Success lies in enchantment

Brian Steffens, Director of Communications

Guy Kawasaki is a former Apple evangelist, from the early Macintosh days in the 1980s. More recently he’s been writing books and giving talks at major venues around the world, where he continues to inspire his audiences. Enchantment is his latest theme. Describing enchantment as a process, he offered a 10-step program to his audience at SXSWi. 

1. Achieve likability. Smile with your eyes, not just your jaw. Dress for your peers. Don’t dress down and appear disrespectful; don’t overseers and appear arrogant or superior. Have a great handshake.

2. Achieve trustworthiness. You have to trust others before they will trust you. He mentioned Zappos and Nordstrom’s as examples of this approach. Default to “yes.” Think positively; how can I help?

3. Get ready. Do something great. Make it deep, intelligent, complete, empowering, elegant (NICEE). Make it short, sweet, swallowable. Conduct a pre-mortem, I.e. Before you launch, assume you’ve failed, and explore all the things that could cause or result in failure. Then go back and shore up or fix the weak areas.

4. Launch. Tell a story. A story is more powerful than a “product” or “service.” Plant many seeds. Don’t just chase after A-list endorsements, enlist the bloggers and social media. Use salient points. Will the customer understand and respond to number of gigabytes? Or to the number of songs or pictures a device will hold? Will they understand and respond to inches of space or number of views? Or will they better respond to number of new customers acquired or product sold?

5. Overcome resistance. Provide social proof. Find a bright spot. Enchant ALL the influencers.

6. Make it endure. (Think of the endurance of the Grateful Dead.) Don’t use or rely on money for endurance. Invoke reciprocation. Build an ecosystem of partners and partnerships.

7. Know how to present, to pitch. Customize the introduction. Sell your dream (not your product or service, see “story” above). Maximum of 10 slides. Maximum of 20 minutes. Optimal font size is 30 pt.

8. Remove speed bumps. Provide value: information, insights, assistance. Engage: many, often, fast. Twitter and Facebook should b core marketing tools and strategies, not an end of day or end of project afterthought.

9. Enchant up. Do everything the boss wants, asks for, even when you feel it strays from mission or priorities. You don’t always know what change in mission or priorities has been handed down to him or her from their boss or board. Prototype fast and seek early feedback to avoid wasting your time. Deliver bad news early: NO SURPRISES. Better: find and deliver a solution.

10. Enchant down. Provide a map to how to get where the team needs to go. Offer them opportunities to master their skills, provide autonomy, give them a purpose (I.e. To make things better). Suck it up: don’t ask them to do anything you wouldn’t do yourself. If you’d like more information on this process, I’m pretty sure Guy would be happy if you bought his book.

Brian Steffens is the director of communications at the Reynolds Journalism Institute. Read his other blog posts here, and talk back at steffensb@rjionline.org and @BrianSteffens on Twitter.