Watch out for the dreaded “e” in Social Media

I’ve lost count. How many blogs and tweets have you read about Social Media? And certainly many do provide sage advice: 5 things to do, 10 things not to do, 3 things to consider, 8 things to blog about, 15 reasons not to give tips and reasons. But as another day winds down, I can’t help but think back to the ‘90s. We were all a twitter (it had a different meaning back then) about e-commerce....

Has Big Bird or Google had a bigger impact on your life?

Sesame Street is turning 40 on November 10th. And according to Mashable (http://bit.ly/2TCNaX), it’s roughly the same age as the Internet. So looking back, which has had a bigger impact on your life? Post your vote and comments and I’ll share the results…should be interesting. Seth Share this post

A dose of reality for social media and business

Can you remember the last time there was so much excitement, momentum, and hype surrounding something? Social media is a brush fire gone wild, right? The excitement is not without cause but a recent article in Computerworld (http://ow.ly/tkoL) injected a dose of reality for social media’s impact on business. According to the article, more than half (54%) of companies ban use of tools such as Twitter...

Customer Voice Selling – No More Fear

One of our clients offers sales enablement training and software to help organizations improve their sales processes and individual rep performance. Of their extensive 30-minute podcast library, during which they discuss various sales challenges, the number one downloaded podcast is entitled “Overcoming Sales Fear.” Anyone who has ever sold anything, from Girl Scout cookies to multi-million dollar...

Five tips to avoid Product-First Selling

We all know that the way people buy has fundamentally changed. The buyer now controls the sales process. They decide what they want, when they want it and rely on publicly available content and peer reviews to make buying decisions. Buyers don’t want to be sold to or talked at about what your company does or how great your products are. Unfortunately, many technology companies haven’t responded...

From custom T-shirt printing to Apple iPhone 4G, intimate customer knowledge rules

We’ve interviewed a lot of people for the purposes of capturing buyer wants and needs; it’s an integral part of developing almost any new go-to-market strategy.  Over the years, one thing has become clear: it’s the answers to third and fourth level questions, and how you interpret them, that yield winning messaging and go-to-market strategies. Let me illustrate with a very simple business-to-consumer...

Death by PowerPoint. Guy Kawasaki has a life saving tip.

I recently read a Hubspot blog (http://bit.ly/2sWYyS) about Steve Jobs’ and Guy Kawasaki’s PowerPoint best practices. Full of good tips but the main point that really hit home for me was from Guy. According to the blog, Guy states that the point of a presentation is to initiate discussion. I couldn’t agree more. What a great way to think of a presentation – A mechanism to start a conversation...

Arms dealer recognizes the importance of customer voice

Recently, I ordered a pack of Nerf darts for my son’s upcoming birthday from an independent toy store selling through Amazon.com.  I was allowed to complete my order online, but received an email days later from the vendor announcing that they were out-of-stock and the order was cancelled. This week, I received an email from Amazon.com asking me to rate my experience with the vendor.  I gave them...

So, enough about me…let’s talk about my company.

After receiving the same spam email from ‘Johnny’ for the 100th time, I’ve developed such an affinity for it that I had to make comment.  Johnny has used Customer Voice Selling to great effect here, so please pay close attention. Below are excerpts from his emails, which are the same every time. . .for the past 100 times. From:  Johnny (He never uses a last name.  He may be a Brazilian soccer...

Fishing for an Advantage

http://www.suntimes.com/lifestyles/food/1796827,FOO-News-media30.article Carl Galvan of Supreme Lobster and Seafood got it right. He sells seafood to chefs in Illinois and understood that he could do a better job of getting them the information they needed to more efficiently stock their restaurants. Don’t swim upstream against the current (couldn’t resist) and make the chef come to the fish....