Reading Time: 2 min I’m a big of of asynchronous communication, where two people can talk to each other at different times, like via email where one party can respond to the other two hours later. It’s why many people, particularly younger ones, dislike phone calls. Phone calls demand your attention immediately, rather than giving a buffer like with […]
Trust
Negotiate with more questions
Reading Time: 2 min I always find it interesting when the data shows the opposite of what I expect. It could be something like Simpson’s Paradox, which is just so weird, or the idea that expert poker players fold 3x more often than an amateur player. In Adam Grant’s book “Give and Take” he shares a study from Neil […]
Lead with reputation and legacy, not business
Reading Time: < 1 min There are a lot of situations where it feels you should quickly steer conversations toward business, but that’s almost never the right way to go. Even if you’re at a business-focused event, keeping the conversations more personal and other-focused will lead to better long-term results. Gary Vaynerchuk can be a polarizing person, but I appreciate […]
Responsiveness can be as important as price
Reading Time: 3 min People value money but they also value time, and if your service can be faster and/or more responsive customers are willing to pay more. Disney’s “Lightning Lane” (formerly “FastPass”) is proof of this — millions of people pay billions of dollars every year just to get in the park, and a huge percentage of them […]
Thank you for your time
Reading Time: 2 min If someone invests time with you, whether it’s to help with a project, move a sofa, or just go to the movies, it’s appropriate to thank them for their time. They willingly gave of themselves, and deserve a bit of thanks for it. What if you steal their time, though? Can you still thank them […]
A trusted partner?
Reading Time: 2 min I get a lot of spam in my inbox every day, and I’m sure you do too. Most of it is just blatant spam, but there is still a subset of it that thinks that it’s just “cold marketing” — which I still categorize as spam. I think a lot of that comes from folks […]
Humility can help you seem real
Reading Time: 3 min Starting back in 2006, Dos Equis ran a series of commercials featuring “The Most Interesting Man in the World”. If you’ve not seem any of them before, here is an example: When reading Robert Carnes’ book “The Story Cycle“, he made an interesting note about these videos and the bit of humility they always showed […]
No organization is perfect
Reading Time: 2 min You see it on Facebook with other people, and on LinkedIn with other companies – “wow, they have everything together”. We’ve learned over the years that a perfectly manicured Facebook feed often isn’t very truthful, but it can be trickier to see that in other organizations. If you see a group that puts out good […]
When your filter bubble works too well
Reading Time: 2 min Over the past decade or so, most people have been building a filter bubble around themselves — only seeing the content that they want to see, and hiding everything else. Sites like Facebook do it quietly and automatically, meaning you have to really fight if you want to keep a nuanced view of the world. […]
More content leads to shorter sales cycles
Reading Time: 2 min If the sales cycle with your company seems to be getting longer and longer, that may indicate a lack of content production on your part. Without solid, regular content, people can’t get to know and trust you until they’ve had direct conversations with you. While those conversations are essential in every case, if you can […]