Happy accidents

He was at home enjoying a DVD of “The Sopranos” that he had rented. After watching the episode, I scanned the special feature: an interview by film director Peter Bogdonavich, (who plays a small role in the series) with the series creator, David Chase.

Bogdonovich asked Chase if he had planned certain nuances in acting and filming the show. “Not really,” Chase said. “It just happened by accident.”

Bogdonavich went on to relate a conversation he had with famed director John Ford: “Ford told me ‘All the best in movies happen by accident,'” he said. “Later I spoke with Orson Welles, and I asked him if it was true, and he said yes, absolutely. In fact, he later defined the director as ‘the man who presides over accidents.’

Bogdonavich calls it the happy accident theory.

THE HAPPY ACCIDENT THEORY AND YOU

Successful marketing, in my experience, works exactly the same way. The best things happen by accident. However, these accidents can only occur if you actively and consistently market yourself and your services.

For example, a couple of years ago, a client of mine organized an estate planning seminar. A short time later, he called to complain about the poor results.

“I didn’t get a single new client from the seminar,” he told me. Needless to say, I was horrified.

“Any?” I asked. “Didn’t you get a single deal?”

“Well,” he said, “a former client of mine got the invitation and came to the seminar. He’s going to do a couple of things.”

“And how much income will these ‘two things’ bring you?” I asked for.

“Oh, $ 50,000- $ 60,000,” he said. “But I’m not really giving you credit for that, because he was already my client.”

EXPECTATION IS NOT ALWAYS EQUAL TO ACHIEVEMENT

This is the kind of thinking that you probably have to overcome regularly within your company. Educating my client (with whom I still have a wonderful relationship) helped him understand something: if you don’t achieve exactly what you set out to do, that doesn’t make your effort a failure.

If my client had not been actively marketing, and had not taken the seminar, then his former client would not have received a promotion. If your client had not attended the seminar, the company would not have made an additional $ 50,000 in revenue.

The fact is, marketing initiatives almost never turn out exactly as expected.

Am I saying two contradictory things? Not at all. Your greatest successes will come by accident. But, you can only have these “happy accidents” if you put in the effort to design.

LUCK – WHEN PREPARATION MEETS OPPORTUNITY

“Luck,” said baseball great Branch Rickey, “is the residue of design.” I am sure that you or your attorneys have had this same experience. You were “lucky” and landed a great customer, and you were able to trace that luck in one form or another to an effort put in, even if it was just the effort required to go to lunch.

How do you balance good planning and hard work vs. chance and luck? First, you recognize that luck will rarely, if ever, come looking for you while you are sitting at your desk doing nothing.

MAKING ACCIDENTS HAPPEN

Here’s an analogy: Marketing is like dating. Let’s say you are single and you want to find a partner. Your chances of this special someone just showing up and knocking on your door are very slim, unless you have something with the delivery guys.

Instead, you have to go out and actively search, using the best plan you can think of. You may look for personal ads in the newspaper or on the Internet. Maybe place your own ad, one that reflects your own interests.

You will go to places and events (ski club? Dog show? Grocery store? Sports bar?) Where you can find people of similar inclinations. You will visit the “hot spots” where other singles hang out. You can invest in a new wardrobe or exercise more. You will accept all blind date offers. And most likely, you go out several times a week.

And how will you meet the person of your dreams? Probably not in the way you intended. You will not meet them on the internet or on a blind date. You won’t meet them at the party your friend is throwing. You will find yourself “by accident” behind the counter at the department store while shopping for a new shirt for that party.

But you wouldn’t have met if you hadn’t gone to the party.

WARRANTIES IN ANY WAY

If you want something to happen, you have to constantly put yourself “out there” where it can happen. Is there any guarantee that you will meet the person of your dreams on any given night? No. Is there any guarantee that you will meet someone after a month? No. And that’s what stops most people. They will not participate in any course of action that does not have a guaranteed result.

In marketing, as in dating, the expense is safe, the result is not. But there are very few such guarantees in life. Almost any action, including a visit to the local convenience store, requires some risk. In business, there is an almost exact correlation between risk and reward. The higher the reward you seek, the more you must be willing to be bold and daring.

If you expect a guaranteed return, a foolproof system, a risk-free course of action, you will be waiting a long, long time. And while you wait, life won’t. Things in your profession will change. Things in the broader economic markets will change. Those who are into aggressive marketing will be the first to recognize changes in the market, react and make a profit.

MARKETING IS NOT A SCIENCE

One of the most maddening things about marketing is that it resists all attempts to reduce it to a science. Like electricity, everyone knows it works, but no one knows why.

Old marketing joke:

It is common knowledge that 50% of marketing efforts don’t work. It’s just that no one knows what 50% is.

In movie making, dating, and marketing, there is an unbreakable guarantee. If you stay home and hide, you won’t find rewards, be they personal or professional.

To be successful professionally, you must relentlessly focus on income growth. Perfecting profitability, or worse, costs, is a recipe for paralysis. It never feels good to risk your money.

You must realize (or convince your partners of this): something more important than money is at risk by doing nothing: the livelihood of your company. If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got, maybe. To achieve new levels of profitability, there is no alternative to marketing.

Have you ever heard the expression, “This is an accident that is about to happen”?

So it is with marketing. It is an accident waiting to happen, a happy accident.