Have I got an amazing special for you!

You just know those words are going to be followed by a pitch, don’t you?

First, I’ll get the rant off my chest: telling me that you have $10,000 worth of ‘products’ for only $297 is selling, period. It’s not special, it’s not a gift. In fact, if these are electronic products with zero cost to reproduce, there’s no such thing as a ‘special’ price because even if I only give you a nickel, your profit margin on that sale was 100%.

Folks looking for yet another tricky advertising gimmick (you can tell them a mile off because all their prices end in ’7′) are delighted to imply that they’re giving you a gift, some amazing mega deluxe special extra deal, in order to make a sale.

Let’s stop corrupting what the words ‘gift’ and ‘special’ mean. Don’t you dare imply you’re doing someone a favor, and then ask them for money. Making a smaller profit isn’t a favor, it’s business.

Remember when you used to be able to ask someone out for coffee in order to get to know their business better? Smart folks realised that by unselfishly learning about others in order to send them qualified prospects, our networks grew and in the long run, it came back around to us.

Selfish folks figured this out, and started asking networking victims out to coffee to ‘learn about your business.’ And then, as soon as they’d trudged through the formalities, the hard sell started. Pitch pitch pitch.

Try asking someone out for coffee so you can learn about their business. Watch the panic in their eyes, the scramble for an excuse. Selfish sellers have done their best to suck the juice out of an unselfish but brilliant method of organically, humanly, growing your business.

Promise me that you, yes you, reading right there, will never resort to deception, no matter how subtle, in your marketing or your business. Promise me that if you offer a gift, it is truly a gift, with no thought of return. Promise me that your ‘special’ price is actually less than what you’ve actually sold for in the past, and explain why you’re reducing the price (otherwise, it just looks like you couldn’t sell it for a hundred so you’ll try fifty.) Promise me that you’ll stop ending prices in the number 7 because even if it works, it’s psychological trickery and it’s unethical and immoral.

Find someone who’s corrupting the gift culture which has been fundamental to civilization for thousands of years, and send them a link to this post. Let’s make sure everyone everywhere knows that we’re not gonna take it anymore. At the very least, the lazy clowns will have to find something else to corrupt.

Rise above the garbage and noise. You’re better than that. You know that, of course, but you’re afraid. I get it.

Sometimes being a hero is hard.

Recently a personal interaction reminded me of an anecdote I read some years ago about tea. (I love tea, but this may be my first business lesson about it.)

When tea first arrived in England it was expensive. Not, a little bit pricey expensive, but prohibitive, only for the rich expensive. But it caught on quickly, because, well, it’s great.

One woman in the south took a full pound of her expensive cache and sent it to her sister in the north, telling her how marvelous it was. Her sister boiled it, dumped the black liquid off and served it like a vegetable. She wrote back about how terrible it was.

She’d prepared it like a vegetable, which she understood, instead of seeing it for what it was: something entirely new.

Some business folks hear about the ‘new marketing’ and assume it’s just more of the old marketing, except online. They still want instant results, measured in dollars return on dollars invested. They want ways to convince people to buy, no matter what they’re selling. They spend time and money bolting a website and blog and email autoresponders onto their old-school advertising.

They’re dumping the tea and eating the leaves, and then they wonder why it doesn’t work.

If you help your clients with their marketing efforts, you may, like the first woman in the story, assume that they’ll know how to brew a pot of social media marketing. Erm, tea. Whatever.

But, like the second woman, they don’t. They can’t. Because it’s so foreign to them, they have nothing to connect it to. Give information away, with no firm plan for monetising it? That don’t make no sense!

Had the first woman included some simple instructions along with her glowing praise, the story may have had a happier ending. Don’t leave anything to chance. Clients who are new to the new marketing will need a lot of hand-holding, a lot of encouragement and explanation and nudging.

Don’t assume they get it, unless you actually see them drinking the tea.

Mother and daughter team Barbara and Shannon Kelley write a fun and opinionated blog called ‘Undecided‘ in which they discuss challenges specific to women in business.

One point keeps nagging me, far in the back of my mind. Today’s post, about Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, nailed down what’s been niggling.

