Jason is not always right

I was reading-up on some of my favorite China blogs and came across a post that asks a great big question about China.  Is Bribery necessary in China?  Here is the source: The Rise of The Dragon: Is Bribery Really Necessary?

So back to the question.  I think corruption is a terrible thing, but having dabbled in international business (who am I kidding, US too) I would say that it is very real.  I hate to say necessary, but yeah, In China it is.  Foreign firms can not own land in China, so if you own a factory their you HAVE taken part in China’s exciting world of corruption.  In order to get a permit to build, you need government permission.  To get permission, on some level someone was bribed or “greased” somehow.  It is literally impossible, and incredibly nieve to think other wise.  My info comes from a few friends and other third party sources, so I may be wrong, but I doubt it.  There are so many levels of beuracracy in China, to think that you can avoid the built-in corruption is again, nieve.

But isn’t bribery illegal?  Yes.  And didn’t they execute the health minister a couple years ago for accepting bribes?  Yes.  Good show huh.  China is good at that.  There are a lot of illegal things in China that you would think their GDP depends on.  Prostitution, child labor (at least us American’s ignorant definition of it,) and environmental pollution just to name a couple.  You see these everyday.  In fact, unless you hide in a fort made of blankets in your hotel room with the phone off the hook and the blinds closed, you can hardly avoid the above three.  Bribery is not quite that bad, but you get my point.

Great post by Seth Godin from a month or so ago.  As a marketer, it is always nice to be mentored.  Whether authors and bloggers realize they are mentoring or not, they are.  I have read this list a half dozen times since I first read it a year or so ago, and seeing that Seth has added some additional points at the bottom, and so I thought it would be nice to share.

I think each one of the points on the list could have a book written about them.  So take each one individually, and don’t go through it all at once and see it only as a list.  take some time and think about how each one can improve your business.

Source: Seth Godin, What every good marketer knows

I saved this post from a few weeks ago and wanted to share my thoughts on it.  In this post Seth talks about how the closer the consumer is to the pain, the more they are willing, and often are forced to pay for the good or service that they need.  In Seths post he says:

“The single easiest way to increase your fees is to get closer to the pain.”

I have been thinking about this idea a lot lately.  Lately at Seatability I have been trying to come-up with and identify the pain, or the void that motivates people to buy a Seatability bungee chair.  Going back to Godins statement above, I would make the argument that the same pain that is a motivator the closer the consumer gets to the pain is also the same motivator that comes into play at any time during the purchasing process.  Why do people buy your companies product?  The most basic answer is that your product fills a pain, or a need in their life.

If you can find that pain BEFORE they get close to the pain described in Godins post, you can afford to charge more from the very start.

Source: Seth Godin: Feeling the Pain