There are three skills you need to master if you want a career in sales. These are bedrock skills that I learned from my time touring the world as a professional mind reader. Enjoy!
Tag: marketing
10 Simple Tips to Have A Better Tradeshow
Tradeshow Booth Design Isn’t The Only Thing To Consider
- Be welcoming. Make your booth inviting by removing tables that block people from getting into your booth.
- Simple is best. Avoid “visual clutter” and use one focal point and only three messages
- People love “freebies”. Be sure to have give-aways BUT to “get something” they have to “give something”. They must give you their business card.
- Train your people how to be effective in the booth BEFORE they arrive. Have a game plan that includes weeding out the “tire kickers” from the real buyers. (Jonathan can help with this.)
- Have everyone that works your booth bring TWO pairs of shoes to wear. Change your shoes every hour or two (at the most). Your body will be less tired and less sore while keeping your energy up throughout the day.
- NEVER sit while in your booth. Take breaks outside of your booth area. Your booth is your sales floor!
- Hide trash, boxes, clutter. Everything and everyone should look crisp, clean and representative of your company.
- Ask customers to “work a shift” in your booth to share their success story of doing business with your company. Reward them with a dinner certificate as a thank you.
- Have something or someone that is designed to STOP traffic in the aisles and make attendees come to your booth to see what you offer. (Like us. . .)
- Be more “interested” than “interesting”. You are here to meet people, build relationships that will yield results weeks later when you follow up with those you met. The more you know about them, the more they want to know about YOU.
Freelancer Advice
This is something I wish someone had told me 20+ years ago. Hopefully this will save you a lot of time and heartache.
5 Dimensions To Successful Sales With Storytelling
Growing up in the Appalachian mountains meant I was surrounded by storytellers.
Whether it’s folklore, tall tales, or making small talk it seemed like everyone in the mountains of North Carolina has the gift of gab.
One year in college I even took a storytelling class. We studied music, narrative structure, pacing, character development, suspense, tension, and more.
Through the years I continue to see more and more parallels between effective sales, negotiations, and presentations.
It’s all just storytelling.
What’s your story?
It’s a common conversation starter, and for good reason.
We understand everything through the lens of story.
The facts and figures help us make quantitative decisions, but the quality dimension is always within a context (and that context is the story you’re telling yourself, someone is telling you, or you’re telling them).
Branding is your story. Marketing is telling your story. Sales is helping someone believe your story. Referral marketing is helping someone tell your story to their friends.
Learn To Do It Right
Since everything is storytelling, it makes sense to dedicate some effort to getting better at it.
To that end I wanted to share five details that you should consider.
1: Accept the mantle
If you’ve ever told someone how your day went, you’re a storyteller. If you’ve ever given someone your “elevator pitch” then you’ve told them a story. If you’ve ever tried to get your friends to watch your favorite movie, then you’re a storyteller.
You’re already doing it so you might as well take it seriously.
You might have a lot of baggage to work through.
- I don’t like being long-winded.
- I hated Aesop’s fables.
- I’m not imaginative.
- Nobody wants to hear what I have to say.
Whatever those roadblocks are, the first step to breaking through them is being honest with yourself about the fact that you’re already a storyteller whether you want it or not.
You can’t avoid it.
To be human is to tell stories.
2: Avoid the Superman problem
You know what that is?
He’s too perfect.
He can fly. He’s impervious. He has X-ray vision. He can move faster than a speeding bullet.
BORING.
At least he has one weakness; kryptonite.
Without a single flaw, Superman wouldn’t be worth paying attention to.
What could someone like that teach me about being the fallible creature that I am?
So don’t hide the tough parts of your story.
I know you’d rather not talk about your most embarrassing and regretful decisions, but they are a part of what makes you you.
In fact, it probably makes you more relatable to people.
Me? I’ve been divorced. I had my car repossessed. TWICE!
I’m not proud of those years of my life, but I also don’t hide from them either.
Share the struggle.
Which leads us to the next point.
3: Don’t fix what’s not broken
Struggle is part of the classic story structure that looks like this:
- The hero
- Is challenged
- And overcomes
- Leaves transformed
This is a framework that has withstood the test of time. The earliest oral-tradition stories and the latest Hollywood blockbuster follow this framework.
