A few of my friends now have grandchildren. My wife and I have a 3-year-old foster child.

She is in addition to three children of our own, two of them teenagers. We’re exhausted. All the time.

Our foster daughter (I’ll call her “Rose”) has been with us a year and a half. We’d love for Rose to be with us forever. Well, not forever. We’d like her to go to college some day.

But right now, she remains our foster daughter. While the case plays out in the court system.

In the past year and a half, my wife and I have been to court three times. The reason is to assess whether Rose’s mom has made any progress.

Has she taken enough steps in the previous six months to get her children back?

The family story is classic (and tragic) – and  too sordid to detail here.

At least iron your shirt

For the last hearing, our foster care agency prepared a 25-page brief with DCFS (Department of Child and Family Services), which recommended a change in goal:  from “return home” to “permanency.”

That was bad for the mom (and good for us). If the judge approved the change in goal, the case would move towards termination of the mother’s rights.

My sense is that only the mom’s attorney, the public defender, read the brief before walking into the courtroom. Most everyone else seemed to wing it. Or skimmed the brief while waiting for the hearing to start.

Rose’s “guardian ad litem” – the attorney assigned to Rose by the state to act on her behalf – looked as if he had just rolled in from an all-night bender.

Unshaven. Wrinkled shirt and suit. Hole in his suit pants. Rosy cheeks.

“You’re the foster parents of who?” he asked when we walked into the building. He asks the same question every time we see him.

He is a caricature of a lawyer in the social welfare system.

One bright light

My wife and I wished that the public defender for the mom had been Rose’s guardian ad litem.

The public defender had a strategy: He called our agency’s case worker to the stand. He tried to show that she was preventing the mother from success. He then put his client, the mom, on the stand, so she could testify to the agency’s wrongs against her.

Neither the state’s attorney or the guardian ad litem said much during the hearing.  The guardian ad litem made a snide comment about the mom when the judge asked him if he wanted to cross-examine her. He said he didn’t, because the more she opened her mouth, the more he didn’t believe her.

It was a nice touch. As if the mom needed more humiliation.

Dignifying the moment

While I was annoyed with the argument of the public defender during the hearing, I admired that he just didn’t show up. He certainly could have. I suppose you could argue, cynically, it is in his best interest to prolong the case. But at least he was on point.

I can’t remember who said that 80 or 90 percent of life is just showing up. Probably Yogi Berra.

There is something wonderfully ennobling, though, about preparation, even if it is for a losing cause. Even if your client isn’t paying the bill. Even if you graduated at the bottom of your law class.

It’s always a bit tempting to rest on experience. To wing it. But every meeting or opportunity demands at least a modicum of  forethought. Perhaps that’s the only real difference between the top of the class and the bottom.

In spite of Rose’s guardian, the judge changed the goal to permanency.

I have been a fly fisherman for 30-plus years. Even lived in Montana for a couple years and in Colorado for several more.

Yet, I’m still breathlessly average in every aspect of the craft.

As part of my mid-life journey, I’m currently reading Gary Borgor’s, Fishing the Film. I can do better than a C minus, right?

The film is the few molecules of skin that constitute the surface of the stream or body of water.

In general, trout feed on nymphs bouncing along the the bottom of the river. And on emerging insects a few inches below, in, or on the film:  the water’s surface.

Thus, the importance of the film for fly-fishers.

Insects start out as eggs at river’s bottom. As they mature,  they rise to the surface, eventually pushing their way through the film and becoming a full adult that sits on the surface and eventually flies away, if not eaten or crippled. To live for a few hours to mate. And then to die.

A short (unhappy?) life.

Predator’s advantage

Borgor says that the #1 job of a fly-fisher to think like a predator. In the animal kingdom, for example, lions become experts in their prey by watching their movements.

In contrast,  humans read, take a class, gape at a computer screen for a webinar. That’s helpful. But not nearly enough.

The most productive activity is to observe your prey. And thus the problem:  “Unfortunately, humans almost never want to spend time observing,” writes Borgor.

That requires patience. And a genuine interest in the subject.

What a prospect cares about

Borgor’s comment made me think of prospects. The application is not that prospects are prey. They are not. And if you think they are, you have bigger problems.

The takeaway is the importance of more deeply understanding the people who you want to join your cause or service. They don’t think like you. Nor are they thinking about how smart you are. Or that you “deliver results.” Or that your organization is “global.”

After years of meetings, proposals, and presentations, I have concluded that prospects are not thinking of me or my firm at all (at least not in the way I obsess about me!).

They think about themselves. Period.

And the more questions I ask, the more I am able to “observe” them.

