"The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas."

Linus Pauling

Today:

If you want to be a good leader some day, you're going to have to develop the skill to come up with Big Ideas that will help your company grow and prosper. Today, I explain how to do this.

Plus:

Last-minute gift idea

A Christmas memory from the ETR/AWAI team

Ho, ho, ho!

The immortal "Follies" girls

What's a rusk?

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How to Come Up With Big Ideas That Will Make Your Business Succeed

If you want to be important to your business, take it upon yourself to try to figure out what your organization should be doing and where it should be heading.

This is what good leaders do. And the fact that you are not the designated leader now shouldn't stop you from acting like one. A fundamental rule for success is this: Do the work now that you one day hope to do. If you wait, the time may never come.

How do you -- a mere cog in the machine -- figure out what is best for your business?
Start with this: an idea. A single, small idea. Like a way to fix a paper machine that keeps jamming. Or a better way to head the weekly memos.

Think of a way to do something better than it is being done now. Talk about it. Write a memo. Push for its execution. Get in the habit of documenting all of your suggestions in writing so that when one of them changes the company's future and everyone else is trying to take credit for it, you'll have proof that it was yours.

Then get on to your next idea. And then another one. You'll notice that each time you communicate a new, small-but-good idea, two things will happen:

1. It will be easier for people to accept it as good.
2. It will be easier for you to come up with the next one.

Now, try a medium-sized idea. This might be about some problem with a process -- answering customer-service complaints, dealing with late shipments, overcoming the objections of a perennially cranky but important customer. Bolstered by the success you've had in solving small problems, you'll have little difficulty finding a good idea at this medium level of difficulty.

After your first idea is communicated, come up with more medium-sized good ideas. You can still suggest the occasional small-idea solution, -- but not as often. You've moved yourself up on the ladder of company problem solvers. Most of the smaller problems should be delegated to smaller thinkers. Don't say so directly. Just imply it.

Once you've secured yourself a position among the medium-level thinkers, you are ready for your first big challenge. You are ready to come up with the Big Idea.

Coming up with the Big Idea is a big task. It must be important enough to inspire followers, useful enough to create benefits (for your customers, your employees, and yourself), and cost effective. And, ultimately, it must be right. There is nothing so dispiriting and financially damaging as a Big Idea that changes systems, drains resources, taxes everyone's patience, and then falls flat on its face.

No wonder so few people are even willing to try.

Standing up in front of the company and making an argument for change takes guts. So, to be able to come up with big, new ideas, you have to have the courage to be wrong. And wise men derive their courage from thinking, planning, and testing.

To become (or maintain yourself as) the Big Idea man in your company, focus your thinking on the two or three areas that are critical to your business. For most businesses, these are:

1. generating efficient new sales to produce growth
2. creating vertical, back-end sales to boost profits
3. improving product quality to ensure customer retention

Each of these areas demands a different approach.

1. To come up with new selling ideas, you have to become a student not only of your own selling strategies but also of the selling strategies of your competitors.

When I consult with a business, I make it a policy to study every advertising campaign they have done in recent years, how it performed, what kind of customers it brought in, how much they spent, how much they refunded, etc. I do the same thing with their primary competitors. In the process, I begin to see the invisible links that support the most successful efforts. And ideas come to me. I wonder what would happen, for example, if A company used the pricing strategy of B company but with the copy approach of D company.

2. I use a somewhat different approach when thinking about possible back-end products. Here, I focus on the initial advertising campaign -- and try to understand what, exactly, the customers responded to. Were they interested in something that allowed them to work more productively? Or did they want a product that would project a certain image -- powerful, professional, or creative?

Once I've discovered the foundation of those initial sales, I have a psychological basis on which to create many back-end products.

I begin with the premise that what a customer bought once, he'll buy a second time. And what he bought a second time, he'll buy again. So, I create back-end products that have the same basic appeal as the lead-generating product but are different in respect to other factors: pricing, packaging, size, quantity, frequency, etc.

For example, a book that promises to make you feel better about yourself can be repackaged as:

a $79 audiocassette program
a series of $15 lessons
a $599 home-study program
a $1,950 two-day seminar

By constructing a simple grid with different prices along one axis and different packaging formats along the other, you can often come up with a dozen or more good back-end product ideas in a single sitting.

3. Coming up with good ideas for improving your product is relatively easy. All you need to do is ask.

Ask your customers by phoning them, writing them, e-mailing them, and surveying them. Keep in mind that sometimes they will give you answers that they think are "good answers" rather than truthful answers. So read between the lines. But if you ask them, they will tell you.

