Friday, July 01, 2005
Master Artisan & Expert Technician
By Christine Regan Lake
The key to business success in the current marketplace is to embrace the concept of being both a Master Artisan, as well as an Expert Technician.
If you think back to the gilded age of this country’s growth you can see many examples of Master Artisan’s work. Take a walk through any historical home and see lots of examples; a hand carved mahogany fireplace, hand painted murals or hand blown glass collectibles. In the gilded age, a sophisticated buyer might wait months for a finished piece from a well known craftsmen.
Today, however, being an artist is not enough. That is because today, there is nothing like the power of NOW. In today’s market, you must be both a creative genius and master technician – meaning that you can deliver exceptional work in a fast turnaround time.
Given that time and convenience are major factors that directly influence a buyer in their purchasing decisions, it is important that whatever your chosen field of endeavor may be – that you truly are both a master artisan and expert technician.
For example, you can have an incredibly creative web designer that people are dying to have build their website, but if that designer is working from a Gilded Age mentality: “It’s a work of art and it will be done when it is done” they won’t have many customers. Both B2B and B2C customers have lofty ambitions when hiring a vendor for any reason. In general, they want a work of art, at a discount price and delivered within a few hours or days.
When I use the term ‘artisan’ I use that liberally in the sense that there is an art and science to any position whether you are a lawyer, accountant, creative director, designer, architect, salesmen, etc. The idea is that you want to make sure that you work consistently month-after-month, year-after-year expanding your skills and abilities in both the art and science of your business.
To help expand your creative ability in your job maybe you need to find a completely unrelated outlet that will enable you to open up, connect with yourself and allow your mind to dance. For some that may mean picking up your old guitar, taking a painting class or taking pen to paper. The challenging part of strengthening one’s creative side is that it is not nearly as straight forward as strengthening the science. One can easily take an advanced course, attend a seminar or read several books to become a better technician.
The inimitable Leonardo D’Avinci was a professed renaissance man who was most notably known as an artist, but he was also a scientist and mathematician among other things. He strongly believed that his painting strengthened his abilities as a scientist and vice versa. Allowing his mind to leave one realm completely to enter another made it stronger when it would return again later.
The key is that if you make incremental improvements in each of these areas over time your creativity will flourish and your projects will be done more efficiently and effectively. This in turn, will be reflected in your sales and profitability.
Creativity will allow you to charge a premium and efficiency will enable you to maximize your profits.
If you have a question for the Maniacal Marketer, please send it to cregan@maniacalmarketer.com.
Christine Regan is the president of Redlake, Inc, www.redlake.tv, a marketing and sales agency in New York.
© Intellectual Asset Management, LLC 2005
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