Confirmation bias is one of the most persistent obstacles in sales and marketing. It’s the brain’s shortcut for making sense of a noisy world—favoring information that confirms what we already believe and ignoring anything that challenges it. Convenient? Yes. Accurate? Not always. As the volume of information continues to explode, confirmation bias only grows stronger. For well-established brands, this can be both a blessing and a curse. On the upside, positive pe

Multiple studies have shown that the subject line is the most important factor in driving digital marketing results. You can spend hours composing a truly informative email for clients and prospects, but it’s a waste of time if no one reads it. The good news is that you have many more characters in the subject line than you’re using—about 85. The average email subject is only 45 characters. What a waste! As long as you put the most important information at the beginning, u

Most companies are giving their employees this Friday and Monday off because Christmas Eve and Christmas fall on the weekend. Guess what customers and prospects think about companies whose employees are working on those days? Read on. When we say that certain people have quality what we mean is that they have impeccable manners, demonstrate good taste, are well groomed, and accomplish all of this consistently---these traits are obvious. Not surprisingly, these same 4 trait

The issue every small business faces is this: How to get Google's attention. in order to drive website traffic and ultimately sales (nearly all very small businesses need a hand up from Google). There is so much advice and 95% of it is either flat out wrong or impractical. The #1 impediment to getting your business off the ground is website traffic. The #1 impediment to increasing your website traffic is your site's Domain/Site Authority rank. The degree of your website

To develop a successful organization---there’s nothing more important than creating a foundation of excellence. This means knowing what you do better than anyone else and then bringing relevant products and services to a market that appreciates those unique capabilities. Paul Leinwand and Cesare Mainardi wrote the seminal work on this topic; a book called, The Essential Advantage. Although I don’t follow and/or agree with everything, it is an excellent book. And actually th

The art of persuasion is really the art of effective articulation—making an organized argument based on facts. You are translating---from concepts to words---what you are convinced is true in a way that’s structured, professional, accurate, and compelling. When it comes to persuasion, effective articulation is far more compelling than manipulation. So how do you articulate without manipulating? Establish Credibility Credibility is built on both expertise and relationship. Th

Multiple studies have shown that the subject line is the most important factor in driving digital marketing results. You can spend hours composing a truly informative email for clients and prospects, but it’s a waste of time if no one reads it. The good news is that you have many more characters in the subject line than you’re using—about 85. The average email subject is only 45 characters. What a waste! The thinking used to be that you want the subject line to be as short

Marketers for all businesses, especially those for very small businesses without a lot of resources, often use automated tools to choose somewhat relevant terms that get the most traffic. The thing is, you want to choose terms that drive sales, not just traffic. There is a lot of info out there about choosing key terms for metatags and content and there are a lot of good tools to help you do that. The most important thing to keep in mind, though, is how your pote

It’s frustrating when you are confident that what you are offering provides considerable value, your current clients love you, but you can’t convey exactly what you do in a way that your prospects can easily grasp. What you need is less than an elevator pitch, but more than a generic description—ideally just 3-5 words that encourages word-of-mouth. Coming up with the best short description does require considerable thought and ingenuity, but once you’ve hit on th

Since we serve the technology industry, the ability to predict trends and differentiate between a thing and a trend with some accuracy is a big asset. Here goes. a thing is the big wave and a trend is what’s left on the beach after the wave recedes. Anyone can recognize a trend once the wave has receded; the trick is to predict what will be left on the beach while the wave is still on the horizon. Following are 5 traits of a true trend that will help you make accurate predict