You don’t have to reinvent the wheel here.
That’s why sharing your struggles is doubly important: it helps the listener/reader experience tension instead of just glossing over details.
4: They’re the hero
Everyone is the hero of their own story and an NPC in everyone else’s.
And maybe featured in an extended director’s cut scene if they’re lucky.
But this is important enough I’m going to say it again, but big this time.
Everyone is the hero of their own story and an NPC in everyone else’s.
This is a huge lesson if you’re in sales or consulting of any sort.
The temptation is to present yourself as this heroic character who has overcome obstacles and vanquished demons.
Great!
But how does that help me?
Instead of focusing on your own adventure, tell them the story of why you’re the best guide to help them conquer their own dragons. Be the trusted guide and advisor who shows them the path to their own greatness.
This is next level storytelling: help them tell their own story of success.
Which leads us to the final detail.
5: Encourage others to tell their own story
Everybody loves talking about themselves.
Even you.
Don’t fall into the trap of only talking about yourself. Give others the permission to share their adventures.
They want to do it anyway!
And if you’re the one who gives them the encouragement to talk about their favorite topic (themselves), then they’re going to love you all the more for it.
So become a master at helping others be better storytellers by asking great questions. Provided engagement through active listening skills.
Master this skill and you’ll never be without friends.
Lessons Learned
One day I was at Wendy’s with my Mom and we had just gotten our order. I asked her to get me some ketchup. Seeing as how I was old enough to get it myself, she told me as much.
But I was so shy I’d rather go without something that I wanted than talk to a stranger.
After years of acting this way, I realized that it was always the “obnoxious” people who seemed to get what they wanted, and I realized that the reason I didn’t like them was that they didn’t seem to hate themselves for the reasons I hated myself.
So I made a decision to get better at being outgoing, and I learned how to juggle knives when I was 13 years old.
That was my way of putting myself out there.
I quickly understood that having a strong network of people who know you’re amazing is an amazing resource.
I think that’s why I had an intuition (if not an explicit understanding) of the value of storytelling.
Being able to tell someone what you’re all about in a way that captures their imagination is a powerful skill.
Even better if you can get them to tell you their story in a way that makes them feel powerful!
Ultimately the lesson is this: humans are storytelling creatures. Since before the dawn of time we’ve spun tales around the campfire, and all human relationships are maintained on the threads of our shared stories.
Take it seriously.
Speaker & MC
Available For Virtual Conferences & Opportunities
You’re planning a high stakes event with valuable attendees, and every detail matters. The speakers you choose will determine how people talk about the event afterwards. My goal? Make you look like a rockstar.
My Guarantee
If I do or say anything on or off stage that reflects poorly on you, the organization, or the event then you don’t have to pay me.
My Message
Most of the time I speak about creativity, innovation, and the psychology of sales, negotiation, marketing, and online business.
Every presentation leans heavily on audience interaction, live action demonstrations of the ideas, and unforgettable experiences that are fun, dynamic, and tweet-worthy. 👇
My Topics
- Think Like A Mind Reader: 30-45 minute presentation focused on the power of creative problem solving, innovation, and thinking outside the box. The takeaways will help you create more a more powerful business with a better sales team, website, and marketing materials.
- Secrets Of [Ethical] Persuasion: Influence is at the heart of all sales, negotiations, business, and life. The better you understand how it works, the better prepared you will be to apply it ethically, and protect yourself from unethical applications.
- Inspirational: Your life is limited by your imagination. If you can’t even picture an ideal outcome, how could you make it happen? This presentation will show you how powerful your imagination can be, and share tools to help you unlock big results in life & business.
“It was one of the clear highlights of the Expo and Learning part of the conference. Most mentioned how they appreciated the presentation itself and the dynamic content.”
Theo, BP ExecutiveTrade Show Competition
As you gear up for the first day of your exhibition, there’s a lot to be excited about.
The booth is set up, your fliers are printed, your sales team is wearing their custom matching polos.
Now you worry about the competition.
What are the other booths going to be like? Who’s going to be next to us? Are they going to be direct competitors?
