websearchsocial Archives - The Sales Experiment

November 3, 2014 by Brett Leave a Comment

Lessons from (and about) Public Speaking

I’ve remained faithful to my current commitment to read or listen to quality, skill-sharpening, mindset-improving content daily.

Unfortunately, I’ve run into a hiccup keeping up with the ‘writing about it’ part of the challenge.

A little less than a week ago, I was wrapping up preparation for a speaking gig. I’ve had short 10-15 minute presentations that were, more or less insurance coverage synopsis talks. I’ve helped team teach 3-4 hour workshops on developing insurance programs for nonprofits and human service organizations.

For some reason, this presentation consumed every gap in my schedule. Thankfully, the preparation helped the talk to go (as far as I could tell) relatively well.

Here are a few lessons I learned about prepping for a speaking opportunity – an opportunity that came about only because of this current 6 month challenge.

Start preparing before you have an opportunity: If you have any inclination toward using speaking or teaching as a marketing tool or value-add for clients, start preparing before an opportunity presents itself. For instance….
Practice in safe environments: Join Toastmasters (the sheer amount of speaking time you can log is helpful) or take opportunities with colleagues to present on relevant work topics.
Draft content: What do your best clients need to know about? What is your message? Start outlining content.
Create 3-5 standard talks: Develop inventory. Have 3-5 topics you could speak 10-30 minutes on each. Make them easy to tailor to different situations.
Choose your technology: Do you have a laptop, a clicker, a working knowledge of Keynote or Powerpoint? One of my biggest hurdles was figuring out how to navigate a PC desktop at work with Powerpoint with a Macbook and Keynote at home.
Watch TED talks: Get to know a non-slide-ument, more aesthetically pleasing way of presenting that might allow you to better engage your listeners vs. encouraging them to read your slides along with you.
Study and read: I loved reading Nancy Duarte’s Resonate and slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations along with Carnegie’s Stand and Deliver. I also picked up a few great pointers from Michael Hyatt’s podcast on effective slide presentations and the archives of What the Speak with Bryan Kelly (I can’t tell if this podcast is defunct or not. It’s great stuff, and I hope it will make its way back soon).

It’s difficult to plan before a tangible opportunity – as I would know since I didn’t plan until I got this opportunity approximately 4 weeks prior to the speaking engagement date.

I’m now inspired to pull together a few relevant talks, both geared toward professionals in my industry and toward professionals in the market that I serve.

Most of what we do as professionals might affect others, but it isn’t out in front of others. The prospect of laying an egg in front of 150 decision-makers can be daunting and all-consuming. Preparing early can help to avoid some of the stress.

What have you been doing to prepare for possible opportunities to present? Do you already present on a regular basis?

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Today’s Listening and Reading

Duct Tape Selling by John Jantsch

I’ve finished the book and hope to write up a book review soon. It’s a great Genesis to maps handbook for a sales and marketing process that considers the best of sales 1.0 along with considering cutting edge tools and buyer styles.

Content Curation Drives Us Nuts, Apple Makes Life Difficult But Wine Saves The Day – WebSearchSocial Podcast with Ralph and Carol Lynn Rivera.

In case you want a different take on content curation practices… a take that differs from the standard line that you have to push out 80% content of others vs. 20% content of your own, then you’ll have a friend in the Riveras. It do appear to be a hill worth dying on for the pair (grammar error intended). Actually, it’s not so much about battling this one marketing urban myth. From what I can tell, it’s more about being intentional about what actually works as it relates to overall marketing goals.

That’s what I like about the Riveras and Web.Search.Social: While they obviously love content and social media marketing, they love being effective even more. They are a worthy listen for anybody who wants to hear about social and other tech-based marketing from professional marketers who use the new tools vs. folks who use the new tools and fancy themselves as marketers just because they know how to schedule tweets.

BTW…. I feel like I’ve heard the 80%-20% rule apply more to ‘give value’ vs. ‘ask for the sale’ instead of content curation vs. content creation. I think many marketers falsely equate ‘give’ with ‘curate’.

Unprecedented and Be Rich – North Point Community Church

Megachurches get a bad rap. I encourage you to watch or listen to one or both of these, especially the ‘Be Rich – 2014’ sermon, where a church challenges its parishioners to give over $2MM on one Sunday, funds that go straight out to local, national, and international charities. In the words of Monopoly, the funds do not pass go (or go to jail, actually), they go directly to the charities.

The business lesson in these two sermons? Be absolutely committed to your mission, whatever that happens to be.

The Owner’s Mind Podcast – Chris Brogan

Great interviews with Rorke Denver (from 10.13.14) and the authors of Same Side Selling, Ian Altman and Jack Quarles.

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That should do it for now… What did you learn, listen to, or read today?

September 30, 2014 by Brett Leave a Comment

Be a little surprising

I’m in the wonderful, exciting world of insurance sales. I’m not going to dog my industry because it really does help a lot of people. And as much as people want to say it’s boring, we are the folks who brought you Mayhem, Flo, the Lizard, the Discount Double Check, and the cute dog who goes all over the place trying to hide his bone.

That said, we independent insurance agents need to up our game. The below referenced podcast about Hello Kitty was a little inspiration today. Just because we want to educate our clients and potential clients doesn’t mean we have to completely punt our personalities and personal stories. As a matter of fact, I’m not sure how much we really need to educate every single time.

