As a Columnist and Featured Contributor for Bizcatalyst360°, (for which I am honoured to be a part of), one of my more engaging posts was an article where I included the following statement:
“Now is the time to be more human by embracing the off-line world again and ACCELerate™.”
Our world is getting more crowded and in which many of us continue to chase the few golden opportunities out there. With globalisation, comes scarcity for things we pursue whilst trying to make a living. This challenge, to put it mildly, isn’t going away. It’s in fact going to get worse.
For example, there are more people living longer today than ever before. Great news of course as most of us live longer than our ancestors, however it comes with a price and it’s not just in increased government spending across services such as healthcare. It also means there are more mature people in work than ever before. As jobs are being outsourced, zero hours contracts a commonplace, it means that there are more of us chasing fewer opportunities to make a living.
So in a marketing context what can we do about that?
Well, certainly not by sidelining the more elderly of us from the business arena as you may think the title of this article suggests! Far from it.
Whether as employees or entrepreneurs who want a slice of the pie, we all need to step up, and big time. If you think your market is already overcrowded, think again. It’s going to become even more so.
This is not yet another article you’ve come across where the author advises you that it’s all happening on-line. In my view that would be misleading and old thinking anyway. It doesn’t mean you ditch your on-line strategy. It means you’ll need to be far smarter to outsmart your competitors.
My articles: ‘Marketing Is Changing: Here’s What You Need To Stay Ahead – Now’ and ‘How Learning and Leading Gets You Ahead Of Your Competitors’ will provide some key whys and hows.
When I was working in sales for a global ICT provider, one of the key performance targets we were measured against was not just about the amount of business deals we managed to get signed, but the frequency and consistency of meeting our customers and prospects face-to-face.
Sitting in front of a laptop was considered admin (dead) time. This was not the approach of the dark ages, it was the sales engagement strategy of this century and when social networks like LinkedIn and Facebook were already making their mark in the world. You will find that this way of engaging is still very current today, hence “new” isn’t in the title of this article.
Where “few” comes in, it is not only through what I share about how effective it would be by engaging with your Core network as part of my ACCELerate™ methodology, (to help you achieve return on investment in your marketing).
It’s also about being one of the few:
You will be one of the few who understands that not everything happens on-line.
You will be one of the few who embraces the ‘less is more’ mindset and who exudes it.
You will be one of the few who truly appreciates that now is the time to be more human by embracing the off-line world again.
So out with the old, in with the FEW.
I am with you John. I keep working not because I need to but because I love the interaction with team and my customers. Retail is a very face to face social and engaging environment. You hear great stories and most days you learn something new from someone you have never seen before. Thank you for a great article.
Thanks for your kind words Larry. Glad you found my article useful. Retail is a great environment to work in. It’s where I started and spent most of my career.
How many of you get a text from your kids, asking what’s for supper? Now, how many of you had your kids just being in the next room?
Technology changes how we socialize with each other. And how we socialize changes the inner structures and workings of our brains. For millions of years we worked with each other in a certain way. We talked face to face. Today, this is no longer the case. Linkedin. Facebook. Twitter. YouTube.
My question to you – if our brains’ structures no longer resemble those of our human ancestors, are we still human? Or are we something much different?
I’m no scientist Chris, however I think it would be a safe guess to say that our brain structures are the same as our ancestors.
I believe what has changed is the mindset and approach by many who feel – possibly through peer pressure and other reasons – that somehow it’s all happening on-line. I beg to differ and hope some of my readers won’t overlook how very important and relevant face-to-face engagement still is.
Thanks for taking the time to comment.
Just had a conversation today with a man at lest 85 or older. I was speechless that he thought that way and he said something almost identical to your question. So that is two people in one day that asked the same question and it is by far not a common question, Wow!
John, I agree. I don’t need a person to person meeting to buy trash bags for my compactor. However, where either larger transactions, or longer term ones are involved I want a face to go with the deal. I want to read the body language and get a comfort level with the person and through him/her with the company. Why is that so hard for many to understand?
Thanks for your comments Ken.
Absolutely, where there’s a commodity purchase, when the value of the items are usually of lower value, the Internet is a great place to transact.
As you share, for larger transactions, face-to-face interaction is imperative for reasons you kindly provided.
Difficult for me to share exactly why there are many who find this difficult to understand. There are various reasons in my view, however one word that usually comes to my mind is: Hype. (Hype of social media marketing for example).