But the other exhibitors are not your main competition.
What is?
Distraction.
Everyone is staring at their cell phones!
You’d think they’re there to do business, but they’re checking e-mail, posting their selfie in front the show to Instagram, and everything except being attentive to their surroundings.
So what’s the main strategy most exhibitors try?
The direct approach.
“Hey! You! How are you?!”
Then it’s like Star Trek: the attendee’s shields immediately go up!
This can be incredibly frustrating for exhibitors, and lead to a disappointing show.
How, then, do you effectively
1) get people’s attention in a positive way and
2) communicate your value in a clear way?Let’s look at the exhibitors who are doing it right!
If you walk any trade show floor there’s almost always a booth that is rocking the show.
They’re “that booth.”
There’s always a crowd, the sales team is busy, and they’re getting more leads than they can shake a stick at.
What is it they’re doing?
I can bet you dollars to donuts it’s this:
Experiential Marketing
They’re incorporating some kind of interactive experience that may or may not be directly related to their product or service. (The connection to their industry is not the important part: the fact that it’s interesting to watch and isn’t a hard sell approach.)
The presentation snaps people out of their cellphone daze, and is interesting so they walk over to check it out. Two people leads to five. Five people attracts another five and soon there’s a crowd.
That crowd is now highly engaged, and hears the sales messaging because it’s expertly woven into the fabric of the experience. Now, when they remember back to the fun they had, they can’t help but remember the brand, too.
Now, those cell phones are working for the exhibitor! Everyone is taking video, taking selfies, and posting about “how much fun they had in booth #714 with #YourBrand!”
Takeaway
Where do you start creating an experience that is fun, appropriate, and well suited to generating positive attention & delivering your unique sales messaging in a fun, engaging, and memorable way?
You start by getting in touch with us. Interactive experiential marketing is our forte.
It’s the cutting edge of trade show lead generation, and it can easily lead to getting three or four times as many qualified leads at a show than your current approach is doing for you.
For more details, just drop me a line about your upcoming show, and we’ll take it from there!
Biggest Trade Show Misconception
“We don’t do that kind of ‘barking.’ We’re a respectable business, and people know we make a high quality product, and we don’t need it. It’s not for us, bye.”
And then he hung up.
If it hadn’t just happened to me, I wouldn’t have believed it.
That was the founder of a company that exhibits at trade shows, and we had connected to talk about his lead generation strategies for the booth.
When I told him about how I create custom designed interactive presentations to engage attendees, make them laugh, and weave the marketing message into the fun that’s when he snapped, and hung up.
And I get it.
There are so many wacky unprofessional strategies that people use, that I can understand where he was coming from.
But it was his assertion that they were a respectable company and therefor didn’t need to improve awareness that struck me as the weirdest part of the exchange.
Counterpoint
A friend of mine attended CES (a huge electronics trade show) earlier this year.
He recently told me about a video he took while he was there. He explained what it was, and I immediately asked him to send it over to me.
Let me set it up for you before you watch it.
It’s the United States Postal Service’s booth. It’s huge. Gigantic even!
You already know who the post office is. You know what they’re about. They’re a respectable business.
You wouldn’t think they need any help in the brand recognition category, would you?
And, yet, they still have an in-booth presenter whose sole job is to engage attendees!
He’s the guy in the white shirt holding a microphone, and he’s in the lower right corner of the video to start.
Give it a watch and I’ll meet you back under the video.
Pretty cool, right?
There are a lot of details to cover, and I might cover them in a future post but the main thing I wanted to draw your attention to is even the USPS recognizes the need to have a proactive exhibiting marketing strategy.
You’re never too big, or too small to escape that detail. Never.
The Takeaway
So if you recognize that successful exhibitors take proactive steps to make the most out of their trade show opportunity, then let’s talk.
We’re at the forefront of the most cutting edge experiential marketing strategies that leverage high impact interactive experiences, so let’s have a chat about how we can make your next show unbelievable.
Stupid Skateboard
Growing up, one of my favorite things was going to the grocery store with my Mom. We always made time to check out the magazine aisle, and I’d go straight to the skateboard publications.
