How to Quantify and Improve your Return on Meetings
Win the Last Mile: Bridging the Gap Between Sales and Marketing
In the following brief, we've summarized 4 common symptoms of sales and marketing gaps we've observed and outlined pragmatic steps you can take to turn communications into a bridge that connects sales and marketing efforts.
Redefining the Breakout Session
Five tips for creating interactive and dynamic meeting content.
A Better Return on Meetings
Proven methodologies for measuring and improving meeting effectiveness.
Introduction to Sales Communications
How a well-planned and executed sales communications program helps you to make the most of your valuable sales opportunities.
The Neglected Step-Child of Business Communication
Most companies concentrate on their external messages. What’s wrong with this picture?
The Reader Is Dead: Here’s How to Ignite a Rebirth
We’re sorry to break the news to you.
Debunking Seven Great Myths of Selling
The common myths we believe about selling create huge sales and marketing barriers
Dress for Video Success
For all the corporate videos we’ve produced the most common question asked is “What should I wear?”
The Genius of Snakes on a Plane
Direct works.
Tips for Public Speaking
How to overcome a fear worse than death.
The Neglected Step-Child of Business Communication
Most companies concentrate on their external messages. They spend lots of time and resources communicating with customers and prospects. What’s wrong with this picture? Too often little thought is given to internal communications. Employees can often feel like a forgotten audience. Worse, employees can fail to act together and lack motivation because they are unclear about the company’s direction or what the business stands for.
This is especially true for you if your company is constantly changing. Change plus lack of clear, frequent employee communication is a combination that can lead to internal churn and confusion.
Southwest Airlines is an example of a company that usually does it right. Southwest views its employees as their main audience. Their philosophy is that if they treat their employees well, their employees will treat their customers well.
MossWarner sees internal communications as a huge opportunity for companies. Sales meetings, company-wide events, intranets, employee training, employee newsletters – all these and more provide excellent opportunities to reinforce your message with the people charged with executing on that message. Don’t neglect talking to employees. Good internal communications will help make them true champions of your message.
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The Reader Is Dead. Here’s How to Ignite a Rebirth.
We’re sorry to break the news to you. The business world doesn’t have readers anymore. We have scanners, glancers, browsers and window shoppers. They zip by at a blazing speed only stop to read your message if you startle their eyes, speak to their desires, or tantalize them with a great offer. Here are ten ways to spark your audiences to read and act on your messages:
- Lead with unique: “This is the only brand positioning that ...”
- Provide an intriguing idea: “Communication isn’t just relaying information. It’s revealing meaning.”
- Pose a question your market cares about: “Can you get a greater return on your marketing investment by hosting webinars?”
- State a great offer: “This $150 software is yours today for free.”
- Shock : “Today, in Connecticut 500 household pets will die.”
- Prove your value: “The last company to try this saved $10,000.”
- Sprinkle in oxymorons: “Famous secret revealed”
- Carefully employ hyper-strong words like bleed, damn, worm, labor, or hell
- Add an engaging quote: “The goal of life is to take everything that made you weird as a kid and get people to pay you money for it when you’re older.”
- Tell a human interest story: “I went to bed with total hearing. I woke up totally deaf.”
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Debunking Seven Great Myths of Selling
Myth #1: Selling is a numbers game.
If you believe that making x sales calls will produce y sales you may ignore the quality of the calls you make. Treating selling as strictly a numbers game dehumanizes the process. It’s a quality game more than it is a quantity game.
Myth #2: Having the best solution is close to guaranteeing the sale.
Of course, clients want solutions. But you won’t be considered a potential solution provider unless you first show clients you will listen to them and you understand them.
Myth #3: Great salespeople focus on the close.
Focusing on closing the sale puts your need before the client’s need. Instead, focus on getting to the truth, finding the pain, or uncovering a problem you can solve.
Myth #4: Selling is finding out the need from the prospect and filling that need.
That’s close, but not true. Selling is finding out what the prospect does and then helping them do it better. Prospects don’t always know what they need.
Myth #5: To sell well you must persistently pursue prospects.
This is counterintuitive, but when you stop pursuing people they become drawn to you. People today look for authenticity and run away from the person who they perceive to be dedicated to making the sale no matter what.
