Don’t phone a friend. Or check Wikipedia. Just tell me.

Recently, I went to the Royal Academy with a chum of mine.

The Summer Exhibition is a must-see show at the RA: anybody can submit a work – painting, drawing, sculpture, print, even architectural plans and models – and stand a chance of being selected along with the revered Academicians.

The show attracts over 10,000 entries a year, a number quickly whittled down to a more manageable 1,000 or so that will eventually be displayed.

Here’s one I spotted at last year’s show that appealed to my sense of the ridiculous:

It was called (wait for it) Yellow Folding Table.

This year, my friend’s friend had a print accepted. It was a cat. Or a badger. Or a marmoset. Or, at any rate, a small cute furry thing.

The most striking works were the large ones. And one caught my eye immediately. It was a white canvas crudely daubed with paint, and a badly drawn black outline of a mouse. At least I think it was a mouse.

Rubbish, I thought to myself. I know what I like, and I don’t like that.

“Oh,” said a woman next to me to her friend. “That’s very…different.”

Her friend agreed. It was very…different. But they still didn’t know what to make of it. They were teetering on the edge of decision – or indecision, which is often the same place.

And then they consulted the catalogue.

“Ooh!” burbled Woman Number 1. “It’s by Tracy Emin. And it costs £90,000.”

She paused, letting the information sink in.

“It’s very, very good, isn’t it?”

Her friend nodded sagely, and they shuffled off to the next painting  – a blank canvas with four dots.

Make your mind up

What do you think about Tracy Emin?

Never heard of her? OK. How about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Rap music? Aboriginal painting? Global warming? The iPhone? The Palestinian two-state solution? Twitter? Cy Twombly?

In this day of instant communication, phone-a-friend and Web 2.0, we’ve started to doubt our own judgement.

We’re taken in by the idea that consultation is always better. That we need to collaborate before reaching a decision. That unless our opinion is backed up by two or three other people, it’s really not worth anything.

Two heads are better than one, we tell ourselves. Better safe than sorry.

But what if the two or three people you consult all say different things? You weren’t sure what you thought, so you asked them. But now you’re not sure what to make of what they think, so who do you trust?

I know what you’re thinking (but do you?)

James Surowiecki’s book The Wisdom of Crowds was a tearaway success in 2004. In it, he argued that groups make better decisions than any individual member of the group could have made.

It’s a seductive theory, because it lets us off the hook. We no longer have to make decisions alone, because we just know that getting a second opinion – or a third, fourth or fifth – will make the decision just a bit better.

But crowds don’t always know best. And the greatest creative minds that ever lived, from Leonardo to Mozart, didn’t phone a friend (you know what I mean).

They went with their gut feel. They listened to their inner voice. They trusted their judgement.

And so should you.

Find out more:

• Tricky Wiki – or why you shouldn’t believe everything you read on the web: Student’s Wikipedia hoax quote used worldwide in newspaper obituaries.
• Everybody else has read it. Have you? The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few.
• Badgers, yellow tables and everything in between: The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.

If not, change what you sell – or how you sell it.

My day started so well.

The summer sun poured through my office windows, and a steaming cup of coffee stood on my desk, its rich aroma teasing my tastebuds with anticipation.

Then the call came. A withheld number, which is never a good sign.

“Hello, Kevin,” said an unfamiliar voice. “Isn’t it a wonderful day?”

“Uh, yes,” I mumbled. “But more to the point, who the bloody hell are you?”

Actually, I didn’t.

Instead, I let him cast his line, safe in the knowledge that I wasn’t going to be hooked. As soon as he said the word ‘cricket’, I knew I was right.

You see, you’re either a cricket fan or you’re not. And I’m not.

Doug was from a corporate sports marketing company. And guess what? A box at Lord’s (The  Home of Cricket – isn’t that a great tagline?) had just come free. Just think of the corporate entertaining I could do!

Except I couldn’t. And wouldn’t. And I told him so.

“Ah,” he said irrepressibly, “so not a cricket fan. What about football?”

