Back in the 50’s when Science Fiction was coming up as a literary genre, a critic challenged the author Theodore Sturgeon and said:
"90% of Science Fiction is crud".
To which Sturgeon replied with the immortal – and actually quite profound – observation that
"90% of everything is crud".
Now I’m not all that informed on AI, but when I look at what’s being done around me, in my little sales & leadgen bubble, it seems that 90% of AI deployments are crud as well. Where ‘crud’ is me using a very generous euphemism.
Sure, it’s a useful technology, but people are using AI and automations blindly, going for more and more volume, but ‘more’ is never the solution to ‘too much’.
And let’s face it: we already have too much advertising, too much spam, too much crappy content, and far too much of the annoying and irrelevant automated untargeted ‘personalised’ outreach.
We have a world full of noise optimised for what appeals to the largest common denominator in society, and now we also get it ‘personalised’ to hundreds and hundreds of different demographics, in ever larger volumes.
And using a technology to simply do more of what is statistically most likely to generate profit doesn’t seem like a solution to anything meaningful.
But we started our businesses in order to do something useful, and relevant, and meaningful… didn’t we?
Aren't we in business to make a difference?
I know I am. And I know that in order for my people to want that difference, I need to look for the discerning, those who think, the ones who observe the trends and are willing to buck them.
These are the people I want to help, these are the people I can help.
And these are the people who expect and demand quality – both of themselves and of their world.
And, these are the people who don’t respond to outreach, marketing or a sales process that lives in the 90% crud area.
The people who like to interact with me and buy from me, are the people who appreciate my ongoing efforts to be in the 10% quality area, where my marketing and sales are concerned.
This is why my outreach process is manual. It’s why I invest time in someone before I ever reach out.
It’s why I don’t let a machine write my messaging: Instead I burn through my own brain cycles to communicate with people, instead of burning through dinosaur bones.
And this works. It filters for just the right people, who – and isn’t that surprising – themselves are quality people.
Here’s why this might matter to you:
Yes you can compete with everyone else who’s trying to optimise for the largest common denominator.
But that means you’re competing with almost everyone else who’s also doing that, and the only way to win that game is by doing things better, and doing more of it.
And even if you would be able to be the best, or even better than the majority, both of which are practically impossible to achieve, you’re not the richest and that means you won’t be able to compete on volume. There will always be someone else with a bigger advertising budget, and it ain’t no fun to compete against those people.
But you don’t have to, if you know how to think.
When you see a huge and obnoxious sea of cruddy marketing and messaging, you know exactly what to not do.
Competing in the 90% area means you’re looking to win on averages, and what you’ll get will be average, but only if you become the best amongst average peers. Which is hard to achieve and crappy to boot.
But if you make yourself stand out by carving out your own path, you might just end up with results that are far, far above average.
It works for me, it works for my clients, and it might work for you as well.
The net upshot of it?
Compete in the 90% and you get crappy clients on a bad day, average ones at best…
Or, compete by being highly personal and unmistakably you, and you end up with dream clients who are happy to spend money with you.