A prospect recently paid me an off-handed compliment as we stood up to leave after lunch: “Normally I’m the one doing all the listening,”  he said. “Thanks for letting me talk today.”

Observing can lead to trust.

What would motivate an athlete to commit to your football program?

The son of a friend vacillated between two great choices: a Division 1AA university and small Division 3 college.

The 6′ 5″ high school senior liked the idea of playing for the small college, which recruited him hard. The campus was only an hour away from home, and has a strong academic reputation.

But there are no athletic scholarships at a D3 school. The NCAA prohibits them. And the school gives no quarter. You’re pretty much on the hook for the entire $40K per year, if accepted. That is no small number.

After being courted by several schools, the athlete’s final decision came down to the wire. He chose the larger university, with almost a full ride.

What was your name?

I’m not sure the decision came down to money, however.

When the student visited the D3 school, as part of the recruitment activities, the head football coach met with the athlete and his mom. The coach made an emotional, 20-minute pitch to recruit the player.

The coach recounted his own decision to attend the very same college, some thirty years earlier, relaying his ACT score (really?). The coach trumpeted what a great athlete he (the coach) was in the day. The coach was all about the coach. The rah-rah lost some air when the coach paused during one of his motivational rants and said, “Ryan, right? That’s your name, right? Ryan?”

Apparently, the small college wasn’t a place where everyone knows your name. Ryan’s mom was not impressed.

Size with values

A few weeks later, the family (Dad, Mom, and the player) visited the program at the larger university, which is at least four times bigger than the smaller college.

When the father and mom walked into the athletic facility on campus, without their son in tow (he was at a meeting with the head coach), one of the assistant coaches said, “Oh, there are the Johnson’s. How are you doing?” The assistant greeted both the father and the mother by their first name.

Not only did the coaches know who Ryan was, they immediately recognized the parents and greeted them by name.

I doubt that was by accident. Someone (probably the head coach) had championed the value of community, and the assistant coaches probably spent some time going over photos, learning the faces and names of the parents and their athlete. Their job one was making sure Ryan’s family knew they were part of the Family.

The scholarship no doubt had some bearing on the athlete’s decision, but after listening to his parents, I wonder just how much.

Big isn’t necessarily impersonal, and small isn’t always intimate. It’s always about the values, and the small things that communicate those truths.

How do prospects come to trust a person, product, or firm?

Prospects make what appear to be snap judgments that are not based, necessarily, on the best rational choice for them. It’s more akin to the alchemy of love than to the step-by-step process of solving an algebraic problem. Crassly, it can be likened to how men in a crowded bar crank their heads when a beautiful woman sashays in. There’s a nanosecond of appraisal and then judgment: smokin’ hot!

The emotion is primitive, visceral, and, of course, in this instance, quite shallow—but the impression is often permanent.

Trust is not lust, of course. So the bar analogy may be more provocative than it is instructive. But whatever the science behind the emotion, trust is not purely rational, at least not initially. That is, chemistry precedes performance. Prospects must trust that you deliver results before they’ve experienced it. “The door to trust is opened emotionally and instinctually,” says Bruce Philp, coauthor of The Orange Code. “Only after that is it about performance.” No doubt you have to deliver on what you promise (back to reality), but not initially.

That’s why to prospects, the language of chest-thump-ese is gibberish.

Prospects and existing customers simply don’t think like folks trying to market to them.

I just returned from a trip out West, and of the four legs of the flight there and back, three were delayed. One was due to weather, the other two because of “mechanical failure.”

I wondered if the pilot shared too much information with us when he said, “The motor that runs the flaps is not working properly.” He then explained that generally the motor runs in two speeds, slow and fast, and that the fast was broken. Too much information, I thought. I wanted a new plane.

But soon we were off.

Not minutes after I arrived home, I downloaded my email and got this message from Delta about the delay on the outbound portion of the trip:

“We are very sorry that your flight was delayed on January 23, 2012. Your feedback on this experience is important to us. We ask that you please provide feedback on your experience while at Chicago-O’Hare Intl Airport using the survey at the link below. The survey is between 4 and 12 questions, targeting your specific circumstances, and should only take a couple of minutes to complete. We thank you in advance for your feedback and again offer our deepest apologies for this inconvenience.”

Really? Now I should be inconvenienced to take a survey after I was inconvenienced by the delay?

What will they really learn from survey results? That I was annoyed? That I exhibited the emotion of impatience, then resignation? Despair? What?

What if I were serene? Detached from the inconvenience?

Maybe the airline should just give us all a voucher for our next flight (or simply for our next drink) and call it good. No questions asked. Warm feelings all around.

That’s what a customer thinks.

Customer service is still so often an oxymoron. I’m always amazed how ebullient I feel when a company makes good on its promises.

