January 27, 2017
Dogfooding -> Rolodex Moments
This is another installment in my continuing series about the rewrite of jonathanstark.com wherein I “eat my own dogfood” to bring the site in alignment with the advice I give my students about how to dramatically increase their profits. It’s sort of a self-inflicted case study :-)
Last week, I changed the headline on my mobile strategy website from the soggy:
“Mobile Strategy for Consumer Brands”
...to the more specific:
“Mobile Strategy for Credit Unions”
Within days of announcing this TWO WORD change, I was contacted by no fewer than FIVE PEOPLE from my network who offered me introductions to credit union contacts, or valuable information specific to the credit union industry.
Okay... here’s the thing you MUST understand about this:
- These five people have known me for a long time.
- These five people have known their CU contacts and CU info for a long time.
- These five people were well aware that I offered mobile strategy services.
Yet, these five people never - not once - offered me meaningful assistance of any kind prior to my public commitment to service credit unions specifically.
So... how come they never thought to share their support before?
Are they stupid? thoughtless? selfish?
NO, NO, NO, OF COURSE NOT!
It was MY FAULT for not giving them enough information to trigger what I call a “Rolodex Moment”.
Here’s my definition of the term “Rolodex Moment”:
A Rolodex Moment (RM) has occurred when someone is inspired to mentally run through the list of people they know and successfully comes up with one or more who they should introduce you to for business reasons. This will typically be in response to the listener’s first exposure to your Laser-Focused Positioning Statement (LFPS). RMs are most likely to occur in your audience if you have adopted a Vertical Specialization or a Demographic Specialization (e.g., “I help dentists” or “I help people who suffer from migraines”). RMs are unlikely to occur in your audience if you have adopted a Horizontal Specialization (e.g., “I help people who need QuickBooks integration”).
As I have seen many times in the past, a crystal clear vertical specialization like “credit unions” is highly likely to trigger a Rolodex Moment.
Here’s the thing:
People like helping people they like.
If you give your family, friends, and colleagues enough information to go on, they will GLADLY introduce you to people who they know who exhibit any externally identifiable characteristics of your chosen target market.
The moral of the story:
Give your support system the info they need to support you and they will support you.
Yours,
—J
P.S. Would you be interested in a screencast series that goes into crazy specific detail about the step-by-step process I’m using to redo my mobile strategy business? It’d be a fair amount of work on my part so I’d have to charge for it but I think it’d be super valuable for the right folks. Please hit reply and let me know if you might be interested. Thanks!