Seth Godin is fond of saying that we must make our products and our companies remarkable, but it’s easier to say than to do (as Seth well knows). And I fear that some people just blow off Seth’s advice, because they hear “remarkable” as just another fatuous superlative, such as “great” or “fantastic” that is bereft of its original, more specific meaning. Remarkable means something that would cause someone to remark about it. So, how do we become remarkable?
Too many people have given up on being remarkable because they believe that it’s too hard. They think about a company such as Apple, with makes the quintessentially remarkable products and ask, “How could I ever do anything that remarkable?”
I’m here to tell you that you don’t have to.
In fact, one way to be remarkable has nothing to do with your product, but rather your attitude. Take a direct competitor to Apple, Dell Computer. Dell has made itself remarkable in recent years, not by its products but by its behavior.
When Dell was called out by Jeff Jarvis and others for its poor customer service (the entire “Dell Hell” debacle), it responded remarkably, not by ignoring social media but by embracing it, by engaging, and by changing it s corporate culture to be much more open and responsive. That approach caused many a positive remark in the blogosphere and has culminated in Dell’s IdeaStorm initiative, in which its remarkable corporate behavior is now causing its customers to bring it the ideas that might yet become the next remarkable product.
Take a page from Dell. If you don’t have any remarkable products, start acting remarkably toward your customers. Your customers might start to trust you enough to help you create remarkable products.
