Читать книгу Oversubscribed - Daniel Priestley - Страница 17

In a busy marketplace in Bali, I wandered from stall to stall glancing at the products on display in front of my hotel. Merchants thrust before me pairs of sunglasses, shirts, watches, rugs, trinkets and even a kitchen sink (literally). After several days of this I had become immune to their advances and easily brushed passed anything that didn't take my interest. No amount of shouting at me, tugging my shirt or grabbing my hands worked to get my attention in this noisy marketplace.

As I looked across the market, I saw a familiar face. It was a work friend whom I had done business with a few years earlier. I made my way past the bustling street vendors and tapped my friend on the shoulder with a warm “what a pleasant surprise to see you here!” He looked up and his expression shifted from stoically blocking out his surroundings to smiling warmly at my familiar face in an instant. We immediately decided to grab some food and a cold beer on the beach for a catch‐up. During the conversation we talked about business and identified several opportunities we could be working on; we parted ways and completed a deal over email in the weeks that followed.

The world has become a noisy marketplace full of vendors thrusting their products in front of people hundreds of times each day. It's had the effect of conditioning people to become numb to most forms of marketing. In a noisy market gimmicks don't work, hassling people doesn't work and interrupting peoples' day doesn't work.

The one thing people will never grow tired of, however, is seeing someone they know, like and trust who appears out of the crowded sea of unknown faces. You must lay the foundations for people to get to know you, like you and trust you at scale.