One of my favorite business writers now is Seth Godin, who has written numerous books on business, mostly about marketing. More importantly, his books are about how to make sure your business succeeds in a time when more and more of your customers are being influenced by the Internet and the I-can-find-out-anything-with-a-few-mouse-clicks buying culture that has evolved as a result of the Internet. You may not think that the Internet has much influence over your business, but it does.

Anyway, Seth is an insightful and amusing writer who wrote a book entitled Purple Cow. A Purple Cow is a company that has made itself remarkable in the way that a purple cow would be remarkable - it's worth talking about. You mention it to your friends and they mention it to their friends, and so on. Here's Seth on what makes a purple cow: "Remarkable is in the eye of the beholder. If the target market wants to hear about it and wants to talk about it, then it's remarkable. Then it's a Purple Cow." An excellent example of a Purple Cow was Hotmail. It's a free email account that anyone can have simply by signing up online. So you get a Hotmail account and then send a zillion emails to your friends. At the bottom of every email you send is a little notice telling how easy it would be to get a free email account. The idea of a free email account spread itself like a virus from one person to the next with almost no advertising.

With a little thinking, you could make something like this happen with your business too.

What does it take to be a Purple Cow? First, you must stand out from the herd. Maybe you provide the lowest cost version of your product, or maybe it's the fastest version of your service. Whatever it is that you do better, stronger, faster, cheaper, or smarter than your competition is your ticket to becoming a Purple Cow. You must then find a way to target this advantage to a community of customers who are clamoring for what it is you do best. Let's call this your standout feature.

Next, find a target market that absolutely needs your standout feature and then find a way to connect with this market. Here you may need to do some research. Who are your best customers? Which ones are the most likely to need your standout feature more than any others? Maybe there's a segment of the population out there you're ignoring that could really benefit from your standout feature. Brainstorm all the different types of people who have a need for what it is you do best. The best target markets are communities, groups of people who are in touch with each other regularly. This could be parents who go to their kids' baseball games every week or business owners who all belong to Kiwanis or Rotary or some other service organization.

Then, find a way to market your standout feature to your target market. Ideally, this will come from something that is a part of your product or service that makes a connection to your target market that is worth talking about. For example, let's say your tire stores provide the fastest tire rotation service in town and you want to promote that speed. Why not give every customer a three-minute egg timer with your name, address, and phone number on it? You'd be surprised how many people find a good use for an egg timer and the connection to your speed would ring true with your customers. Especially if many of your customers are busy people who would really appreciate the speed of your service. I think you get the idea here.

You remember the old joke about a bad idea: "That and a quarter will buy you a cup of coffee." Not any more. Starbucks changed all that. Starbucks was a Purple Cow because they made it cool to pay outrageous sums for an inexpensive beverage. Now Starbucks is everywhere and the quarter cup of coffee (or its inflated equivalent) is a second-class citizen in the world of coffee. That leads us to the best reason to become a Purple Cow: it can be extremely profitable.

As Seth points out in most of his books, there's not much money to be made by selling to the middle of the population. Sure, McDonalds sells a zillion burgers a year. But they're not very profitable. American Airlines sends a lot of seats through the air every day. But are they making much money? On the other hand, how profitable do you suppose those earliest Starbucks stores were? When you make or provide something that people need and want, you can charge what it is worth to them. 'Nuff said?

So what does this have to do with employee performance? I'm glad you asked. The best way to get great performance from employees is to give them great jobs to do. What better job than to help you milk a Purple Cow every day!

Besides, I really enjoy sharing my favorite books with friends. I hope you'll read some of Seth Godin's books soon. In fact, if you ask, I'll send you a free copy of 99 Cows, Seth's companion book to Purple Cow. To request your free copy of 99 Cows, simply send an email to: purplecow@jemperformance.com and I'll send it to you the same day.