I watched a commercial on YouTube by internet marketer Frank Kern this morning, in which he discussed his concept of zero resistance marketing.
In contrast, he points out, other marketers push the content to the back, narrowing the audience significantly at each step from URL, to opt-in-page, to email, to attachment that may get opened, let alone finally viewing the content.
He asks instead, “Why not just give the content upfront?”
In other words, “Why make it hard on your future customer?”
MIND READING AND PSYCHIC POWERS
Not too long ago, in a unit far, far away (or very close), the boss felt strongly about discipline and obedience to the rules, the standards. Among other things, this meant stricter adherence to the chain of command.
As one of the battalion’s operations officer, my job was to take orders from higher and translate to lower, to the companies. The orders we called TASKORDs (for task orders), what other units might call a fragmentary order (or FRAGO). We call the individual task (“Hey you, do this”) a tasker or tasking.
For me, the strict adherence to the chain of command reporting procedures meant a backlog of things I’d send him, orders waiting in his inbox or in the inbox of his executive officer.
If there were any corrections, and there almost always were, then the printout with the corrections would slowly make its way back down to me. Then, slowly back up to him; by slowly, maybe a week, maybe two.
Who cares, right? Well, what about for tasks with deadlines happening in a couple days? We frequently got short notices.
To keep the heat off of us for late work, we’d issue the orders down to the company without his approval. We’d have to read his mind
Not only did we have to read his mind, we had to predict how he might change his mind.
BUT HOW?
When we guessed wrong, we issued a modification to the order. If it was urgent, we’d email and phone call.
And if it was urgent and important and complicated, we might actually walk over there to talk it in person.
He would end up approving after the fact. He caught on. It became obvious when work would get done yet still be sitting in his inbox waiting for his approval.
In response, I asked him for permission to decide without his approval, and to simply apprise him of our work. He concurred.