Assume you attend a conference. The speaker gives you six techniques, 'best practices' as she calls them, that are guaranteed to improve the ability of an e-mail message to drive sales.
The speaker is an expert, and has mined information from numerous companies to develop her point of view.
Do you take her advice? Do you go back to your company, and implement her ideas? Or do you discount her expertise, because you perceive her ideas "don't work" in your culture, or don't work with your customers?
I get perturbed when somebody who doesn't work at my company tells me that my company is not employing best practices.
And yet, if you assume that the presenter is pure of intent, there's a good reason the presenter shared these ideas with you ... they probably work!
How do you filter the ideas you hear from presenters at conferences?
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Common sense is largely underrated in this case. Often folks are intimidated by experts and their lingo that they out common sense on hold and implement all that the guru suggests.
ReplyDeleteI had a woman question me today. I told her that a certain idea was maybe 80% as effective as another --- she asked me if her company should change course.
ReplyDeleteIn spite of my comment, I told her not to --- I told her to test the idea at her company, and if it worked, then great. Certain ideas that perform 'below average' can outperfom other ideas in individual situations. It's always good to do testing, and chart your own course.
Kevin:
ReplyDeleteI couldn't agree more. We seldom hear someone recommend testing and yet it is a powerful and economical way to verify our business assumptions. In the DM/Catalog world testing seems to have become and automatic afterthought rather than the solid tool it should be