I was out looking at the list of people wanting to follow me on twitter when I came across this post and it hit me that there is a marketing niche within the problem. You can go to Tina McAllister's site and read it there or I have included her post here for your viewing.
The Curse of Perfectionism
I think my son is pretty darn near perfect.
If perfect means being utterly kissable when you first wake up in the morning and have dragon breath. And you wake up grumpy after a nap and whine about every single little thing. And you cry when the puppy scratches you even though you were the one teasing the puppy in the first place.
Yeah. That kind of perfect.
That’s a cute sort of perfectionism. Which I think most kids have. “Cute perfectionism” is what I’ll call it. Come on, people…let’s create a new buzz phrase!!
But there’s a perfectionism that isn’t cute. And it’s called being an unrealistic, anal-retentive freak. And there are some people I know who need to let their A-type shield go and just embrace the mundane like the rest of the free world.
I have a client who is cursed with perfectionism.
It’s okay. He doesn’t read my blog. So it’s not like I’m going to hurt his poor little type-A feelings or tick off his anal-retentive side.
This client won’t let his pursuit of perfectionism go.
And it’s driving me mad.
I edited his book MONTHS ago. And he’s still not finished.
Because he keeps adding.
And adding.
And adding.
Stuff.
Mind you, his field of expertise is a constantly changing animal. It’s scary to put things in print when they just might change within weeks or months and then you have this book, something in print, making you look like a doofus. I get it.
But seriously, this is out of control. His book should have gone to print about 4 months ago. At the worst, with his anal tendencies, 2 months ago. And yet, he is still tweaking it and getting it ready to send back to me.
I have thoughts (and suggestions) for you perfectionist whack jobs out there. But I don’t want them to get lost at the bottom of a long rant, so I’ll just save them for my next post. Because, yes, they are useful tips for perfectionists and how they can get their sanity back and use the changing field to their advantage.
So…are you cursed with the need for perfection?
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One Response to “The Curse of Perfectionism”
AZMike Says:
October 13th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
Tina,
As a marketer, you should help him use this quirk in his favor.
Let me explain, I follow Matt Furey, and he sent me an email letting me know about Charles Dicken’s from “A Tale of Two Cities” fame, among others. Well ol’ Charles and a number of top writers of his day sold their manuscripts by the chapter. Some actually would have a rough outline of the story, probably a chapter list but then each week or month or whatever they would sell their followers a new chapter. The story being written on a weekly business.
Now I am not suggesting your guy should dole out a chapter at a time, but how about using his “ever-changing” industry to his advantage? Release the book, have in the sales copy for the book or as a nice attractive bookmark included in the book or both a Nice notice that says, “Hey, you and I both know our industry changes so fast that just like computers, what is ‘State of the Art” today is tomorrow’s bargain sale merchandise. When you buy this product you get updates. You get access to my private website and monthly hardcopy newsletter with all the most recent updates, industry trends and even some inside scoops mailed to you.” All the client needs to do is fill out a form, (Name, Address, Email, Phone, etc).
You could use the constantly changing climate of his as his “strongest selling point”. Use that anal-retentiveness in your favor, his favor.
Dan Kennedy is one of the guru’s I follow and try to pay attention to. Dan made the comment once that he had never learned how to get a steady stream of clients coming into his “sales funnel”. Dan wrote his books to help with that but he still constantly was manually filling the pipe. Well Dan is quite successful, some say he’s worth 25 Million (I bet it is more). Dan sold off his resell writes to one of his students… Kimble? And when he had been doing with Bill Glazer for awhile he wanted to cut back on his workload so he sold his “No B.S. Inner-Circle Newsletter” to Glazer. It was probably a pretty sweet deal for Dan, he is a marketer and world class copywriter. Well I had heard the first year Bill had it he tripled the size of the members and he did away with the lowest rung(silver) of the Inner-Circle membership(except for Paul Hartunian?). How did Bill grow this so fast? Bill gave away three month memberships to the newsletter, people paid $9.95 for the shipping and unless they cancelled they were put on “auto-till”. So after 3 months the free membership turned into a 39.95/month program.
This is another point you and your client can use, Bill used host-beneficiary relationships that Dan Kennedy himself had established but never capitalized on. Dan had various levels of his Inner-Circle, the top being Platinum(Around $32,000 per year with a limit of 18 memberships). These were held like 3 or 4 times per year, great big Masterminds with all members sitting around letting everyone else in on everybody’s secret marketing steps. Well Bill took the newsletter to all of these marketers with their own individual followers, as well as the other levels of the Inner-Circle(Gold and Gold+). There was some sort of agreement where those members that endorsed the Glazer-Kennedy Inner Circle to their followers received a cut of everything those New members bought. Who are the host-beneficiary relationships in your clients business that he could be endorsed to their followers?
AZMike
P.S. Also on getting the contact information, you could have your client find three or four Joint Venture partners that share that information and pay for the manufacture/delivery of those ‘updates’ and in return they get a 1/2 page ad delivered to this “hungry market’.
______________________________________________(End of Post on Tina's site but not end of this post.)_______
I may be stretching the idea that this is a marketing niche but it has to stretch your mind a bit. What might have been the advice you would give Tina? Here is the link to her post if you want to add it there.
AZMike
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