Posts Tagged ‘Communication’
The Problem with Pitch Decks
I’ve seen thousands of pitch decks. The vast majority are horrible. There’s the corporate vanity deck. It always has a lot of slides. Usually it mentions the customer name in about 3 places, on the cover slide, the second to last slide, and the last slide. The rest of the deck is all about the vendor. You…
Read More4 Key Traits of Great Business Leaders
Steve Jobs once said: “Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.” If you are about to become a business leader and fulfill your leadership potential, that is exactly what you should do—try to be the best and to nurture the qualities that you have which make…
Read More6 Tips for Interview Success
As you may recall, a few months ago we wrote a piece about how you can plan and pitch a top-notch PR campaign. Hopefully by now, you’ve had a few chats with the media and secured interviews about your subject. Great job! But now the real work is about to begin, so get ready for some…
Read MoreNewsletters are the Most Popular Type of Email
Almost three-quarters (74%) of survey respondents said that sending newsletters is their #1 email marketing choice, says a new study from GetResponse and Smart Insights. That and autoresponders (61%) (e.g., thanking subscribers for signing up) are way ahead of all other options in their recent survey of 1821 marketers worldwide. Other option results: Multi-step welcome…
Read MoreThe Gratitude Tool That Works Every Time
Long before the rise of email and social media I was extolling the virtues and value of saying “thank you” with handwritten notes. While certainly not an original idea (whose Mom didn’t make them write thank you notes for gifts?) they remain—in my opinion—one of the best ways to express gratitude and make another person…
Read MoreThe Power of Female Leadership: 3 Important Behaviors to Adopt
We’ve all read about the qualities it takes to become a great female leader: how to “lean in,” what language to use in order to show an attitude of cooperation, the importance of personal flexibility. In addition to some of these overt actions and the content of what we say, subliminal messages have an underlying presence. Sometimes…
Read MoreProvocation or Obnoxiousness?
The concept of provoking our customers, getting them to think about their businesses differently is a key element of providing insights. Paraphrasing Brent Adamson, to help our customers “unlearn” we have to show them what they are currently doing may be wrong. That is, there may be different ways of operating that will produce superior results, or…
Read MoreLeadership Skills: How to Provide Corrective Direction
When discussing the “How to’s” of building an engaged culture, we hear lots of talk about “reinforcing the positive” and “catching people doing things right,” but what happens when people are doing things wrong and we need to provide corrective direction? Specific steps need to take place to get the person moving in the proper…
Read MoreClosing the Sale
Earlier today, I was interviewed for an article on “Closing The Sale.” The article is in a publication focused on small business owners. As we concluded the conversation, the interviewer said, “Your answers were completely different than I expected.” I think too many of us, entrepreneurs and sales people, alike, have mistaken impressions of closing…
Read More7 Superb Communication Solutions for Small Business
One great thing about running a small business: communication can be immediate and effective. At the enterprise level, communication is slower. Employees are often inundated with emails while talking on social media, instant messaging, and texting. Small businesses can take advantage of their size to ensure an advantage. This can happen in a number of…
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