No.

“Tennis?”

No.

“Rugby?”

No.

“Horse racing?”

No.

“Dogs?”

No. No. No.

Game over. Insert new coin.

Sometimes, you just have to face it: they’re not buying what you’re selling. And you can do one of two things.

You can either keep on trying, which means you’ll waste your time (and lose lots of other sales to more likely customers).

Or you can change what you’re selling. A bit like Virgin Mobile didn’t do when I spoke to them about their mobile-phone contracts.

“You don’t send texts?” said the incredulous customer sales person.

Yes, that’s right. Calls, yes. Texts, no. So could they give me more calling minutes in lieu of the hundreds of texts I’d never send? Couldn’t they make an exception?

“Um, I don’t think so,” she said, fishing around for a killer argument.

And then she found one.

“You see, if we made an exception for you, we’d have to make an exception for everybody, and give them what they wanted.”

Mentally, I moved my chess piece. Checkmate.

But I savoured my little moment, and let the silence drag on, until she could bear it no longer.

“You see my point, don’t you?” she pleaded.

I didn’t.

And the very next day, I changed my mobile operator – to one that let me take any mix I wanted of minutes and texts.

Lights, camera, action

Most companies think they know what their customers want. And they keep on hitting those little square pegs harder and harder, in the hope that they’ll one day go in.

Clever companies think like customers. And when people aren’t buying, they change what they’re selling, or how they sell it, until customers do buy.

Just like lovefilm.com did.

When I first checked, this DVD-rental website was just too expensive. I like films, but not enough to pay £15 a month (that’s $22.50 or €17.50).

So I didn’t bite.

But wait, it told me – I could have four discs at a time, and an unlimited number of films per month.

I still didn’t bite.

Then my local DVD store closed down, so I checked again.

Same deal. Same reaction.

And then last week, fearing becoming a social outcast (I hadn’t seen Slumdog Millionaire) I checked again.

And there, I saw a new package, aimed at ‘lite’ users, priced at just £4 ($6, €4.60) a month.

I bit.

So you see? If people aren’t buying, it’s because you’re not selling what they want. It’s not that they don’t like you. It’s not that your product doesn’t work or your service doesn’t deliver.

It’s simply that something, somewhere in the mix is wrong.

Get it right, and they’ll bite.

Find out more:

• What do you mean you haven’t seen Slumdog Millionaire? Quick, hurry over to lovefilm.com.
• Leg before wicket? It’s simply not cricket. Check out Lord’s Cricket Ground (tell Doug I sent you).

…or how to avoid mixing, dangling and losing control

OK, let’s jump on in.

Oh you thought there’d be a witty intro, a scene-setting anecdote, did you? You thought you could just sit back and enjoy the ride?

Well you can, in just a moment. But first, here’s a question for you:

What is a paragraph?

Give up? Well cast your mind back to your English class, and you’ll remember that each paragraph should have one idea. When you move on to a new idea, or a new angle on the same idea, then start a new paragraph.

It really is that simple.

(Paragraphs also allow you a little breathing space, as you can see.)

Now if a sentence is part of a paragraph, it too should have a purpose. And it does: it conveys part of the idea, and should have a focus all of its own. Pack too many elements into a sentence, and you’re heading for trouble.

Here’s an example from The Guardian newspaper:

Having been one of just 10 women MPs when first elected in 1982, at seven months pregnant, she has long been a critic of the gentlemen’s club culture, and while many of her colleagues are calling this crisis a catastrophe, to reformers it is also an unmistakable opportunity.

Feeling seasick yet? I certainly am.

This never-ending sentence is taken from an otherwise well-written profile of Harriet Harman, focusing on the MPs’ expenses scandal.

It’s a one-sentence paragraph, but look at how many ideas are in it:

• She was elected in 1982
• She was one of just 10 women MPs
• She was seven months pregnant
• She’s a critic of the gentlemen’s club culture
• Some of her colleagues are calling the crisis a catastrophe
• To reformers [is she one of them?] it’s an opportunity

This sentence is a bulging holdall, a ragbag collection of unrelated ideas. And yet it was written by a journalist with decades of experience.

