As I stood outside the auditorium after my recent speech in Toronto, a striking grey-haired man beelined toward me and made a comment that made me twing.

“I need a word with you.  Stay here.”

I immediately began worrying.  Had my speech offended him?

He returned from the rest room and began his apparent complaint.

“Harry, my wife is an interior decorator here in the province,” he said. “Before she read your book The Invisible Touch, she was charging the going rate here, which was $55 per hour.”

“That sounds attractive,” I said.

“Yes, but she wasn’t that busy. She was billing fewer than 20 hours a week.”

I flinched, feeling a left cross could be coming.

“Then she read your sections about pricing, and decided to start charging $105 an hour.  And you know what happened?”

Don’t hit me, please don’t hit me.

“Her business has grown so much that now I have to do all the housework.”

I shouldn’t have been anxious, actually.  I’d heard three stories just like after previous speeches.  They all reinforce my mantra:  Price is not just price.  It’s a quality cue.

A higher price suggests that the quality simply must be there.

Some say this seems obvious, yett they never ask, “What does our price say about us?  Does it speak well of us?”

“Do we sound really good, incredibly affordable–or lost in the muddle in the middle?”

What do your prospects hear when you talk price?

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You don’t make things for your living. Instead, you make it providing something: a service.

How do you sell that?  To understand how, first compare your task to your car salesperson’s. The person didn’t have to do much, no?  You felt the smooth finish and the soothing comfort of the leather seat.  You heard the echoing thump of the car door closing and the hum of the engine.  Your car was visible, and your senses whispered to you, “this is the car you want.”

But what is your service? It’s invisible.  At the time your client “buys” it, your service is merely a promise that you will do something.  Your service doesn’t have a ten-coat paint job, leather seats, or an V6 engine that purrs.  Your prospects cannot see it.

How do you make your prospects believe in you, when only seeing is believing and it’s rare to buy something “sight unseen”?

Send visual clues. Prudential sends them with a rock and All State with two good hands. Investment banks deliver them with rich leather portfolios and Geek Squad with geeky white shirts and black ties. (Who ever forgets Geek Squad?)

If your compelling message is speed, copy One Hour Heating and Air Conditioning and feature a clock.

You’re a plumber?  Make a very tidy business card–out of waterproof plastic.

A freelance writer?  Make your card in the shape of a long pen.

Whatever you do, find some way to send a powerful and visible clue. Make your invisible visible.

–

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Take the phone that changed the mobile device business, Apple’s IPhone, and study its screen for five seconds.  Now ask: Where have I seen those colors before?

It’s hard to miss.

They’re the bright primary colors of your childhood toys.

The IPhone screen uses the same color pallete used by the Fisher-Price toys: Lime Green, Aqua, Trix Cereal Red, Cheerios box Yellow, Kix box Orange.  And see the symbols in the icons?  They are simple and playful.

Look at the IPhone icon for Messages.   What is that?  It’s one of those word balloons that your first saw as a child, reading cartoons.  It’s a cartoon word ballon.

Look at the color of the phone’s IPod symbol, then the Fisher Price Website, and you’ll see it: the cheery orange color for Fisher Price Babygear.  The purple ITunes symbol is Fisher Price “Shop” purple and its blue email symbol is “Games & Activities” blue.

“All that distinguishes men from boys,” we’ve heard, “is the price of their toys.”   The IPod shouts this with colors that call us back to our childhood: I am a toy.

Do you appeal to your prospects’ love of play?

If you have not seen it, go see it as soon as you’ve finished this.

http://bit.ly/xcBdXl

On the video, you see the photo of polar bear approaching a Siberian Husky in Manitoba, Canada.  The 1200-pound bear’s predatory stare makes it clear: the husky is lunch.  Then you notice the Husky’s body language, which tells you that he sees a different opportunity.  The dog is bowing with his tail wagging. It’s sending a message that every dog owner recognizes: let’s play!

The bear rises up with its claws retracted and opens itself to the Husky.  The two then come together and begin an unforgettable ballet.  They nuzzle and wrestle like mother and puppy; they play. In one particularly endearing photo, you see in the barely open eyes of the bear its bliss. That look reminds you of the purpose and result of our own play: delight.

Dr. Stuart Brown, who presented these photos at the May 2008 Art Center Design Conference in Pasadena, California, is among the researchers who have concluded that animals, including us, are programmed to play.  We need play to develop normally. Play-deprived adults often develop antisocial personalities, and play-deprived rats die.

Puppies and dogs, bears and cubs, babies and adults–play is basic to us.

Years ago this discovery led a historian named Johan Huizinga to offer that we should not be called homo sapiens, literally “wise men,” after all.  We should be called homo ludens: Man the player.

