Guest post from Bruce Lee: 10 simple techniques to improve your advertising and web site copy.

5 reasons Good beats Perfect (almost) every time
The perfect is the enemy of the good. This wonderfully compact nugget of wisdom – commonly attributed to Voltaire, the French Enlightenment figure – is a fixture in the vernacular of modern business. My undergraduate French degree doesn’t qualify me to challenge Voltaire’s intellect. But hey, Voltaire hasn’t done a lick of work in over [Read more...]
The 3 Keys to Marketing Happiness
Here’s the deal: marketing is hard. If you think marketing is easy, you’re probably not a marketer. Or a human. Yes, you’re probably some kind of replicant who (that?) has been lucky enough to have the Google algorithm programmed into memory. Or you are, in fact, the Google algorithm, crawling this page right now. [In which [Read more...]
New white paper on Medical Device demand generation
Most of my readers may not work in the medical device field, but there are some nuggets in the piece that can be applied “horizontally.”
Are you a rainmaker or a meteorologist?
A CFO with whom I once worked shared with me the qualities he believed essential in a VP of Sales. As he worked up the list from bottom to top, I was certain that some variation of “consistently achieving revenue and gross margin quota” was going to occupy the #1 slot. But instead, he treated me to [Read more...]
Smart social media – 5 ways KLM gets it right
A friend in Amsterdam shared this video on Facebook today, and I was inspired to spin it here on the TLOTL blog. It struck me as a potential “beginning of the end” in the tedious debate of the question: is social media dead? I refuse to waste pixels issuing birth or death notices for social media (or [Read more...]

A picture spares us from a thousand words

b2b marketing, b2b sales, lead generation, lead nurturing, marketing automation, sales process, Thought Leadership

Oct 202010

I’m pleased to share with TLOTL readers the Focus Experts’ Guide: Sales and Marketing Pipeline and Funnel Models. This collection of 14 one-page funnel visualizations was created by sales and marketing leaders who are active on the Focus network. If you spend any time following thought leaders in this space, you’ll recognize most if not all of the other contributors. I’m truly honored to be sharing pixel space with this distinguished group!

You can download the guide here (PDF).

Below I’ve included some additional links and context:

Here’s the full list of other Experts’ Guide contributors, with links to their blogs (and my sincere wishes that the links boost or at least help maintain their organic search rankings).

Ardath Albee, CEO and B2B Marketing Strategist at Marketing Interactions
Michael Brenner, Director of Online/Social Media at SAP North America
Michael Damphousse, CEO/CMO of Green Leads LLC
Christopher Doran, VP of Marketing at Manticore Technology
Barbra Gago, Social Media Manager of Cloud9 Analytics
Steve Gershik, CEO of 28Marketing
Sue Hay, CEO of BeWhys Marketing Inc.
Matt Heinz, Principal at Heinz Marketing LLC
Carlos Hidalgo, President of The Annuitas Group
Jon Miller, Vice President of Marketing at Marketo
Adam Needles, VP of Demand Generation Strategy at Left Brain Marketing
Matt West, Director of Marketing at Genius.com
Steve Woods, Chief Technology Officer of Eloqua

A link to the Experts’ Guide download page on Focus.com

Craig Rosenberg, the leader of the Focus Expert Network, is currently running a guest post series with each of the contributors on his blog, The Funnelholic.

And lastly — for anyone who may still be reading — here’s the back story on my entry:

I sent my picture to Focus at the end of August, right around the time my daughter attended her first few days of kindergarten. At the time, it occurred to me that I was participating in a kind of show-and-tell for grownups. Just like the objects that kids describe to their classmates, each funnel concept in this guide tells us a story. And the story isn’t just about the funnel as a business process. It’s also about how the storyteller thinks and solves problems.

Prior to submitting my picture, I had white-boarded it twice before for two different prospects. The first prospect said she really appreciated my (impromptu) illustration, as it helped her think differently about her problem. We haven’t done a deal yet, but had we not had that meeting, I probably wouldn’t have drawn my picture.

The second time I drew it was in a meeting with a prospect who – a few weeks prior — had asked me to send him a “brief, high level write-up on how we’d work together.” I wrote out my proposal in text form, and, per his request, kept it really brief – barely over 1 page in length. But as brief as my proposal was, when I met with my prospect, I could see that I had made excessive use of that obscure, incomprehensible, buzzword-laden dialect: consultantese. Even in sanitized form, I’m embarrassed to share that original proposal verbatim. But I ran it through a word cloud generator (thank you Wordle) to show what I mean.

