Earlier this week I had lunch with my friend Bill Whitley. Bill works with property casualty companies like Nationwide and State Farm to equip their sale people with a stronger message – in the same way that I work with high-tech sales and marketing people. If anyone’s product has commoditized, it’s property casualty insurance! You’ve […]
Make sure you check out Mumbai traffic while you are here…unfortunately there is no way to capture the terror of driving over here on film, but more often than not, these trucks and cars are just an inch or two from my car. In fact, my driver did actually run into a taxi on this […]
Yesterday we completed day 2 of the Making Money with Security workshop – working on messaging. Wherever I go, there seems to be a disconnect between marketing and sales…at some point in the value proposition development portion of my workshop, I ask someone to show me what they would deliver if given a high level […]
Here is the Playback link from a webinar I presented yesterday on Effective Demand Generation (CLICK)! (Sponsored by Cisco Systems) A few highlights: 1. We started out reviewing key marketing concepts. The fact is, old school marketing doesn’t work and CIOs are tired of the same old lines every sales person uses when following traditional […]
I’ve seen presentations given by less charismatic people, but with very strong content, and then from others with less content but very strong presentation skills. Content is king! But a poor presenter can destroy great content; on the other hand, a great presenter with a hollow message comes over as shallow, and full of hype. […]
Is Webex a good tool for selling over the phone? Some sales calls lend themselves to Webex or some other form of web collaboration software. For the same reason I don’t really like PowerPoint for an initial sales call, when Webex is used to show PowerPoint on a long distance sales call, I find it […]
RSA is over and I’m headed home. While here I thought of one more important presentation topic, so continuing from the whiteboard and PowerPoint posts last week, here is an important add-on. Sometimes you just can’t be there in person, so what do you do? I am not a fan of cold calling when it […]
Day two of the RSA conference – what a great day. I started off with breakfast in the Consierge lounge, meeting with RSA’s US Sales manager. From there I navigated through a 5 minute hail storm on my way to deliver a keynote address to Cisco partners on ways to apply the concepts of educational […]
If you’ve read Stephen Covey’s classic on life management, Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, you may remember habit 2, Beginning with the End In Mind. This is key to any great sales call, marketing event, or other demand generation activity. Having done many executive luncheons, one of my clients’ first questions is always, how […]
I was speaking in Cancun last week and just before my session started, one of the hotel staff members ushered in a flip chart that I had not requested. Then a familiar head popped in with a knowing smile. I really like flip charts. Sure enough, I did use it! While white boarding is […]
High Tech Business Growth 