Tip #1: don’t mix too many ideas in one paragraph, or in one sentence.

Say what you mean

Though the above sentence is long and winding, its meaning is still (just about) clear.

That isn’t always the case.

I know what I mean, you say to yourself, as you read back over a sentence you’ve just written. Sure, it’s not the most elegant sentence in the world, but then, you’re not looking for prizes – just to get your message across.

But it doesn’t matter if you know what you mean. Does your reader?

Last week, I came across the following sentence:

Interestingly, and perhaps in a sign that this is changing, Cruddas goes out of his way to praise James Purnell, who resigned on Thursday night with a spectacular call for Brown to do the same, both personally and intellectually.

I scratched my head. Aren’t all resignations personal? And how do you resign intellectually? I read it again. And again.

Then, in desperation, I read it aloud. And finally, I realised the meaning. It’s this:

Interestingly, and perhaps in a sign that this is changing, Cruddas goes out of his way to praise James Purnell, who resigned on Thursday night with a spectacular call for Brown to do the same, both personally and intellectually.

Tip #2: read everything you write out loud (but make sure you’re alone first).

It takes two to dangle

Have you ever received a letter or email that begins:

As a valued customer, we’d like to make you a very special offer.

Something feels wrong, doesn’t it? (I mean other than the ’special’ offer, and the fact that you’re valued no more than the 100,000 other recipients.)

This problem revels in the delightful name of a (deep breath) dangling non-participial modifier.

In plain English, it means that the first part is unrelated to the second.

Who’s the valuable customer? You are. So the first word after the comma should be you. The corrected sentence looks something like this:

As a valued customer, you qualify for our great special offer.

Alternatively, you could rework the beginning, giving you:

As you’re a valued customer, we’d like to make you a very special offer.

See? That works better. Well the English does anyway – I’m not so sure about the offer.

But that’s another story.

Tip #3: if you begin a sentence with ‘as’, be on your guard. You might just be dangling (and it’s not a pretty sight).

Don’t talk to everybody. Talk to somebody.

I heard from my friend Dave last week. You know Dave, don’t you? Well you do if you live in the UK.

David Cameron – he of the silky voice, easy manner and impeccable credentials. The leader of the Conservative Party.

Dave to his friends. And I’m his friend – along with millions of others.

Let me explain.

Vote early and often

Here in the UK, it’s a week of elections. In England, local councillors are up for election to decide how they can spend more of my money on painting pointless lines and implementing ‘traffic calming’ measures.

And across the country – in fact, across the continent of Europe – it’s time to elect members of the European Parliament, that vast travelling circus that divides its time between Brussels and Strasbourg.

So needless to say, all the political parties are looking for support. But some are looking in the wrong places.

The Labour Party pushed a leaflet through my letter box. The Liberal Democrats did the same.

And so did the British National Party – in fact, their leaflet doubled up as a handy window poster (no thanks – I’d rather avoid the flying bricks and dark looks).

Tell me a (s)tory

But Dave took a different approach. He decided to do a mailshot.

Now the trouble with all mailshots is that they’re only as good as the database list you’ve got.

And database lists, as you probably know, have a very short shelf life.  Which is why most mailshots have a less than stellar return.

But in this case, there’s a perfect list. One that’s up to date, accurate, and complete – and available free, gratis and for nothing.

It’s called the electoral register.

It’s a simple but brilliant idea:

• It’s personalised. As you can see, I got my very own leaflet, addressed to me. It was the only piece of electioneering bumpf I kept (sad, I know).
• It’s targeted. Everybody on the electoral register is eligible to vote, so it’s as targeted as it can be. Leaflet droppers hit everyone, registered or not.
• It’s comprehensive. If there are three voters in the house, there are three leaflets – not one, unlike the droppers. So everybody gets one (and nobody wants to throw away somebody else’s mail).

