Fly on the E-Commerce Cyberwall

Stretching Your Way to Success
Here's a favorite quote from C.S. Lewis:

"Aim at heaven and you get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither"

In the post I did a couple of days ago, I expanded on an excellent post I had read on another blog. One thing I didn't mention, though, was that the first comment made about that blog was a rather skeptical one.

The topic was about ensuring that whatever you presented to potential customers had great value in it. It broke down the different aspects of giving value and what you could accomplish by it in the long run.

That comment that stuck in my mind, though, heaped a healthy dose of skepticism on the whole subject. The person said something along the lines of, "Yeah, sure, but I can't see just giving and giving and giving away everything for free and then crossing my fingers and hoping that something good comes out of it."

That's the way that many business owners look at it. "Giving is bad; getting is good. If I can get with as little giving as possible, I've won and they've lost."

Marketing is not a zero-sum game, though, any more than Lewis viewed faith -- and God. Our world is set up -- created, if I may use that term in this context -- as something where the more you focus strictly on getting for yourself, the more you lose out on what you could have gotten.

It's a paradox, but I've seen it over and over again. Sure, those who focus strictly on what they get may seem to be ahead for a time. But in the end, they always lose. And those who focus the most firmly on themselves, lose the biggest.

It may engender skepticism from some, but giving value is indeed the best route to getting -- many times getting far more than you could have imagined -- sometimes in surprising ways.
Jeff

Labels: inspirational quotes