I once got a job offer from Steve Jobs. I say this not in the “My mother petted Secretariat” sense because I hate name dropping. But his name in the news got me reflecting on our conversation and the value of doing what you are passionate about.
Read MoreWe are our stories. It is who we are and how we think. Our brains are wired for stories and narratives. We identify with familiar stories. They evoke emotions and expectations and hope. If you want to sell something, convince someone of your position, or market your products or services, you first need to tell a story. Here’s why.
Read MoreReason and logic, while they seem to form the basis of many sales and marketing campaigns, are not sufficient for their purposes. Why? Because we humans are not rational actors. Ninety-five percent of our thought is unconscious and dependent on frames, metaphors, stories and narratives that help us make sense of complex situations.
Read MoreEmpathy is the identification and the power of understanding and imaginatively entering into another person’s feelings, thoughts or experience. It seems to me that one of the things we are lacking in our society, as well as in business today, especially in the relationship between sales and marketing, is empathy. What if we remembered the other person is thinking, “Do you understand me, can you help me, and do I trust you?” Maybe we wouldn’t get lost on our sales and marketing journey.
Read MoreOn the eve of the mid-term elections, I am struck by the tactics for messaging used by the major parties and the parallels for Sales and Marketing. The first is that those that keep their message simple and consistent are much more likely to get their point of view accepted. The second thing is that we are all risk averse. Our little medulla oblongata (lizard brains) in the back of our skulls that generate our flight or fight response take precedence over our frontal lobes where reason happens. So messages based on loss or fear tend to trump those based on reason.
Read MoreIt would be odd to hear a medical pacemaker company say their device can “Take a licking and keep on ticking,” (an old Timex tagline) Or maybe not. It’s something I would want if I had a pacemaker. Alternatively we could say that the device has a mean time between failure of .63 trillion seconds. Which will you remember?
Read MoreA friend sent me his resume and asked me to take a look at it. This is a slightly sensitive situation since it is the equivalent of asking the question above. He’d also had a “Resume Doctor” jazz it up a little. The resume summary was terrible. I fell asleep during the first paragraph. Here’s an excerpt.
Read MoreSuddenly, the wooly mammoth turned with a snort… its tusks swinging violently back and forth, its trunk searching for our scent. My mouth was dry. My palms sweaty. My heart thumped like the great beast itself. I watched with terror as Grog attacked from the flank and was swept away by the beast’s long tusks. Gnerk then bravely charged, but the beast reared on two legs and came down on top of him, stomping his small body into the ground. I cringed as I head Gnerk’s bones crunching, but seized the moment, the beast distracted, and ran my spear between the mammoth’s ribs and into its heart. What do Carly Simon, blogging and wooly mammoths have to do with Sales and Marketing?
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