That Statement Is More Than A Mouthful…
but you need to chew on it because it will make you money!
Creativity is far more than learning to finger paint in Kindergarten.
Business Creativity creates profits and causes lives and businesses to thrive and become exciting.
Creativity even saves lives!
About 30 years ago (or more) I adapted a phrase that graced my letterhead and evolved onto my earlier web pages as well. That phrase was ‘Looking Beyond The Obvious‘ and that phrase (and concept) are still with me today partly thanks to my CCIM (Commercial Real Estate) instructor who was so creative that he had managed to put together a 28 way exchange in the Real Estate business. That means he had 28 different clients and 28 different pieces of Real Estate being traded back and forth. I will never forget him saying ‘the best part of that exchange was getting paid 28 times‘!
How many of you would like to be paid 28 times (or more) by any given customer who would only normally buy once? If everyone who is in business and reading this does not hold up your hand and agree, get your keys out now and lock the door because you should not be an entrepreneur. Okay, maybe you were conservative and wanted to see where I was going with this before committing, but if you did wait, you need to get over that hesitation (remember – Ready, Fire, Aim).
STOP SELLING – GIVE IT AWAY!
When you start ‘Looking Beyond The Obvious‘ (meaning being creative, in this context) you will find that, as in all manifestation, you will attract more and more creative ideas and actions. Let’s think of an example together… I’ll go first. Let’s say that I own a coffee shop and I want to sell more product so knowing that a cup of coffee costs me 4.8 cents to make and it sells for $2.49 how do I get more people in to buy more coffee….
First (and obvious) thing is to make sure the coffee is really good but, looking beyond the obvious, I realize that to sell more I need to stop selling coffee. That is right! Stop selling it and give out coupons for a free cup of coffee with those fantastic muffins we also sell at $2.49!
“Whoa”, you say, but the muffins cost 24.3 cents to make! That makes no sense! However, it does make sense because once you have lured the customer in and they know the muffins and coffee are great they will come back. More importantly, when they pop in next time to pick up a coffee and the well trained staff upsell asking “would you like a tasty muffin with that?”, they will recall how good the muffin was and buy both... again and again!
There is an endless number of creative ideas for your business and the more you come up with, the more you will come up with, so start thinking now! That is the key: think (creatively)!
By the way, when you think of the word think (in a customer service context) look at it this way:
Take Her (or him) Into (a) New Kingdom! After all, most of us have heard the saying that the customer is king… what good is being king without a kingdom (wink).
