There may no more powerful communication tool than a story well told. A story is not a PowerPoint presentation or a canned pitch or a memorized speech. It is as it sounds: a plain English parable with a beginning, middle, and end. Stories help people understand and make sense of what you are selling. A…
E-mail communication with customers can be efficient and easy, but it is easy to fall into a bad habit of only using e-mail to handle customer inquiries. If your goal is to build better relationships with your customers, the telephone may be a better tool. While talking on the phone can be can be stressful…
In the ancient Greek poem “The Odyssey,” the story’s hero, Odysseus, tells the Cyclops that his name is “Nobody.” When Odysseus instructs his men to drive a fiery iron spit into the monster’s single eye, the Cyclops yells out in vain, “Friends, Nobody is killing me now,” so no one comes to help. This action-adventure…
Book titles play a huge role in a book’s success. I need your help in naming my next book which will be a follow up to “First, Best, or Different: What Every Entrepreneur Needs to Know About Niche Marketing”. The new book will continue the exploration about how to successfully market products and services in…
Would you buy something from someone whom you don’t trust? Most people won’t. Studies have shown that lack of trust may disable a sale more quickly than any other factor. So, what is trust? I define it as the feeling you get from someone that what they say equals what they do. Sometimes we trust…
Your brand is your promise of value to your customers. Great brands are unique, consistent, and authentic. Your brand’s uniqueness answers the question, “How is your offering different or better?” To be considered better or different than your competition your offering must have at least one feature or benefit that is measurably better than the…
Marketing mantras say how you are different. A mantra is a religious prayer or mystical phrase or poem that instills concentration when repeated and is used for meditation and prayer. The key is to focus on the mantra and to block out everything else. A marketing mantra is three to five words that describes how…
No, this is not a flashback to the psychedelic sixties. Instead, this is a serious discussion about color and how it can be used in marketing. While perceptions of color are somewhat subjective, there are some color effects that have universal meaning. Colors in the red area of the color spectrum are known as warm…
Great brands are authentic, consistent, and differentiated. Once significant brand equity is established products can be successful in spite of themselves. Just look at McDonald’s. Author Selena Maranjian wrote in the Motley Fool recently about a research study that described a new way to get your kids to eat their broccoli: “Wrap it in the…
It was not that long ago when formal business letters were the primary selling tool for B2B selling. The customer would say, “Send me a proposal” and sales people would willingly oblige with a multiple page letter, stamped, sealed, and delivered by the U.S. Postal Service. E-mail has changed the landscape and the formal business…