Make some enemies

Posted in Lead generation, Qualifying, Social Media on June 19th, 2011

Making enemies and being “PG-13″ from Craig Wortmann on Vimeo.

"Story" as an action verb

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..

Online vs. offline…selling is now a triathlon

Posted in Entrepreneurship, Sales, Social Media on December 16th, 2009

Is the act of blogging really just a big time suck?  Is blogging selling?  Is creating short videos for your website just a voyeuristic waste of time?  Or, is this the new selling? Are the days of hitting the streets with your message gone?

No.  Yes.  No.  Yes and no.  No, dammit.

I’ve met six people THIS week (and it’s Wednesday) who are having trouble figuring out how to spend their “selling” time.  Pick up phone and prospect?  Do a little SEO on the site? Email potential channel partners?  Throw together some videos?  Host a party to sell my new product to real, live, human persons?

In order to answer these questions, most of us fall back on the old question; is your business B2B or B2C?  If B2B, then walk the streets and pound the phones until you’ve lost your voice.  If B2C, then blog, optimize and video yourself to greatness.  The boundaries aren’t clear anymore…the walls have come down.  iPhones with video, wordpress and blogger, and readily-available optimization techniques have blurred the boundaries of B2B and B2C.

In the old way of selling, he who knocked on the most doors won.  No longer true.  If selling were a sport, it would be a triathlon.  After you run a 10K, your legs feel like rubber when you get on the bike and start pedaling.  This is what sales people are going through as they adjust to the necessity of leaving a sales meeting and jumping on their blog.  They feel their legs wobble, and it’s only until they have run a few races that they get used to it.  Then, like triathletes, they get addicted.