Is Your Number Catchy As 996?

Here’s a definition. It comes from Chinese working conditions;

(Chinese: 工作制; pinyin: Jiǔjiǔliù gōngzuò zhì),
996 is the work schedule at many a tech company in China,
which means an individual works 9am to 9pm, 6 days per week.

72 hours. That’s some going. Which many a fledgling entrepreneur would struggle to match. So much for the old 40-hour week. Even Europe’s 48-hr Working Time Directive and its opt-outs.

I learn of these archaic conditions through Microsoft’s present bad press on the matter.

Once you understand where the label figure comes from, you can’t help but admire its coinage.

24-7 step aside for a moment. And several others in its image.

I often blog on the importance of your buyer naming their project. So long as it is with your aid alone behind the scenes and marries up with a key unique you offer.

This working practices description makes me think you can also have a project number. Just as, if not more, powerful.

The optimal slant would be to play on what is being lost, as in this case with non-work time being decimated, so that buyers can focus on stemming such losses.

Like for Chinese modern-day sweat shop drivers, mining the time being stolen may prove a fertile seam.

Or you go for financial amount representation.

I once assisted an initiative subsequently known through the (albeit slightly less snappy) equation 5×10=15. Where the multipliers referred to increases in a certain department, and their product the year by which it would happen; 2015.

As you get into the nuts and bolts of your prospect’s loftier aims, such digits should well emerge. Grab them and don’t let them go to waste.