Marketing and selling professional services is all about building relationships in which you are considered a trusted advisor. You demonstrate your expertise in ways that build credibility and trust.

Check.

If we all agree on that, why do I see all these service overviews, capability presentations, client lists and process overviews?

Sure, you might check off some boxes but it doesn’t help you achieve the ultimate goal: Establish yourself as a thought leader and trusted advisor.

Imagine two agencies:

Agency A develops a list of prospects for their services, creates a capabilities brochure and website, and sends out an email to their prospects, to be followed by a call few days later.

Agency B uses the same prospect list but they invest money in researching either the vertical they’re targeting, the regional area they want to work in or the service expertise area they want to target. And they share the insights gathered by research with their prospects.

Now, which company would you like to meet with?

I get bored just thinking about Agency A.

Agency A provides no value and doesn’t differentiate itself. (”We are another agency that can do the same thing as all the other agencies. Choose us.”)

Agency B provides something of value and showcases their expertise without being annoying. The prospect might have an agency they work with but Agency B has a good chance to stand out and get some business going. They don’t want to talk about themselves, they want to talk business, starting a real relationship.

So, forget about marketing your services, your processes, your capabilities. Spend your time and budget on creating value. It delivers better ROI, establishes trust and is a good start to a long, fruitful relationship.

I will never fly to Pluto.

This is not up for discussion.

You hear people talking about their limitations all day long.

“I could never learn French. I’m not good at learning languages.”

“I could never learn to play the piano. You have to start before you’re six.”

This is pure silliness. You’re not flying to Pluto.

People learn languages all day long. A 82-year old friend of mine just learned Japanese and will explore the country in November. If she can do it, anybody can do it. You put in time and effort, you can speak Japanese.

People are walking the fine line of fear and laziness. It’s much easier to watch “The Bachelor” than spending two hours over your Japanese book. You’ll never learn the piano until you put the time in.

Just accept resonsibility

You don’t need to learn Japanese, you don’t need to play the piano. You don’t need to follow your dreams.

It’s totally fine to do whatever you do. That’s your choice. But don’t try to sell me you couldn’t follow your dream.

Let’s be honest: You chose a different path. As long as it’s not based on laziness or fear: God bless you.

But, if in the dusty back of your mind you think you could be doing something else, feel you need to add more to your existence: don’t bug me with your excuses. Don’t tell me you had to give up on your dreams because of “A”, “B” or “C”.

Companies are Status-Quo-defending machines

This applies to companies as well. How many times have you heard:

“Oh, we can’t do this.”

“We’re just not set up for this.”

“I wish we could change…”

“Our CEO just doesn’t get it.”

Everybody is busy protecting and rationalizing the Status Quo.

Stop it already.

Do it.

Or don’t.

Just stop making excuses.

I’m a Dodgers fan.

Big mistake.

I’ve been a Dodgers fan for almost 20 years now. My first baseball game was in Candlestick Park and I liked the Giants. But I was never a fan. I also liked the Angels for a while. But I was never fan.

The Dodgers are my team.

And they made my life miserable. Traded Piazza for garbage. Sold the team to a network just to sell it again to a Boston parking attendant. A guy who can barely make payroll. The Dodgers used to be known for being a classy organization. And having classy fans. We don’t scream at opposing teams “Beat XYZ”, we don’t curse other players out. Things have changed. Now, idiots aka criminals aka fans almost beat a Giants fan to death. The Dodgers are a pathetic organization.

Since I moved here in 1996, I’ve been to one playoff game. I think we were done in the first inning. The Angels won the World Series. The Giants. Shoot, even the Marlins and the Diamondbacks.

The Dodgers?

They keep breaking my heart.

I started thinking about next season in May because the team is so terrible. I watch games because Vin Scully is still around, the only reminder of the good old days. I barely go to the games anymore because it’s not a good scene for my kid, parking is more expensive than a ticket and the former pristine park looks like a bad case of over-advertising.

But I’m still a fan. I still watch games. I will continue to hope for a World Series.

That’s brand loyalty. Not the faux stuff we try to sell in the marketing world.

Imagine being kicked in the face by your favorite brand. Being mistreated every time you try to connect. Being kicked and kicked and kicked. Just to be kicked again. And get up, waving that Dodgers logo. That’s brand loyalty.