Every birthday and Christmas I’d ask for one, and eventually my parents gave me one from Wal-Mart. I spent weeks riding it up and down our street trying to do the most fundamental trick: the Ollie.
The skater jumps up, and the board follows. When done properly, it looks like pure magic.
I could never get it right! I tried jumping while moving. I tried jumping while standing still. I tried facing left. I tried facing right.
I fell down more times than I can count.
Eventually I figured it out: while the board was fine to get around on, it wasn’t designed to do tricks. I wasn’t the problem; it was the board’s fault! Stupid skateboard!Until One Day
My brother (4 years older than me) and one of his friends came home after school. His friend asked if he could try my board, so I said yes.
He proceeds to do trick after trick. Ollies, kick-flips, you name it he could do it.
I was stunned, and that was the instant I learned a valuable lesson:Just because I didn’t know how to use a tool doesn’t mean it’s not capable of doing its job.
In Business
I see this all the time in my consulting. People are convinced that:
- Email marketing doesn’t work
- Facebook ads are useless
- Twitter is dead
- Nobody reads blogs anymore
- LinkedIn never leads to anything
- The era of making phone sales is dead
And so on down the list it goes with people who may have dabbled in a particular approach, and failed to get results. It’s easier to believe the tool is broken instead of admitting their lack of skills in execution.
Moving Forward
I continued skateboarding for years after that afternoon (until I had a massive wipeout that left scars I still have today). I never really got good at doing tricks, but it was a fun way to get around campus when I went to college.
What I didn’t do, though, is ever blame a tool for my lack of skills again.
Do you have a tool, technique, or strategy that you love using that other people think is done for? I’d love to hear about it!Fire Triangle of Online Sales
I love fire more than you do.
When I was 14 I almost got arrested for juggling fire. Well, not for juggling, per se, but for drawing a crowd big enough to block the sidewalk & forcing folks into the street who wanted to get by.
Fire & street performing taught me a lot of what I use every day in my business, nearly 20 years later.
It’s all about triangles
Triangles are everywhere, and for good reason. They’re simple, strong, and infinitely variable.
Once you see it, you’ll notice them everywhere.
3 legged stools are stable on any surface. Triangle chokes in martial arts are nearly infinite in number.
Ever heard of the fire triangle?
Fire needs oxygen, fuel, and heat to exist. Remove any one from the equation, and it goes out.
Turns out there’s a “fire triangle” of doing business online. These are the 3 essential elements to successfully doing business on the internet. Get any single one wrong, and you’re not going to be toasting any success marshmallows.
</mangled metaphor>
Website
You have to have a place where you can build your presence. Some people use Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc. I prefer having my own website.
Hey, look! You’re on one right now!
If you’re building on someone else’s platform, they can change the rules overnight, and you’ve lost all your hard work. (Ask me about my friend who lost his 40,000 YouTube followers due to their mixup, never to get them back.)
A website is always available. Multiple people from different places on Earth can visit the same website at the same time. That’s like being in 2 places at once.
You can’t do that.
Your website is your best tool for telling people who you are & what you’re about. When we do that in the real world we call that having a conversation & that builds trust.
Your website is your virtual handshake and trust builder with potential customers & clients.
Social Media Marketing
You have to tell people you exist.
I get it. You want people to find your organically. You want to feel like people are connecting with you based on the value of your work.
You want people to like your page because you’re just that wonderful and they should just know.
You feel like if you tell people about your work, you’re being sleazy.Well, consider this.
What if you created the cure for cancer in a lab in Antarctica? What if you didn’t tell anyone you created the cure for cancer? What if you thought,
“I’ve worked hard creating this cure. People should know how amazing it is. I shouldn’t have to explain it to them. I want them to come to me here in the frozen-ass wasteland where I live.”
For shame! How dare you hide the cure from the world like that! You have a moral obligation to tell as many people in as many different ways you’ve done this amazing thing.
Telling people you’ve cured cancer is marketing. Helping people understand how valuable the cure is, is sales.
Now, if your cure is just water, and you’re telling people it’s the cure for cancer, then you’re lying & that’s sleazy.
But, there’s nothing inherently wrong with telling people what you offer is valuable, and the best place to do that nowadays is online.
