I just finished reading Seth Godin’s new book TRIBES. I highly recommend it. One of his key points is the concept of a figurative posture of “leaning in.”
“A marketer can offer a product, take orders, and move on. Or he can use interactions with prospects to create something more, to surprise and delight and generate far more…”
So that’s what it’s called. I have always tried to establish more than just an order when I work with a customer or client. Friends have sometimes even mocked me for “working too hard” and “going further than expected” and “wasting my time” with the lagniappes (Cajun for “a little extra”) I heap on my clients. Even though it WOULD sometimes seem like I was wasting my time or working too hard, it’s nice to know that there is a name for what I have done for my whole career. And that it might not have been so crazy.
Pay it forward…it feels pretty good.
“If you can connect to people in such a way that they will miss you if you’re gone and in a way that they will feel missed if they are gone, then you have created a tribe, and tribes are always more powerful than the alternative, which is yelling at the masses…”
--- Seth Godin, author, marketing maven