Choosing Pepsi over Coke 90% of the time is not brand loyalty. It’s a choice you make. Nothing else. If the bottle leaks, the product is not always perfect, the price doubled in one day – let’s see where your loyalty takes you then. Oh wait, to the competitor.

The marketing brand loyalty is meaningless. Just like many other metrics we try to sell to clients. They’re meaningless because we set the bar too low: “Ok, nobody clicks but at least they had an impression of our brand. They might not remember anything but there’s an imprint of this impression in their subconscious mind.”

Oh, ok.

The goal shouldn’t be to create some superficial brand loyalty. The goal should be to create brand loyalty that weathers any storm, any kickfest from the brand, any negative stories. Watch the World Cup to experience brand loyalty. Go to a U2 concert. They can release 10 crappy CD’s, people will buy the 11th because they are loyal.

Nobody says it’s easy to develop brand loyalty for toothpaste. Because it’s not easy doesn’t mean it’s not possible. Everything is possible. There are fans that want to visit each Starbucks. Or the guy that will eat his 25,000th Big Mac. Loyal fans do bizarre, weird and total crazy things because the brand means a lot to them.

For brands to create anything resembling real brand loyalty, they need to set the bar higher. Much, much higher. We do too many things in marketing that have not been clearly defined. There are too many terms we talk about that have ambiguity built in it. Many people like it because it protects them from judgement or failure. Ultimately, it ends with the illusion of success based on lack of clarity.

Real brand loyalists do weird, crazy, bizarre things. They paint their faces blue. Stand half-nude with a letter painted on their chest in a snowstorm.

It’s time for brands to return the favor. Or they’ll never be my Dodgers.

From time to time we all like to check in on places or things that, across years come to mark the passage of time. For some it’s a museum, for others a landmark or their old neighborhood. For me it’s the cemetery of my hometown.

I visited it first when I was 6 years old, accompanying my father to his father’s grave. I was in a summer camp when my grandfather died and only found about his demise upon my return, missing out on the important ritual of his funeral. This led to weeks of nightmares, imagining my grandfather stuck in some wooden box, falling into a dark hole. That was death for me.

Over the years, I visited the grave of my grandfather, my best friend is somewhere, a classmate who died of food poisoning. Sometimes I just slipped in to walk down the rows of graves, looked at the variety of gravestones, admired the constant care and love relatives showed for the ones they missed. Visiting the cemetery, reminded me of my own mortality but also of the amazing opportunity we’ve all been given the day we were born. You feel a tiny tad more alive when you go to a cemetery because you’re still alive. You don’t belong there yet. One day you’ll be there. But not today.

Both my parents died 3 years ago. This changed the way I perceive my visits to the cemetery. Time reverses now. I go back in time and think of the times when I was a kid. I imagine my parents being younger than I am now, even while I see an anterior future of which death is the inevitable outcome.

This is what I go to the cemetery for now. To stop the clock, to take stock. It’s not about seeing my father’s gravestone or the roses on my mother’s grave. It’s about going back in time. Remembering the little things in life, not the big events. It’s like remembering vacations: you do remember the big things, the landmarks. But the real memories are the loving hug of your wife after a nice dinner, the stolen kiss, or the sight of my kid chasing the pigeons in Venice.

I’ve eaten in amazing restaurants and I enjoyed each experience tremendously.  And we often measure our enjoyment on Michelin stars or positive reviews on Yelp, but it’s the fries from the streets of Amsterdam or the ice cream from your hometown ice cream parlor that open the floodgates of beloved food memories.

A famous German writer, Walter Benjamin, experienced “the way into his labyrinth” of his own past, “led over the Bendler Bridge” whose “gentle arch became my first hillside,” as he described that fairly unremarkable Berlin landmark in a late memoir of childhood.

“Everyone has encountered certain things, which occasioned more lasting habits than other things,” Banjamin added. “Through them, each person developed those capacities which helped to determine the course of his life.”

A bridge, fries with currywurst or a piece of art in your favorite museum, which help to cope with the impending abyss. All of us have these places or objects that function as mirrors we hold up that look different to everyone who sees it, and whose beauty lies as much in us, and our capacity to dream, as it does in my wife’s eyes or my daugher’s sweet breath.