Our home computer had a virus with more tentacles than a octopus. After trying to download anti-virus software to aid my anti-virus software, I finally gave up. The virus had stolen my browser. I was cooked.

My anti-virus software was McAfee, so I called the anti-virus software company, and they offered me an $89 option to solve the problem. They’d take control of my computer remotely. And fix the problem.

And within an hour so, I was able to use the computer again. Voila!

The next day, I received a call from a gentleman who, clearly, had his feet up on a desk in India. I struggled to untangle his English. He was from McAfee. It was a customer satisfaction call. He asked, “Are you happy with the service?”

“Absolutely,” I said.

“What?”

I realized he didn’t under my exclamatory. I said, “I am happy with the service of McAfee. Yes.” I repeated my satisfaction.

“Very good,”

Then I hung up. Happy with the service. Annoyed at the inconvenience of expressing my joy in plain English.

About 3 minutes later the phone rings again. It’s my friend again. He had talked with the technician. And the technician said that there was no virus on my computer. He simply unchecked a box that had to do with my proxy settings – and then he re-installed the anti-virus software.

Then the customer service person, whom I could barely understand, or barely wanted to understand, said, “We will refund your money.”

Yep, the computer works, and my $89 is back in my checking account (in 5 to 7 business days).

So, it truly isn’t what you say (or the accent with which you say it), it’s what you do.

P.S. Update:  The computer really did have a virus. A few days later, I had more problems. But I still felt a inner tingly feeling from McAfee’s honesty.

Every American Indian tribe (and every Texan and Mexican) feared the Comanches in the 1800s.

Their rise to dominance is in part a story of positioning strategy. I’m just finishing Sam Gwynne’s recent book, Empire of the Summer Moon – a riveting narrative on the rise and fall of one of the most feared tribes in American history. Only the Sioux on the northern plains come close to the Comanches’ ferocity.

The Comanches’ ascent can be traced clearly to their expertise in raising, breaking, and riding horses. Over the course of about 200 years, the tribe developed a specialty in handling horses. Consequently, the Comanches made their living by hunting buffalo and warring against other tribes (stealing their horses) and, eventually, killing the white man. The tribe had no patience for subsistence farming.

At a young age, Comanche boys had a horse to ride. By the time they were in their teens, a young brave could sweep up off the ground a wounded comrade at full gallop. For years, the Comanches raided and slaughtered the frontier settlers, including the Army and even the early Texas Rangers. For example, when chasing and then engaging the Comanches after a raid on a settlement, pursing soldiers would dismount their plodding Army horses to shoot their muskets. It took a minute or so to reload the rifle.

But the Comanches would stay on their mustangs, which were much leaner and faster than the those of the soldiers, and charge into a line of standing soldiers. By the time it took to reload a musket, a Comanche brave could shoot a dozen or more arrows while hanging on to the side of a horse at breakneck speed.

Eventually, the inexorable advance of the white man pushed out the Comanches. The white man slowly learned to ride more like a Comanche warrior – on a fast horse. And then came the game-changer: the Walker Colt, the repeating revolver. Then it was the white man’s turn to slaughter the Indians.

The simple point is that power comes from being really good at something. Ergo, one thing. Consequently, you develop a reputation (and a messaging strategy) for that one thing.

The specialist position is really the only tenable marketing strategy in today’s explosion of organizations, services, and products.

I like coffee, and I’m not a snob.

I enjoy Starbucks, but I’ll drink almost any other brand, including drip from a greasy spoon.

In recent years, I’ve stopped dreading our stops at McDonald’s for our kids while traveling to and from our vacations. When McDonald’s got serious about coffee a few years ago, it put Starbucks on notice. I read the recent Harvard Business Review interview with Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, and he had sharp words for his lower-cost competitors:

“… McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts were on the very low end. Let’s characterize them as willing to do anything to capture or intercept customers – free coffee, coupons, say anything, do anything. We respect them as companies, but we didn’t respect their practices.”

I thought that part of the interview sounded a bit whiny. It is business, after all.

Recently, I witnessed McDonald’s “interception policy” firsthand while on a weekend getaway with my wife.

We stopped at an interstate oasis about a hour from our home. In addition to the gas station, the rest area had several shops, including Starbucks and McDonald’s. The two were less than a dozen steps from each other.

If you were standing in line at the Starbucks, however, you couldn’t see the McDonald’s counter, because it was around a corner.

But McDonald’s had put up a visually engaging menu on an empty wall that Starbucks customers saw while standing in line to order – its interception policy.

The first thing I observed: the latte that I planned to order from Starbucks was almost $1 less at McDonald’s!