Scearce Market Development proposal wordcloud

Consultantese

Pretty messy isn’t it? The proposal wasn’t much easier to follow.

Once I drew a simple picture on my prospect’s whiteboard, our conversation became simpler, and we ultimately started working together.

No matter how long I work in this business, I still forget sometimes that consultantese has no place in my sales process. Plain English is better. And a simple picture is even better still, especially if it’s something my kindergartner might understand.

Guest post from Bruce Lee: 10 simple techniques to improve your advertising and web site copy.

b2b marketing, b2b sales, collaboration, copywriting, graphic design, indoor rowing, inside sales, lead generation, marketing communications, marketing to sales handoff, personal training, Pilates, spinal tap reference, Thought Leadership, truth in advertising, Uncategorized, wordpress themes

Jul 282010

[Post #1 in the "Other Voices" series, featuring Bruce Lee of CreativeLee Advertising.]

This week I’ve been doing, with a little help from my friends, a mini-makeover on the TLOTL blog. A few of the changes:

Installed a new WordPress theme. Thank you to Sayontan Sinha for giving us the elegant and simple “Suffusion.” I gladly made a small PayPal donation in support of your excellent work on this theme.
Replaced the mugshot that was taken when I was 38 pounds heavier. Thank you to my wife Heather, to Concept2 Rowing (makers of my Concept2E Indoor Rower), and to my personal trainers at Conscious Body Pilates for supporting my renewed commitment to improved health.
Incorporated the “Tall Poppy” color element from the Scearce Market Development brand palette. Thank you to Penny Laine for your work on the original SMD palette and logo. And thanks to Chirag Mehta for publishing your helpful “Name That Color” lookup tool. The HEX# for that color, C04027, doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.

I’m throwing shout-outs to these people and companies, some of whom I’ve never met in person, to underscore how much the creative process — in marketing, selling, or anything – is a team game. Which brings me to the fourth change I made to the blog this week: a new tagline.

“Tips, tools, and inspiration from marketing and sales masters.”

I’ve always thought the “Lord of the Leads” concept was about mastery of a process; specifically the process of generating and managing “the leads.” But successful practictioners of the marketing and sales arts understand that real mastery depends on integrating an incredibly diverse range of expertise — strategy, financial, product, creative, technical, analytical, operational — into a compelling buying experience for customers. A marketing leader, in particular, must be highly skilled at eliciting and synthesizing high-value contributions from experts in all of these areas.

So, starting with today’s guest post, I’m turning up the volume (to eleven) on the voices of other experts in the marketing and sales workflow.

First up to bat: Bruce Lee from CreativeLee Advertising. Bruce and I are members of a consultants’ roundtablegroup here in Seattle. Two other similarities: it turns out we live about 1/2 mile apart (98112 baby!), and we both previously worked for companies that were acquired by Best Buy. We are also both self-styled word warriors, though there the differences quickly begin to emerge. Because, quite honestly, I’m Don Quixote to Bruce’s Sun Tzu.

Bruce is contributing “10 simple techniques to improve your advertising and web site copy.”

1.Have someone outside your department read what you’ve written, and ask them if they understand it thoroughly. Chances are you’re using some term that makes sense to you, but not to your intended reader. Someone from outside your fishbowl will catch that.

2.Don’t use acronyms. If it’s important enough to mention, it’s important enough to spell it out.

3.Don’t get cute.Never use any derivation of the Got Milk campaign (for example, “Got Trash?” or “Got Pho?”). Never make any allusion that “size does matter.” Leave humor to the experts.

4. Don’t lie. Exaggeration and hyperbole are lies. Omitting important details, or burying them in the fine print, is a form of lying. Someday soon, credit card companies will pay for this transgression.

5. Proofread it out loud. Then have someone else proofread it out loud while you listen.

6. Say it correctly. “Happens only once a year” is better than “Only happens once a year.” (Only Jack kissed Mary. Jack only kissed Mary. Jack kissed only Mary.) Misuse “it’s/its” or “your/you’re” only if you want the reader to think you’re incompetent.

7. Resist the urge to use an exclamation point. Resist!

8. Unless you’re simply listing a commodity and a price (1 gal. 2% milk, $3) include at least one product benefit. (Chocolate Milk. Builds strong bones and kids love it. 1 gal. $3)

9. Try to find a way to work the word “you” into the headline.

10. Know when to bend the rules. You’re trying to communicate with people using only symbols. But when a person reads, they hear a voice talking in their head. It’s sometimes okay for that voice to start a sentence with a preposition.