Don’t ask clients to do extra work to promote your business At the end of a long project, I asked my client for a testimonial. She said she would be happy to give me one. Her exact words were, “I would be honoured.” So I was surprised when she ghosted me. After a couple of [...]
Saving time on social media can burn your relationships Photo by h heyerlein on Unsplash The first chatbot was built in 1966 by Joseph Weizenbaum at MIT. This bot was named ELIZA, and was one of the first artificial-intelligence programs capable of taking the Turing test. Image source: Wikipedia ELIZA was able to simulate [...]
Email is the virtual welcome mat to your business Photo by RTImages on iStock The moment I stepped into the store, I felt something was wrong. My wife and I were strolling down Hawthorne Street in Portland, Oregon. Our young kids were at home with their grandmother babysitting, and we were on our first [...]
Sales gets you where you want to go. Marketing is why you want to get there. Meme by Alex Bogusky Does selling feel sleazy to you? If so, there’s a good chance you don’t understand the difference between sales and marketing. Using the example above, these two signs give you very different reactions. In the [...]
It is much easier to find an existing audience than to carve a new one out of the crowd. Your future customers are already congregating somewhere. Go there and be valuable, make relationships, and gain customers. Photo by WoodysPhotos on iStock I think of marketing myself like I am a vagabond peddler. I have a [...]
So, thank you for coming. Um. We’ll get uh…started…in just a few — hang on, I can’t see my slides anymore. One second. Hey, can you see my slides? I can’t…uhhh…oh, hi there, we’ll get started soon, I’m just…um… Has that ever happened to you? Maybe you were the host of the meeting, with a [...]
This is a very personal question, and since it’s also a business question, there is no single right answer. Some say a personal brand is best, while others say a business brand should remain separate from your personal identity. They’re both right, sometimes. The Origins of Branding A brand was originally a symbol that [...]
Make your bio sticky, clear, and short Photo by ismagilov on iStock The best elevator pitch I ever heard was from Cory Huff. Cory has a website called theabundantartist.com, and when I met him at Pioneer Nation, I said, “What do you do?” He replied, I help people sell their art online. Sticky, clear, and [...]
Selling is only pushy if you haven’t done enough pulling. Photo by Camrocker on iStock My first sales job was selling donuts door-to-door. Every Saturday morning, I would knock on the doors of strangers, introduce myself, and make my pitch. Within a few minutes, the stranger would either hand me five bucks, or shut [...]
