Toni emphasized the importance of a business' "touchpoints" with its customers. They can be common things like signs or business cards. But broadly, touchpoints are any opportunity to influence a future buying decision. Collectively we scrambled up our grey matter and came up the the following as ways to potentially influence a future buying decision (we couldn't believe how many of them there are; remember, some are off the wall but that is the kind of thinking we need to encourage if we are to be not just better, but different):

Roadside signs, posters, cheques, Christmas cards, thank you cards, complementary passes, staff clothing, sky writing, stationery, carry cases & folders, vehicles, napkins & placemats, landscaping, sponsorships, badges, flowers, music, smiles (!), jingles & slogans, charitable donations, shopping bads, furniture, reading material, traditional media advertising, websites, email signature, youtube videos, other social media, business reception area, decor, customer washrooms..... the list goes on.

There are so many points at which you can "touch" a customer. If one of them is not up to snuff, there is a disconnect and customers are likely to remember that one disconnect more than all the other successful "touches". Toni gave an example of a fabulous spa experience she had at a top ranked resort, but then found the cheapest, grittiest toilet tissue imaginable in the washroom! Guess which "touchpoint" gets remembered and commented upon..... 

Toni Newman showed us how we can get in the mindset of thinking more creatively, of seeing new possibilities. We divided into groups and she passed out a different ordinary objects to each group. We were challenged to come up with 20 (yes, twenty!) purposes each object could serve as under different circumstances.

Our group was given a roll of masking tape as our "ordinary object". Our first challenge was to imagine purposes for the object if we were a 5 year old child. Then we looked at it from the perspective of an alien visiting from another planet. Then from the perspective of a blind person. Sound hard? The amazing thing is that we came up with 20+ responses for each situation, except for the alien one, where we fell short by a few.  

It may sound silly, but it really opened up our minds to possibilities and to a type of creative thinking. It set the groundwork for our next exercise, which had more practical applications...

"Professional catalyst" Toni Newman informed us that there are now 32 versions of Tide detergent available. That's right - thirty two. In today's marketplace, being better than your competition is a given, but to be truly successful a business needs to be different from the competition, and in that Tide has succeeded. They are offering to the consumer products that no other company is offering.  Toni stated, "If you're not at least getting better, close up shop and do something else".

To get to the top of the ladder (and Toni brings a bright red ladder to her seminars, frequently ascending and descending on it to illustrate her points), a business has to aim for HIGH SPEED TRANSFORMATIONAL CHANGE, vs. simply "tweeking" their products/services/operations.

As she climbs to the top of the ladder, Toni states, "Teach yourself to see what others don't see, and you will know what others do not know".

Toni Newman, a professional speaker on innovation topics, recently spoke in Halifax at InnovatioNS, a workshop for the tourism industry. However, she refers to herself as a "professional catalyst", and indeed she lives up to that moniker, inspiring attendees to come up with new ways of thinking, of examining every possibility as a potential opportunity.

She divides businesses into those run by people who ask "Why?" and those who ask "Why not?" The "Why" people tend to be traditional thinkers who rely on past practises to move forward, as in "Why would you change things?". The "Why not?" people tend to think "Why not? Let's think it through and then let's give it a try - we just might be on to the next big thing!".

It all ties into the need to not just be better - being better is a given in business today - but to be DIFFERENT from your competition.