I first tried to buy my Android phone (MyTouch) there were two color choices, white and black. I went in wanting the black model, but just out of curiosity I asked if I could see the white model.

So, after verifying my account standing and eligibility for the savings, the T-Mobile sales rep said “No problem” and ran to the back room and came back with both a black model and a white model. He opened up the white one and let me check it out, but I was quickly put off, so I told him, “I’ll take the black one”.

“Um, I actually just scanned this one into the system so I don’t think I can make the change”. “Err… Let me see”…

From what I gather, there just was no option to make the change or even remove it as a line item.

“Ok, I’ll just pay for the phone, return it and then you can ring me up for the black one, I don’t mind waiting”.

So he tried that, I paid for and returned then phone.

“Hmm… It looks like I can’t actually ring you up for a new phone since your account is now marked as no longer eligible for the savings”.

We went back and forth for a bit trying to figure something out, he called T-Mobile offices and there was nothing they could do. But They did have a solution.

Go to another T-Mobile location and buy it there.

“Huh?”

Here I was, ready to hand over hundreds of dollars, sign a new 2-year contract, and was unable to because of a simple miscommunication. And the comedic solution was to go to another T-Mobile store about five blocks away.

So a known bug in their process forces customers to find another physical store location. Should not a transaction always occur, no matter what, if both parties are a good fit?

Kat and I had a great experience at 90 Miles Cuban Cafe this afternoon that I think is the perfect example of what a great work environment can do for a business.

We both recently went vegan so whenever we are eating somewhere new we always have a plethora of questions and today was no different. “Is there any dairy or honey in the creole sauce?”, “can we have our roll without any butter?”, “are the beans cooked with chicken stock?”, and so on.

He quickly picked up on the fact that we were vegan, genuinely offered some recommendations and then, believe it or not, came up with a dish for us on the fly. It was delicious!

How hard was that for him to do? Not very hard at all, but we rarely have such experiences. He just as easily could have mentioned the tofu sandwich and been done with it. But instead, since there were no instilled guidelines handed down from management, and he clearly loved working there, he actually got excited in coming up with a dish he knew we would love.

They now have two repeat cusomters for life simply by removing any guidelines and allowing their employees to treat the place as if it were their own.

Fantastic clip from Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares where chef Gordon Ramsay visits failing Indian restaurant, The Curry Lounge.

Why is it failing?

With 100+ pick-n-mix items on the menu, the owner is afraid he’ll not be able to please everyone. By offering something for everyone, even chips at an Indian restaurant, they end up with something mediocre.

They compromise their authenticity.

Just an FYI if you ever find yourself in Brighton, UK, my favorite Indian restaurant: Memories of India.