You're nuts if you believe me

I'm the first person to admit that compared to you, I have no idea what I'm talking about. You're there, doing what you do, and doing it with skill.
Let me be really clear: My job is not to tell you what to do. I don't know what to do. You do.
Not just me, of course. Everybody with a blog or a book or an interest in your success. Don't do what they say. Listen to their questions instead.
My job is provoke you into asking hard questions. Ask those questions to your boss and your co-workers and yourself. It's easy to show that self-aware decisions and thoughtful strategies outperform blind stumbling.
I don't have a lot of patience for this list of seven rules or that manual of how it's supposted to be or the step-by-step road map you can purchase today only. I think you'll do a lot better if you get optimistic about the future and cynical about pat answers at the same time instead.

What does better mean?

Are zippers better?

For years, I always wore jeans with a zipper. After all, zippers are better. They're faster and easier and they do what they're told. What an amazing invention! How did we survive without zippers?

Last year, just for kicks, my dad bought a pair of jeans with a button fly. Middle age crisis, I guess.

Now, that's all he wear. Buttons are better, according to him.

How can buttons be better? They're archaic. They take a long time. They're difficult.

Except that my dad like the way they look. And since he like them better, they are better.

This is a hard lesson for marketers, particularly technical marketers, to learn. You don't get to decide what's better. He does.

If you look at the decisions you've made about features, benefits, pricing, timing, hiring, etc., how many of them are obviously 'better' from your point of view, and how many people might disagree? There are very few markets where majority rule is the best way to grow

Marketers, in and out...

Here, I want to share with all of you on marketing's great tip of the day, my personal review on any marketing activities done in real time and just about anything related to marketing and business. Enjoy!

P/S = I would like to invite all of you to email me your very own personal thought on anything that's related to business and marketing.Thank you. 

Well, here's goes nothing....

Ever notice that most car specs focus on acceleration, not braking? It's more fun to focus on getting fast than it is on getting slow.

How would you manage or market differently if you knew that you had to hit the brakes, and hard? Slowing one thing and speeding up something else.

Prediction: there will be no significant newspapers printed on newsprint in Malaysia by 2012. So, you've got two and a half years before the newspaper industry is going to be doing something else with the news and the ads, or not be there at all. Does that change what you do today if you work in this business?

Insight! The newspaper industry is in trouble, but news is not going to go away, just the paper part. Those who are working hard to preserve the paper part are asking the wrong questions and are doomed to fail.

Prediction: 90% of your sales will come from word of mouth or digital promotion by 2011. How do you change what you're doing today to be ready for that?

Prediction: The effort required to outsource a task involving the manipulation of data of any kind will continue to decrease until it will be faster and cheaper to outsource just about anything than it will be to use in-house talent. What will you do today to ensure your prosperity when that happens?

Going fast, doing your best and then slamming into a cliff works best for Wiley Coyote, not humans.