Myth #6: The sale is lost or won at the end of the process.
The most important part of the sale is the beginning, not the end. At the beginning you must establish trust, build rapport, show value, be honest and demonstrate a primary interest in the prospect.
Myth #7: Workaholics rule.
The most successful salespeople (and business people in general) are not workaholics. They are those who love what they do but lead a balanced life. They wakes up every morning feeling, “Oh, good, I can’t wait to get to work today,” but they also find ways to balance sales with outside interests that provide respite, renewal and enrichment.
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Dress for Video Success
OK, so you don’t look like Tom Cruise or Angelina Jolie and you never took an acting class. But the time may come – if it hasn’t already – that you will be asked to appear in a corporate video. And once the initial excitement of your first screen appearance begins to fade, you may ask: “How can I present a good appearance on tape?”
First things first
The first thing you need to know is whether the video calls for you to be casual or formal. For example, a casual look might be appropriate for a sales director delivering a pep talk to associates in the field. On the other hand, a suit and tie might be more appropriate for a senior executive presenting financial information to potential investors. So rule number one is: make sure you learn from the producers of the video what your “look” is supposed to be. That way, you won’t show up on shooting day wearing the completely wrong attire.
Once you know your look, there are a few simple guidelines you can follow to create a better on-camera impression during videotaping. These are not intended as fashion directions, but practical considerations related to the technical realities of recording images and sound.
Clothing
Naturally, your clothes should be clean, pressed and comfortable. If you are traveling to an off-site location, you may want to consider wearing different clothes en route to the shooting location and changing into your video clothes once you arrive.
The clothes that show up best on video are solid colors in darker pastels, such as pinks and blues and jewel-toned blues and greens. Gold and brown often work well, too. Red, black and white should generally be worn only in small amounts.
Avoid wearing all white or all black (unless you are a religious leader or Johnny Cash) and bear in mind that under studio lights, white or highly reflective fabrics can cause “hot spots” on the screen. You should also avoid wearing tiny checks, herringbone and other finely detailed patterns, because these can create an undesirable flashing on television, called a moiré effect. Large prints and checks are usually fine, however.
General grooming and appearance
On shooting day, you don’t need a professional makeup artist. Regular street makeup is usually fine, although ladies should avoid strong makeup colors. In harsh lighting, ladies also may want to apply more makeup than usual and men may want to apply a powder or other substance to decrease the shine from the skin’s natural oils. Also, try to make sure your hair is neat.
Jewelry
Wearing small pieces of jewelry is usually fine, but try not to wear large or especially reflective jewelry that might create glare, or interfere with lavaliere (shirtfront or lapel) microphone placement. Also, be aware that bangles and other jewelry can make distracting sounds that may be picked up by the microphone.
Shoes
Of course, no one will be looking at your shoes. But if you are standing and walking around during your appearance, they may be listening to them because shoes soles that squeak or clatter when you walk will get picked up by the mic. Avoid them.
Camera awareness
Your best presentation will happen when you relax, act natural and generally forget that there is a camera in the room.
However, there is one circumstance under which you do need to be somewhat aware of the camera. That is when you are being taped in a large room and you are moving about. You need to be aware that you could move beyond the camera’s range.
Also, if you are being taped in a “live” event with audience Q&A, it is good practice to repeat an audience member’s question. This is because the audience member probably is not wearing a microphone. As a result, the viewer will hear your brilliant reply and have absolutely no idea what question you were answering.
Also, in live events, try not to turn your back to the audience…or the camera. This often happens when a speaker take cues from a presentation that is projected behind the speaker. It is probably not the perspective you want people to remember about your appearance.
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The Genius of Snakes on a Plane
What’s in a name? Or a title? Or a headline?
Today these summaries, like all other bits of communication, are wrapped in so many layers of spin and hyperbole that the meaning has gotten lost. In an effort to be clever we often compromise clarity.
That’s the refreshing genius of the movie title Snakes on a Plane. The clarity is what’s clever. You know exactly what you’re going to get and the title is so simple that it became the buzz surrounding the launch of the film.
Whether or not you see the film (movie may be a better descriptor here) you can learn something from the title. If you want to stand out – be clear.
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