Posted in Marketing, Power of Story, Sales on February 28th, 2010
Telling stories in business is a discipline that is your most important tool in your success toolkit. Take selling. Most often, sales people operate at the level of features and benefits, staying within that narrow “leaf level,” mistakenly thinking that this is where decisions get made.
The ability to move comfortably back and forth between the forest, the tree, the branch and the leaf, describing the complex chemical reaction at the leaf level while also describing the stunning beauty of the forest itself. As we move from level to level, different kinds of stories get told. And it’s these stories that build connections and context for the decisions that we are asking our clients and employees to make.
Your action: Capture your stories and work on wrapping them around the facts and data, bits and bullets, features and benefits.
Posted in Art of conversation, Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Power of Story, Sales, Social Media, Teaching on December 19th, 2009
If “google” can become an action verb, why can’t “story?” After all, the word “story” comes from the Latin “historia” which means “narration of what is learned” which sure seems like an action to me. I hereby nominate story as an action verb! So go story..
Posted in Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Sales on October 27th, 2009
A “sales trailer” is to a business what a “movie trailer” is to a movie. It’s the short, 30-second piece that draws you in and generates interest. Every business and every sales (and marketing) person should be able to rattle off the company’s sales trailer at a moment’s notice. There’s no excuse for not being able to do this.
The sales trailer answers the question; what problem do you solve? But it doesn’t give the boring technical reasons why this is so. Too often the sales trailer ends up filled with jargon that just clogs and confuses. A mistake that almost all entrepreneurs and sales people make is that we know our product or service too well, and so instead of being concise we toss jargon around like a child in a tantrum.
Here’s a great way to take a time out and stop using jargon in creating your sales trailer: use a magnetic poetry kit to create it. That way, there will be no risk of “phosphate-free” or “API-enabled” leeching into your sales trailer. Just sit down with the kit and a handy refrigerator and go to work.
Sales people need to trust that simple is better and that less is more. If you draw in a prospect with your sales trailer, you will get to the next step. Really. My sales trailer? “We tune your sales engine for high performance.”
Posted in Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Sales on September 11th, 2009
I’m reading this totally shocking, voyeuristic book called The Game. Avi over at CaptainU, which makes college sports recruiting software has been bothering me for over a year to read this thing. And finally I relented. The Game takes an insider’s look at a group of guys dedicated to the art of picking up women. It unlocks the secrets of their techniques and why they work. What’s amazing about this book is how true it is to the selling challenge. Although I’m far removed from “running game” as it’s discussed in this provocative book, I do see a ton of businesses, big and small, that could benefit from the advice contained within. Most sales organizations fail at the beginning and at the end of the sales process. That is, they hate that uncomfortable, awkward feeling of prospecting. And once they’ve built a relationship, they hate closing. So what do they do? They do the easy stuff…explore needs, present options, propose. In other words, they hang around against the walls of the bar waiting for someone to come and talk to them. My advice? If you want business (or a date), push off the wall and run some game.
Posted in Marketing, Sales, Web presence on July 23rd, 2009
Think of the best party you’ve been to in the past year. What was it like? For me, the best party had a great setting, delicious food, cool people, and – most importantly – excellent conversation. It feels great to go to a party and mix with people you know and people you don’t, and to have a cool, thinking conversation emerge from the milieu.
But think about what it takes to create the environment for that conversation to emerge. Isn’t this challenge the exact same one we are trying to tackle in our businesses…namely, drawing people together to enter into a conversation that takes them (and us) somewhere?? What is the engine that drives marketing and sales? Conversation! But then why the heck do we spend so much time on the setting (website design) and food (content)? No question that this stuff is really important. A party without food and drink will not go very far. But if everyone is sitting around stuffing their faces and no one’s talking, what reason do they have to stay?
To stretch the party metaphor a bit farther, consider that our blogs are the pieces of conversation that we share with each other, our tweets are the fly-by funny comments made as the jokesters walk through the party, and our analytics are the ‘after-party’ where a precious few clutch well-handled bottles and debrief the scene. Now, THAT’S a party.