Our enterprises regularly overlook this.  They treat us like their vision of polar bears: serious, acquisitive, predatory.  But in the days that follow,  I will try to demonstrate the power of our drive for play, and how smart marketers have tapped into it.  (And you should, too.)

What do I love?  Just what you love: Play.

—

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Unwittingly perhaps, Kurt Vonnegutt once offered some excellent career and marketing advice.

In Vonnegutt’s God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, Mr. Rosewater Sr. realized early that his grandson Eliot lacked all the skills necessary to succeed in business.  Fortunately, he saw one ray of hope for Eliot.  There was one way that his hapless grandson might succeed.

“Eliot, one day an enormous sum of money will change hands,” grandad told Eliot at age 21.   “Make sure you are in the middle of it.”

Mr. Rosewater’s advice was echoing in my brain when a graphic artist recently asked me for career advice.

I said, “Just get out there in opportunity’s way.  Let it hit you.”

For all the talk about plans, dreams, and schemes for success, much of  success in life comes from accident.  Sometimes, success is just a matter of the seat you’re assigned on a flight to New York one afternoon.

People don’t want to spend time making decisions.  They have little time and less each year.  Someone meets you, likes you, and hires you.  Some people propose after first dates, after all.  Many people in business move just as fast.

This is the Collision Principle.  Get out there–period.  Eventually, luck will hit you.

—

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A musician plays notes, but listen carefully.  You realize that music comes not just from the notes, but from the silences.  Silence works.  Sometimes, it sings.

A friend comes to you seeking consolation.  You help her not with your words, but without them; you just listen.  Your silence works.

Your group convenes to plan.  Someone voices a good idea.  You nod in her direction and others notice.  Your silence works.

A client comes to you seeking help.  You can do that best by going so silent that all you hear are his needs, worries, and wishes.  His answer comes from your silence.

We live in the age of noise that drowns out the signals.  We have to escape to thrive.  So go quiet and then totally still, and you will realize the power of silence.  Silence makes notes sing, lets you help another person to see her way and feel her worth, and lets you hear–without interruption and with total clarity–the answers.

—

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Who shall I be?

How do I want to be perceived?

What’s my personal brand?

In truth, you have no options.  We decide.  And we’re smart.  Yes, you can fool us once.  But that’s your problem, because people who has been fooled feel foolish and resent the person who outed them.  They lose all trust in you.

Think of this.  You’ve seen several actors attempt different roles.  And no matter how hard they tried to portray someone else, they ended up playing themselves. Famously gifted as she is, Meryl Streep has made a career portraying slightly tweaked versions of Meryl Streep, but with different accents.

You’re trying to build your brand?  Be you.

You want a better image?  Be a better you.  Do better things, or do the things you do better.

Years ago, I wrote something that struck a chord so strong with a famous blogger that he inscribed it his company’s coffee cups.  The messsage applies to every person:

“The heart of a brand is not slick packaging, artifice, cleverness, or polish.  The heart of a brand is the truth.”

You want to build a stronger brand for the New Year?  Build better truth.

–

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Just watch everyone and anyone all day long.

Before work each day, most men read the news about play: the sports page.  (Most younger men read it online the night before.)  Well before lunch, over 20 million people recheck the performance of their fantasy teams–an obsession which has has transformed fantasy football into a billion dollar business and the subject of a popular television sitcom. (The League on FX, which previewed in October 2009.)

At breaks in office halls, more people replay Saturday’s and Sunday’s games and second-guess the coaches. Then they return, and close theira office doors (or hush their cell phone voices) to search for tickets for the next weekend’s game.

When they succeed, do they say they “got” tickets?  Heavens, no.  They scored some tickets.  They won.  In America, even getting tickets to a game is a game.

When we finally get down to work, we play.  We don’t add a client; we win the account. Or we won it while fishing for it, as our language suggests again: we landed the account.

Asked about their apparent lust for business, the very successful insist that it’s not about money.  “Money is just a way of keeping score,” they insist–and they mean it.  Money is the trophy, work is the game.

On our way home we we feel lucky and stop at a store to buy lottery tickets.  We do this in numbers beyond comprehension.  In 2008, Target, State Farm Insurance and Microsoft all earned over $60 billion in revenue.  But their successes paled to state lotteries.  The lotteries that year swallowed over $77 billion.  If America’s lotteries merged tonight into a single corporation, tomorrow they’d be our country’s 22d-largest and the world’s 71st largest company.

All day long, we love to play.

More than ever, people are recognizing people’s passion for play.  You want to get stronger and fitter, for example?  Go to Fitocracy.  As the site recognizes, “Fitocracy turns fitness into a social game.”  You record your workout data and compare it with others.  It lets you beat your goals–fitness’s answer to running’s “personal records”– and compete with others.

All day long, we love to play.

Do you and the service that you offer appeal to our love of play?

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