See the two photos.

I would argue that McDonald’s creative for their menu is more enticing than is Starbucks’.

I toyed with the idea of stepping out of line at Starbucks to walk around a corner to McDonald’s but didn’t. I bought at the premium price. But as soon as I began drinking the latte, I thought, “What am I thinking? Why am I paying more for the same thing?”

I’m not sure that’s the power of a brand. It may simply be a testament to my laziness. Either way, Starbucks won that afternoon.

So can the premium (high cost, high perceived value) survive in a down economy?

Melissa Parks, CZ’s editorial director, thinks so: “The reason I would NEVER buy a latte from McDonald’s is because I associate everything that McDonald’s produces as artificial. Case in point: their Chicken McNuggets. That’s not real chicken. So, when I contemplate drinking a latte, I question if it’s going to be a real latte, or if it’s riddled with all that artificial stuff that keeps their costs down.

“Another reason I would never buy a McDonald’s coffee is because I look at the moms on the playground who drink it, and (I’m being completely honest here) I don’t associate with them. Their experience, based on my prejudice, is not my experience. If I began drinking McDonald’s coffee, I would belong to a different tribe – a discount tribe, and one I really don’t want to be part of. I like being part of the Starbucks tribe – even if it means not drinking a cup every day. I’d rather have a Starbucks latte a couple times a week than a McDonald’s latte every day.”

Customers in North America are finnicky, aren’t they?

Several weeks back my family and I attended a Chicago Cubs baseball game.

Yes, they lost. In the 12th inning.

As we walked out of Wrigley, a middle-aged homeless-looking guy stood in the middle of the sidewalk with a cardboard sign: “Why Lie? I need money for cold beer.”

Gutsy, I thought. But I didn’t reach for my spare change.

Three other stories of need: The other day as I was exiting Starbucks, an apparently homeless man asked me for a Passion Ice Tea Lemonade with sweetener. He was specific, if not tactful.

A couple weeks ago, as I was driving from Boulder, CO, to Denver, a man with a deeply tanned face textured like that of a lizard skin, stood at the exit off 36 and held up a cardboard sign saying he was out of work. I averted my eyes as my car slowed at the top of the exit ramp.

As he walked past my car, he pulled out a purple mobile flip phone out of his back pack and took a call.

Last week, while leaving a downtown Chicago restaurant at around 10 PM, I turned down Clark and stopped at a light. A woman who appeared to be in her mid-twenties emerged out of the darkness, ran up to the front passenger window of my car, and screamed at me, “I’ve got a baby in car and I’ve just run out of gas. You have to help me now.”

It’s all messaging, subtle and not so.

A man walks into a bank.

All he wants to do is deposit a check. He should have trusted his instincts and used the ATM.

He is greeted by the sentinel guarding the door at the customer service desk, “Hello, welcome to Chase Bank. How may I help you?”

He averts his eyes: “I just want to deposit a check.”

The sentinel persists: “We can have one of our personal bankers help you.”

“No, really, I’m good. I have everything I need.”

He walks to the counter with deposit slips, fills one out, signs the check, and gets in line. I should have simply used the ATM.

As soon as he gets in line for the teller, another woman, perhaps the personal banker, approaches, “Why are you visiting Chase Bank today?”

“I’m here to deposit a check.”

“Is there anything else we can do for you today.”

“No, I just need to deposit this check and I’ll be good.”

Thirty seconds later a teller says, “I can help you here.”

She takes the check and deposit slip and says, “Do you have any other accounts with Chase?”

Can’t she see that on her computer screen? he thinks.

“Yes, I have my business account, my checking account, and my mortgage through Chase. I’ve been a customer since 1992 – you bought the bank we originally started with when we moved here from Colorado.”

The teller says, “Have you heard of Chase Exclusives?”

“I think so. I just need to deposit this check.”

“Well, you really need to hear about Chase Exclusives. It’s a credit card with a ton of awards and benefits. I can have a personal banker go though your accounts and see if you are receiving the full benefits of Chase.”

“I don’t really have time for this today.”

“Okay, so could you give me your telephone number? I’ll have our personal banker call you.”

He finally agrees, thinking, I’m free. Then, the teller says, “Why don’t you wait while I introduce you to your personal banker.”

By this time, he is perspiring, trying his best to be non-anxious and polite. He doesn’t give a hoot about Chase Exclusives. He needs no credit card with frivolous awards with every purchase.

Apparently, the bank has abandoned its monotonous, day-to-day activities (such as providing small businesses with lines of credit) and gone into another business: annoying its customers with stuff they don’t want.

We really do live in a post-advertising marketplace. It’s all white noise if you can’t deliver on the promise of your basic services.