Ready For Some Wisdom!

Here's a quote from Twitter. It relates to talent development vs. talent identification. The context of the quote comes next. Ready for some wisdom via the world of sports?

Tom Byerトム•バイヤー

@tomsan106

Can’t beat teaching the basics, it’s highly underrated.

While Nike, post Michael Jordan, scoured the U.S. in search of the next Michael Jordan, foreign countries were focused on teaching young kids the basic fundamentals of ball handling. Currently, 1 out of 5 players in the NBA are foreign players. The past three MVP winners — Giannis Antetokounmpo, Jokic and Joel Embiid — are all international players. That group will include Luka Doncic someday as well. Talent Identification vs Talent Development, the later usually wins out in the long run. Football is no different. Raising the the bottom always pushes the top. Countries are too fixated on Elite Player development. Tiny countries are being taught how to identify potential talent from the tiniest of player pools instead of focusing more on Developing an army of kids who can just master a ball, the basics. This will automatically increase the Elite player pool organically. Many countries search for their Messi or Ronaldo. China searched for several years until they wised up and realized, out of their population of 1.4B people, they couldn’t find what they didn’t have. Same in India and Indonesia. Countries with the most populations seem to do the poorest when it comes to developing top players because they are being sold outdated models for development and not realizing their treasure chest are the millions of young kids that they need to just focus on, the basics! So yes, learning how to tie your shoes correctly before entering the court, is by far the most basic of basic skills needed before trying to learn how to dunk a basketball! (John Wooden, famous basketball coach, taught each player the proper way to tie shoes on the first day of practice each year).

Ok, I'm back! Do you know where I'm headed with this quote? Let's go to one sentence:

• Talent Identification vs. Talent Development, the later usually wins out in the long run.

Loyalty Programs are Talent Identification programs. You query your database, you identify the best customers, and you try to squeeze more juice out of the lemon.

Customer Acquisition efforts are Talent Development programs. You create awareness, the awareness leads to prospects, some of those prospects become customers, and some of those customers get to a point where Talent Identification determines those customers belong in a Loyalty Program.

I recall the blank stares I received thirty months ago when I posted that the best way to increase the number of loyal buyers is to increase the number of new customers. You could increase the number of loyal buyers by 10% or 20% via a loyalty program. Or, you could increase new customers by 20% every year and double the number of loyal buyers in five years.

I know this isn't what you want to hear - but we're marketing the wrong way, and your industry doesn't want you to know that.