The Kelleys say “For generations, men’s roles have been predetermined, and unquestioned” and comment on the challenges of a woman who’s trying to find the balance of being herself while fitting into what was, until fairly recently, a man’s role.

Here’s the thing: I’ve been doing that my whole life. Well, switch the roles, but in a lot of ways, I’ve never been fully comfortable with what the stereotypical man is supposedly like. I couldn’t care less about sports. I’m much more interested in talking to a woman than staring at one. (I’m generally more interested in talking to a woman than to a man, too.)

My business model has always been focused on relationships, communication, emotional connections. I do not ‘close’ sales. I don’t go for the jugular in business deals. I tend far more toward kind and gentle than sharp and assertive.

I deeply appreciate the struggle women have had to achieve anything near equality in a seriously unfair world. I know, a little, how it feels.

It’s bound to happen. We’re only human and we all make mistakes. We try very hard in our businesses to put processes in place so that we don’t make mistakes. But it happens. So what do you do when it happens?

Here’s my opportunity to be authentic and admit that recently we made a mistake on a client project. Of course it was completely unintentional and accidental. Upon review we still don’t even know how it could have happened. But it did. Our client brought it to our attention in a very kind manner. He knew it was accidental and unintentional. Though the mistake couldn’t actually be fixed, he expected us to offer some sort of compensation for the error. And we completely agreed!

We were mortified that a mistake had been made! This client is one of our favorite clients. We really enjoy working with him and we weren’t sure if this was going to be the end of our working relationship. We needed now to make sure we lived up to our customer service superheroes policy. So we discussed exactly what we could offer this client to make amends for this mistake. We wanted to be sure that what we offered far exceeded any expectations he had.

We called our client and apologized for the mistake, no excuses. Then we proceeded to explain what we could do to make amends. We made a generous offer of additional time at no charge and offered to take on a project we knew he needed done at no charge. We wanted to make sure our client felt well taken care of and hoped he’d continue working with us.

Our client was very happy with our offer of additional work at no charge! He explained that he’d wondered how we would handle the situation. He realizes that mistakes happen and that it’s the way they are handled that makes all the difference. He was very excited to continue working with us and had a project we could start on immediately. He was so impressed with the results of that project that he offered to write a testimonial if he hadn’t already (he already had though).  We continue to work together and our client continues to refer others to us.

Yes, we will make mistakes. It’s how we handle them that determines the outcome. So here’s my 3 simple rules on how to handle mistakes:

1. Own up to your mistakes. Take responsibility for what you did. Don’t make excuses. Figure out how the mistake was made, if at all possible, and then put into place processes to prevent that mistake from happening again.

2. Apologize. Give your client a sincere apology, without excuses, for what happened. If you used a sub-contractor and the error was made by your sub-contractor, you still need to take responsiblilty.

3. Make generous amends. This does not have to be monetary. It can be additional time or product. Be sure your client feels they got more than enough compensation. If the error resulted in a $500 loss for your client, make amends of double that value.

When you own up to your mistakes, apologize, and make generous amends, you’ll find that your clients appreciate your openness, honesty and integrity.

For much of my life, I was an introverted cynical loner. No, really. I spent as much time alone as possible. I took entire vacations alone. My favorite activity was reading, alone, in my room.

Fast forward 30 years.

Since the turn of the millennium, I’ve changed. I’m not sure when it started.

But I know why.

Some things only grow when you believe they will. Faith. Trust. Until you extend them, and see the good, you won’t have them. Live as if.

I’ve trusted some people, and they’ve given me back the love of people I know I had as a child.

Too many to name, but I’ll give it a shot. Folks like Tom, Jerry, Marcos, Anne, Bernadette, Jodi, Jule, Chris, Mary Louise, Megan, Paul, Bolaji, Conor, Greg, Bill, Ed, John, Bonnie, Rex, Brendan, Becky, Bernd, Rick, and, well, y’know, the three I forgot.

It was not easy for me to trust my thoughts and feelings to a group of strangers. I’ve tried, in the past, and it was too ugly, too often. Not this time.

I love these people. They aren’t acquaintances or associates. They’re my tribe.

They’re friends.