Should You Simplify Your Sales Script?

There’s a shop half-way down Smith Street that sells just about everything. Whatever you might need from a hammer to a cigarette lighter, a birthday card to an egg slicer they’ve got it. It’s the kind of shop that usually encourages browsing more than buying, where people wander around aimlessly ‘just looking’. But in this…

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Everything Starts With Something

When we’re starting a project or working towards a business development goal we typically have a laundry list of everything we want to do. From developing a new product to filing our tax returns, it’s in our nature to want to make immediate and visible progress all at once. That desire to do everything often…

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The Empathy Profession

When I was growing up (and maybe when you were too), careers like medicine, nursing and teaching, were regarded as being part of the ’empathy profession’. Today, every one of us, from accountants to designers, CEOs to Astronauts, are in the ’empathy profession’. No business or brand can thrive without understanding what it is their…

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A World Built On Promises

Scott and Joanna are planning to open a two-hundred-seater restaurant along a small shopping strip that backs onto a residential area in their local suburb. They know the neighbours will be concerned about the prospect of increased traffic and noise from the venue, especially at the weekend when they open until 1 am. So they…

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Who Trusts You?

We spend a lot of time wondering who we can trust. We are careful to work out who is worthy of our friendship, business or time. And yet, we often fail to make the connection between trust and success when it comes to ourselves. You don’t become trusted by being more successful. You become successful…

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The Hallmarks Of Good Marketing

A real estate agent can generate more interest in a property by listing it well below the expected selling price. Underquoting is sometimes used as a marketing tactic to create a heightened sense of urgency in prospective buyers who don’t want to miss out. When the property sells for 30% above the quoted price range,…

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Marketing Forwards

Lachie was a half-decent painter and decorator, but what he really had going for him was his youth and enthusiasm. He’d been in business long enough to reap some reward for his efforts, but not so long that he’d experienced the bust that inevitably followed the boom in Western Australia. Lachie had an easygoing nature.…

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A Measure Of Progress

In the animal kingdom ‘more’ is often the best measure of success. Herds and hoarders have a better chance of survival. But ‘more’ isn’t always the best measure of human progress. The longest queue isn’t always a sign of better quality. The most sales don’t always lead to a more sustainable business. The greatest number…

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Ten Benefits Of Backstorytelling

Since the explosive growth of the advertising industry that began on Madison Avenue in the 1920s, marketing has been about creating a story to make people want something. Conventional wisdom dictated that if you wanted to sell more of a thing, you appealed to a customer’s desire to improve his situation in the moment. Then…

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The Measure Of Greatness

I will never forget the first assembly at my children’s school in Australia. Our family had newly migrated to Perth, Western Australia. We wanted to settle our boys as quickly as possible into their new life. So, much to our ten-year-old’s disgust, they were in new schools within two weeks of our arrival. There we…

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