Ask your customer-service people -- as many as you can. They understand the major gripes, nagging issues, and market trends that influence your customers' decisions to buy (or not to buy).

Ask the people who make the product, especially those on the manufacturing line. Ask, "What is are the three best things about this product?" and "What are the three worst things about this product?" What they say might astonish you -- but also inspire you.

By doing your homework in these three critical areas -- front-end sales, back-end development, and product improvement -- a constant stream of good ideas will keep popping into your head.

Discuss these ideas with trusted colleagues -- and as soon as you have the wrinkles ironed out, present them at company meetings.

Don't just shoot from the hip. Carefully plan what you're going to say. Memorize the first and last sentences of your presentation. Make sure you have impressive and persuasive data to support your claims. Explain how the customer will benefit from the idea -- and then explain how the company will too. Summarize your main points succinctly.

Be prepared to have your Big Ideas rejected when you first suggest them. (Almost every one of the Big Ideas I've come up with have been.) But if you can be open to criticism and flexible enough to make sensible modifications, your Big Ideas will get better and better -- and your critics will eventually become your supporters.

(Ed. Note. The above article was adapted from MMF's soon-to-be-published leadership book. You can reserve a copy today for just $10, 50% off the cover price. To reserve your copy, please send your contact information to support@earlytorise.com, and a member of our team will call you to take your order.)

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Today's Action Plan:

Turn yourself into an idea-generating machine. Start today. Start small. Come up with one idea for doing something better than the way it is now being done.

Last-Minute Gift Idea

If you want to keep yourself in the head of an important client, send some sort of gift-of-the-month. Every 30 days, he'll be pleasantly reminded of you when he opens his box of wine, cigars, fruit, etc.

Christmas Memories from the ETR/AWAI Team:
"Grandma's Best," by Denise Ford

By the time I was 11 years old, I was the already the oldest of eight kids. And my Christmases were shared not only with siblings and parents but also with many friends and neighbors. During the holidays, our home became a warm meeting place where those without family -- like Sadie, the ex-Follies dancer (see "It's Good to Know," below), or the slightly eccentric Mary -- would join the family madness.

On Christmas Eve, the whole gang would venture out into the cold night air for caroling. The neighbors welcomed the kids with cookies and the parents with eggnog (perhaps laced with a little something to beat the chill). The last carol would be sung to Grandma (her birthday was on Christmas Day), who stayed back at the house to mind the fort. Then, everyone was off to St Agnes Cathedral for midnight mass.

In the morning, all the children would line up on the staircase before they were allowed downstairs to open their gifts. Christmas afternoon would bring a huge feast with turkey, creamed onions, giblet stuffing, cranberry sauce, and Grandma's buttermilk rusks (see "Word to the Wise," below) for all.

My best Christmas ever was on Grandma's 90th birthday. All us kids -- willing or not -- put on a talent show, with poems and stories and songs. Ending, of course, with her favorite Christmas carol.

It may have been the best one ever for Grandma as well.

Ho, Ho, Ho!

Our story takes place not too many years ago in Russia, at the home of an elderly couple, Ivana and Rudolph Raskalnikov. One day, Rudy looked out the window and said to his wife, "Look, honey. It's raining." She responded, "I don't think so, sweetheart. I think it's snowing." He
replied, "I think you're wrong, dumpling." She said, "I know I'm right, my precious. Step outside and I'll prove it." So they stepped outside and, lo and behold, discovered that it was, in fact, raining. Rudolph turned to his wife and said, "I knew it was raining. Rudolph the Red knows rain, dear!"

It's Good to Know: About the Follies Girls

The Ziegfeld Follies, created by the impresario Florenz Ziegfeld (1869-1932), was an annual review famous for its spectacular staging and "the most beautiful girls in the world." The Follies ran from 1907 to 1931.

The Follies "girls" were immortalized in Stephen Sondheim's 1971 musical, "Follies" -- which, despite a good run, was unprofitable because of the sheer size and pedigree of the cast.

Word to the Wise: Rusk

A "rusk" is a very hard, very dry, sweet biscuit -- originally prepared in South Africa by the Dutch.

Example: "These days, I prefer biscotti -- but when I was a child, I loved the wonderful buttermilk rusks my grandmother made for me."

MMF

Copyright ETR, LLC, 2003

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