Creativity Malaise?? Time to road trip!

A friend of mine recently shared this observation about his start-up:

the most frustrating part of it: we have difficulty finding time to sit together and "reinvent the world/future" of the company. Probably a lack of oragnization, and certainly too many things to do, which in itself is a good problem to have I must say. (Mathieu, you did sign that disclosure agreement? Didn't you??)

My suggestion. Take a Road Trip, and do it now.

Why?

When Mathieu and I worked together, we used to have to drive 4 hours each way to get to customer and prospect demos. On those drives we used to bubble up some of our best ideas, practice our spiel, get good at verbalizing the raw and unformed ideas, and generally have a great time in doing so.

On the way home we would debrief the demo then, fall back into the creative BS line we had on the way out, and try to imagine what we could do next.

So, Mathieu set an appointment (real or imaginary) to call on a prospect about two hours outside of Marseille. On the way out just get the ideas out there, make the sales call (or if you are inventing an imaginary one set your phone to call you shortly after you arrive to have the prospect cancel on you); Then use the ride home to make action items from any ideas you had on the way out.

Might as well make the trip worthwhile.

(apologies to Sandi for lifting your pic. Hope you don't mind.)

Sell the problem (borrowed from Seth)

In a recent post Seth Godin suggests that we need to be good as selling the problem (before we can sell the solution).

Seth's Blog: Sell the problem

Getting your clients or prospects on the same page as you, by demonstrating your understanding of their pain, and then suggesting that you have a remedy to that pain is one of the keys to successfully changing them from prospect to customer.

If the customer does not at first recognize the problem or pain the resistance to change is certain to go to infinity. If we do not have a reasonable alternative to the current situation that too sets the resistance to infinity.

Both points Seth is good enough to mention in hist blog. But I would add that we cannot forget to include the ever important W.I.F.M. (what's in-in for ME) and the desire to feel that it was their idea.

Get them on board with the problem, present them with a beneficial alternative, that makes the individual succeed as well as the company and let them THINK it was their idea.