MY FIRST TOY
As a child of the 70’s, it may not be surprising to hear, that the first toy I recall vividly having was an Action Man. I can clearly remember the daredevil adventures that he undertook in my hands.
“Parachuting” without a chute from the second-floor window of our home.
“Rafting” down streams on a scrap piece of timber.
Getting run over by tanks – yes, a friend had the Scorpion Recon “tank”.
He was indestructible. At least to my young mind at the time.
It is only now, many decades later, that I wonder if those memories subconsciously influenced my decision to join the British Army as an officer? Oddly enough, I did indeed get run over by a tank – albeit lying at the bottom of a trench on Salisbury Plain.
Or may have led me to believe that I was indestructible when I rode a moped through minefields in Cambodia in my mid-twenties.
Question: Do you still recall your first toy?
What if your software business was as unforgettable in the minds of your ideal prospects?
THE IMPORTANCE OF A MEMORABLE BUSINESS
One problem that many software tech businesses suffer, is that they are just not MEMORABLE. In fact, many are instantly forgettable. So easy to get confused with other companies that clients will end up buying from competitors who “look” like them.
Question: If you or your business is not MEMORABLE, what do you have?
Probably a headache and an expensive sales process. By not being MEMORABLE you will experience a lot of hard work, that will go nowhere. The real hard slog. Lots of wasted time, effort and with that wasted money.
We have all experienced this phenomenon. How many times have you watched a presentation that you have forgotten before you even got home?
It is one of the critical elements that we found in our past 3 years and on-going study of the fastest growth companies. The exceedingly rare 1% had the quality of being MEMORABLE in a way that the rest didn’t.
Now being MEMORABLE does not mean that you have to wear a red nose and do magic tricks everywhere you go. But you do need a number of important elements that build-up to create a business that is not forgotten quickly.
I don’t think I have a poor memory, but I have on several occasions had a salesman contact me and just a week later I could not even remember what they did. Just some vague recollection of the name. I think you are likely to have experienced the same.
EMOTIONS
From a psychological and science perspective there are various reasons for something being MEMORABLE or not. The first is that we need to have some form of emotional connection.
Emotions are one of the ways that our brains decide if something is important or not and if it should be stored in our long-term memory. It’s like a filtering system to ignore the unimportant.
VISUALS
Our brains are more adept at quickly processing visual images which is due to our survival mechanisms. Consequently, we are more drawn to visual images that communicate then we are words. Especially, lots of words.
If you know anything about memory techniques is that to retain information most people remember information visually. In fact, the memory techniques that are taught by memory experts are always very visually based and use very few words.
THE SCIENCE
According to research in 2008 by Brady & Konkle, the widely held assumption that visual memories lack detail is wrong. They showed that long-term memory can store a massive number of details. Participants in the study viewed 2,500 pictures of objects over the course of five and a half hours.
Afterwards, they were shown pairs of images and indicated which of the two they had seen. A remarkable recall performance of 92% accuracy was achieved. The human brain is amazing at long term visual recall.
Carefully designed visuals can create powerful mental images in the minds of your ideal clients. Visuals that can be easily remembered to make your business more MEMORABLE.
I have my first childhood toy on my business card .
It’s a great conversation starter! As well as a memorable beginning to any meeting.
The other factors that can be used to be MEMORABLE include:
- Being RELEVANT: for your specific audience and how you do that
- PUNCTUM: how you pull in your audience. Make them interested and want to LEARN more by using a PUNCTUM hook to remember (yes, you can ask us to explain that – just message us)
- CSX: Competitive Space eXperience in this context means not too much information at any one time so that you overload your audience. If you do effectively it is like trying to store more information in a full buffer memory. Information’s spills out and the meaning and understanding is typically lost
If you have found this topic of interest then please link with more on Linked-In if you have not already done so. I will occasionally send you a few more insights about what makes the top 1% of software companies successful.
All the very best,
Neil