I’ve spent a lot of time on this blog talking about how storytelling is important for sales (and marketing), and particularly the way language helps construct our reality, which means it can also lead us into traps. For example, how … Read More
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ROI Calculators
Now you can embed ROI calculators in your lead magnets (or proposals). ROI Calculators are popular online because they promise to help your prospects discover just how valuable your offerings are. However, this promise is often unrealized because: Online calculators … Read More
Canyons and Bridges
When you’re selling, you want to close the deal quickly. But when you’re buying, you want to make sure you’re doing what’s right for you, which can be particularly hard if you don’t have a lot of expertise in the … Read More
Will the end of the movie business end your business?
In my last post, I made the seemingly preposterous claim that every business is a media business. Some people agreed, some people disagreed, but the hypothesis definitely caught people’s attention. So, it might be worth asking, what’s happening with the … Read More
Every Company Is a Media Company
Congratulations! In addition to your regular job, you also run a media company because every company is a media company. “That’s ridiculous!” We’re a consulting company, or a software company, or a law firm. Or we manufacture widgets. “We’re the … Read More
Language and the Pursuit of Happiness (and Business)
Chalmers Brothers’ book, Language and the Pursuit of Happiness has a lot of interesting things to say about language and how it shapes our lives, both internally and our relationships. To start, he points out that we live in language … Read More
Pricing pressure? It could be your proposal
I’ve heard a lot of people complain about how their market is getting commoditized and how there’s no way to achieve good price points. What happens when we look at the proposals the sales teams are sending out? They’re terrible. … Read More
Sending Holiday Cards to Your Customers
One of my customers had a great suggestion recently about using Mimiran to help send holiday cards to customers. This customer includes their customers’ billing address on the proposal, so that information is already in Mimiran. By exporting the contact … Read More
Zombie Deals: the obstacle to sales that you have hidden in plain sight
We have enough obstacles to sales but we often add big obstacles without meaning to. I’m talking about the undead, “zombie deals” in your pipeline. They never close and they never die, but you spend lots of time and energy … Read More
Election 2016: How not to make decisions
Regardless of who you voted for, or who you want to win, America has a terrible way of selecting a new leader. Some of this is inevitable in an organization with over 300,000,000 people. Some of it is a vestige … Read More