And here’s the result:

See – that’s me.

Now here’s the thing. I know how they did it. I know why they did it. I know how easy it is to do. I know it’s a gimmick.

But it works. I get a warm, fuzzy feeling.

And that’s the power of personalisation.

So how are you getting personal with your customers? Are you selling lawn-mowers to people in apartment blocks? Are your prospects all called Sir or Madam? Or, worse still, Friend? And are you using the simple solutions that others don’t even see?

In short, are you leaflet dropping or doing a Dave?

I know which one gets my vote.

If you don’t, somebody else will

Remember what Woody Allen said? 80% of success is just turning up. Trouble is, most of us don’t do it often enough.

“But I’ve got nothing to say,” a friend of mine lamented recently. “They know who I am, and what I do, and everything about me.”

Everything? I was doubtful.

So he and I sat down, pulled out a chunky pen and a pristine sheet of paper, and 30 minutes and two skinny cappuccinos later, we had a list of 12 things he could tell his clients.

Things that would surprise them, inform them, entertain them, intrigue them.

But more important than anything else, things that would tell them that my friend was still around, still doing business, still waving not drowning.

I forget what I can’t remember…

We humans forget – fast. It’s said that the average person sees 300 adverts a day.

And often, we remember what we saw last. So if you’re not in touch with your clients, and somebody else is, you can just guess what’s going to happen.

It doesn’t matter that they don’t need any products or services from you (or your competitor) right now. What matters is that you’re not making an impression and the competitor is.

Governments understand communication – only too well. They have entire departments working round the clock to make sure everything angle is optimised, every story spun and every last drop of political capital extracted.

Take the swine flu epidemic. Here in the UK, we had blanket coverage. Nobody, but nobody, could have escaped the deadly virus that is 24-hour news.

But still the government needed to be seen to do the right thing. So it cranked up the printing presses, ordered forests of paper, and primed the postmen to do a leaflet drop.

And so last week, this sailed through my letter box and floated gently onto the welcome mat:

There was one problem: 20-odd million leaflets take time to print, so it was about two weeks too late. The media spotlight had moved on to MPs’ expenses, abuse in Irish Catholic institutions and emergency surgery using a household drill (ouch).

Nonetheless, it created the impression of action. The leaflet explains that there’s no cure, though antiviral drugs do help. And as for the face mask, the must-have Mexican fashion accessory this season:

The available scientific evidence shows that these basic face masks don’t protect people from becoming infected.

That didn’t stop the the government ordering 30 million masks. Why? To send out the right message. Or even to send out a message. Any message.

The leaflet does have a great catchphrase, though:

Catch it. Bin it. Kill it.

Don’t you just love it?

Talk to me (like lovers do)

If you are going to stay in touch with your clients (and you should) make sure you get it right.

Just yesterday, I had a call from my mobile phone provider. They like to stay in touch – a bit like a too-persistent friend, but never mind. At least they try.

“Is that, mmm, Kevin Walsh?” a woman with a voice like a bag of marbles asked me.

I confirmed it was, and she then told me who she was and why she was calling. “To keep you up to date with products and services,” she said unconvincingly.

In other words, a sales call.

Tip #1: Don’t stretch the truth.

I told her I was busy.

“OK, love,” she croaked, “I’ll call you a bit later.”

Tip #2: don’t get over-familiar (love, honey, pet, darling…)

No, I insisted. If I wanted information, I’d check out the website. Politely but firmly, I told her not to call again.

“OK, love,” she said again.

And one last thing, I said. Could she refrain from calling me ‘love’? I didn’t really think it was appropriate.

“Sorry, love,” she said, and rang off.

Tip #3: If you’re going to talk to your customers, try listening to them too.

I just called to say…

So what have you got to say to your clients right now? Nothing? You’d better find something – fast.

Before somebody else does.

Find out more

• Was that a sneeze I heard? Check out Important information about swine flu, the leaflet from the UK’s NHS (National Health Service).