Unless you have a perfect product out of the chute everytime, and if you do, please call me or drop me an email because I want to work for you, you constantly should be looking at what you can do to improve your product, your service, your research.
An example of this is my first book, Your Daughter Has Been Diagnosed With Rett Syndrome. It was my first self published book and it wasn’t heavy in the number of pages, and in fact, I added a flip book inside which chewed up pages but still it was fairly well received. The reason is that people searching for information are pretty forgiving if they get the information they are looking for. In the case of my first book, I have been lucky and one of these days I need to get a sequel out with changes in Arianna that have been happening and our lives in general (from the perspective of coping parents).
My poker books were presented differently and there have been various comments on them ranging from hatred to delight. I think the truth is somewhere in between that I didn’t right the great American poker book but something that had some practical value to the reader (hence the name of my series of books that start off “Practical”).
I did get better with subsequent books though my experiment into larger print for the Crazy Pineapple 8b book was either appreciated by the older set or booed and hissed. Sales have picked up on the book and from emails I have been getting, I think again, that content is king and that is what people look for.
Incrementally, I decided to move onto cover illustrations and I added that for my fiction books, The Inappropriate Library and Clean, A Tale From The Inappropriate Library.
With each book – fiction or non-fiction, I get a little better and as the saying goes, instead of making a million mistakes I only make 999,999. The take away for you, dear reader, is try and list one or several things that you are doing that the next time you try to do it, you will have improved it someway.
The Japanese built up their economy from the 1960s thru 80s by incrementally just developing existing products. They did this by taking products like televisions and making them better, one thing at a time. They improved size, color picture, etc. They ended up owning large chunks of property for a brief time in the United States and companies like Sony are what people think of when it comes to electronics. Their overnight success was accomplished by gradully changing one thing at a time and releasing it.
Apple took a pocket mp3 player, repackaged it and marketed it as the must-have device and the iPod has taken off and is still flying several years later.
If you aren’t making a product, think of what you can do with your service that will add value for your customer or client. The little things go a long way like being polite, taking the time to listen to the customer and getting the orders right the first time.
Hopefully I got the order right this time. Did you want some fries with that?
Questions or comments? Let me know about them! Thanks for taking the time to visit and for more information or to get back to the beginning of the blog, go here.
This entry by Kim Greenblatt, www.kimgreenblatt.com/wordpress, talks about growing your business by changing one thing at a time in production or service. The Japanese did similar business growth from the 1960s to the 1980s. From his profitable blog.
Tags: Apple, Business, change, ipod, Japan, marketing, poker, profitable, Rett Syndrome, service, Sony, television