The big idea I got from the Hello Kitty podcast was that we need to always add a little surprise to our marketing or sales efforts. We don’t need to be ridiculous, but we also don’t need to pretend we are Stepford Wives of business communication.

The hat trick of marketing, though, would be the piece that educates with personality while calling the reader to action. I need to work on the call to action part.

Today’s Small Action: I tried to inject a little personality into a post on my day job blog about ‘subrogation.‘ Don’t know if it was successful, but I took a stab at it. Let me know what you think (click on the link above and check it out yo).

I also signed up for Triberr. I have no clue how to use it, but it was encouraged in the Web.Search.Social podcasts, so I did it like the good lemming that I am.

Today’s Listening

Mad Marketing 35: Getting Content Marketing Buy-In and Martha Stewart’s Keynote Bust – Marcus Sheridan – Do you have a content marketing plan? Does your organization think it’s even helpful?

Ryan Hanley, Shut Your Big Fat Face! The Web.Search.Social Marketing Podcast – Ralph and Carol Lynn Rivera

Here’s Why Hello Kitty Is Your Biggest B2B Marketing Ally, The Web.Search.Social Marketing Podcast- Carol Lynn Rivera: Great short episode about being willing to inject your personality and story into your business communication

Beer. Guacamole. And Writing A Great Email Marketing Campaign with Mike Brooks The Web.Search.Social Marketing Podcast – Ralph and Carol Lynn Rivera: The takeaway from this one? As much as you love the way you write your emails, it’s not a bad thing to check metrics. Most email providers have ’em. Use ’em why don’t you?

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This blog is a response to Dan Miller’s unintentional challenge from his podcast on August 15, 2014: If you read or listen to 30 minutes of quality content a day, you’ll double your income.

From September 1, 2014 through March 1, 2015, I will be doing the following:

Listening or reading to 30 minutes of success, growth, business, spiritual, or other mindset-shifting, skill-sharpening content.
Selecting one action item from that content (with some leeway to select an action from a previous day’s content).
Doing that one action.
Writing about the action or some other idea from the reading and listening of the day.

September 24, 2014 by Brett Leave a Comment

It’s My Birthday and I’m Going to Tell Stories Like Grandpa

The 80/20 rule. Is it really a universal truth like gravity and the perfection of Moose Tracks ice cream?

Maybe it’s not so universal. And I’m not just saying that it’s more like the 90/10 rule.

The 80/20 rule is actually the Pareto principle, the idea that 80% of results derive from 20% 0f the causes. The principle has its origins in economics. An example would be that 20% of individuals own 80% of the land.

There is some solid applications we can make from this principle. Many of us in sales could trace 80% of our revenue to 20% of clients. 20% of our sales activities can be leveraged to 80% of our effectiveness.

The 80/20 or 90/10 rule often gets applied to social media activities, also. It’s become almost universally accepted that 80% of social media posts should be content curation (i.e. posting links to other’s blogs or resources) and 20% links to your own business’s information or blog posts.

Oh So Pinteresting, Oh So Helpful (and Eye-Opening)

But then, listening through the Oh So Pinteresting Podcast, I landed on the gem that is episode 069 – Is Your Social Media Content Curation Just Noise OSP 069.

It was refreshing to listen to Ralph Rivera challenge this 80/20 practice of focusing on content curation vs. learning how to usefully and generously tell your own business story. I love the basic premise that if we want people to benefit from the value our businesses bring to the table, why do we always highlight everybody else’s work? Is it really helpful to send people away from our own websites and content where we should be showing how we can solve their problems?

It was like a breathe of fresh air. (He wrote two blog posts on the topic: Part 1 and Part 2). We don’t have to try to be the most well-versed blog readers out there! We just need to do a better job at translating our work into a generous story that can benefit readers, fans, and others who might run into our work.

He uses the metaphor of listening to Grandpa tell stories at the dinner table. Nobody tells him to shush. He’s wise. He has experience. He has some humor about him. We love to hear him tell his story. We don’t want him to toss Readers Digests to everybody and tell them to go find a spot on the couch.

My Action Today: Use social media and other content to amplify the value of those I help vs. sending people to others’ home bases all the time.

I help a few folks with their social media. I drafted an initial plan that will help move our work from a 80/20 type output to translating our offerings into a story that will engage readers with our products and services vs. some sort of falsely humble content curation generosity thing (although I won’t stop completely).

As a part-timer in the social media game and as one who has fallen prey to the 80/20 gospel, I’m excited about the shift.

Rivera also pointed out that brand awareness doesn’t necessarily put money in the bank. Sales put money in the bank. And the problem with much social media striving is that it is not tied to revenue.

Over the next few days, I look forward to seeing how I can tell marketing stories in a way that draws engagement to my work and the work of my clients vs. overworking my Feedly to Buffer connection (as much as I love that connection).

A huge P.S. here: Check out Cynthia Sanchez and her work over at Oh So Pinteresting. Especially check out her podcast and give her workshop a whirl if you are interested in using Pinterest for your business. It has singlehandedly caused me to become a Pinterest nerd.

And today’s my birthday (hence the post title). Happy birthday to me. 🙂

It's my birthday and I'm going to start telling some stories. I'm the blond kid. — It’s my birthday and I’m going to start telling some stories. I’m the blond kid.

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