Long sales cycles make it hard to structure your message and address the right questions. The key is to instead structure a series of messages that answer the right question at the right time. A message format that your organization probably uses is focused on how. In fact, it’s common for ALL of your messaging […]
Tools
3 Books That Will Make You a Better Communicator – EP:093
This week we look at 3 books that will make you a better communicator by making the useful usable. Made to Stick, by Chip and Dan Heath, is amazing at detailing how to get your message to stick with your audience. They make that information usable with an acronym: SUCCES. A great message is […]
How to find the words that build ideas
“People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” “Haters aren’t your problem. Ignoring them is.” “You can’t change what you do until you change how you see.” What do those three phrases have in common? They capture someone’s Big Idea (Simon Sinek, Jay Baer,…me). They’re short (tweetable, even!). They’re clear. They’re memorable, […]
The Persuasion Formula – EP087
Is there a persuasion formula, a simple way to think about it so we can be better at it? Yes. There are three predictable things you’ll need to address in order to persuade an audience: goals, perspectives, and truths. When we change someone’s mind, we’re changing one of those three things. It’s not easy, however, […]
The Key to Giving and Receiving Better Feedback – EP083
The challenge of giving and receiving feedback is to get people to move past the negative. The problem is that our brains can’t just stop doing something without replacing it with something else. Telling someone (or yourself) that something is wrong doesn’t tell them what to do instead. The trick for feedback is to pair […]
How to start a presentation your audience wants to keep listening to
Let’s say you sit down to read a new mystery novel. You crack open the cover, flip to the first page, and just as you’re about to read the first line, your (soon-to-be-former) friend comes over and says, “The butler did it.” GAH. Why does that drive us nuts? And more importantly, why does it […]
How to Match Your Topic to Your Goals: “Idea Ikigai” – EP079
Look for the Overlap The best topic for you is at the intersection of 4 things, and the concept of Ikigai can help. To figure this out for yourself, you can do an “Idea Ikigai” with four sheets of paper. On the first sheet write, “What I Want.” List the things that you want this […]
How to Make a Change More Actionable – EP071
Bloom’s Taxonomy Just because we understand something doesn’t mean that we’ll actually do it, which is a problem if we’re trying to get someone to make a change or take an action. That means we need to design our messages to accomplish a specific mental outcome: we need to be specific about what we mean […]
How to create positioning that maximizes your messaging
Here’s irony for you: I learned my biggest lessons in positioning from someone who was anonymous. It started with a mystery. Funnily enough, the mystery was not who this anonymous person was — that was an open secret. I mean, everyone knew who this person was. See, I spent the first 15 years or so of my marketing and […]
How to Find Your Why… All Four of Them – EP067
The Four Why’s You Need to Answer “Start with Why” is pretty common advice, but it’s hard to follow. It wasn’t until Tamsen had a conversation with Nilofer Merchant that things shifted into place for her. She said, “change doesn’t happen until we understand the context in which it happens.” In other words, our Why […]