Email
Think about someone asking you to marry them on the first date.
Sure, there might be a situation where you’d say yes (Maybe it’s me: devastatingly handsome, charming, and successful. I get it, but my heart belongs to someone else.), but the chances are you wouldn’t have enough context to make a decision. You barely know the person.
If you ask too early it’s gonna be awkward. Too many people ask for the sale right away and they wonder why they get turned down.
Think of email as a way to court your customer. Help them understand how wonderful you are. You show them you can be a good conversationalist. They have a good time whenever you show up, and eventually they look forward to hearing from you.
That’s what email can do for your business.
Put It All Together
If you apply these three things in juuuuust the right way, you’ll have a successful business that you can run from anywhere in the world.
Don’t know what your fuel is? Tried it before but it didn’t work? Let’s chat about it. This is what I do for a living! I help people turn their experience into a successful business by helping them create their own holy trinity.
If you’ve read this far, let’s talk about how we can make this happen for you. Join my secret email society with the form below.
(You can marry me!)
How I Got A Company $100,000 of New Business In A Week
Case Study
Let me walk you through how I got a company more than $100,000+ in new business, and then show you exactly how you can use the same techniques for yourself (even if you’re not a big agency).
A while ago I was hired on at the company as a graphic designer, and over the months I realized I could bring a lot of other skills to the table. The main way I’d promoted my mind reading shows is through email, so I was excited to bring that skill to my job. It was was outside my job description, but it was actually really cool to be able to contribute to a big win that everyone pitched in on. The company I was working with is a social media company that manages accounts for some large brands you’d probably recognize. They had been trying email marketing to drum up business without much success, so I wanted to figure out what was going on.
They purchased a database of 39,000 emails, so the quality of the leads wasn’t exactly top notch. The emails were companies & entrepreneurs who had bought professional services before, but they hadn’t actively signed up to receive emails from the company.
So that was the first clue why it hadn’t been working.
Then I looked at the emails they were sending out. They were pretty, but well polished emails usually are sent from companies, so it gets filtered out by readers. Think about it, when was the last time you spent the time to create a 3 column layout with coordinated graphics & buttons in an email to a friend? Probably just typed something out, and sent it over, right? The numbers show that text-only promotional emails work the best, but it’s the least intuitive for business owners. They want the pretty stuff!
Another speed bump was they could only send the same message to everyone; customized messages weren’t possible because their database wasn’t segmented or categorized.
Solutions
I started out by asking what we were already good at. What were the industries we were already doing excellent work for, and what had they learned from it?
We listed 7 areas that we really knew how to handle, so I asked everyone at the company to pitch in and write informative blog posts that explained how clients had used their services & seen results. The community engagement coordinators also wrote articles around what social media platform was best suited for each industry, and the best way to engage with followers.
Then we created email campaigns for each of the 7 categories that would direct readers to the articles & blog posts. The tone of the emails was more conversational, more personal, and communicated a much more fun personality. My client is a social media company; be fun!
Now that we have the campaigns ready to go, how do we figure out who to send them to?
I’m kinda proud of this one.
I created a landing page on the website. The landing page had a simple form on it that asked them to tell us what industry they’re in so we could send them a report on the best social media practices for that industry. Instead of focusing on what they could do for us (give us their dollars!), we were offering something they would find valuable, first: how to make your own dollars through proper social media use!
When someone fills out the form, it would tag their contact information with the appropriate category which would then trigger the proper email campaign. This way we allowed the contacts in the database to organize themselves without us having to go through 1 by 1 and go looking for it.
Then we wrote the main email that was sent to all 39,000 contacts letting them know who we’d worked with previously (social proof), and then we told them we had unique insight on what works, what doesn’t, and on what platforms so they should click through and let us know what industry they were in so we could get that info to them.
And it worked like a charm.
We had massive open rates on the email, tons of click-throughs to the landing page, and most of the people who saw the landing page filled out the form.
Then they started getting the emails that pointed them to the blog posts that lived on the site. We saw big spikes in traffic, and people were spending time digesting the information.
And it worked.
Within a week there were tons of new, highly qualified leads pouring in. The sales team was now spending their time closing hot leads who were getting in touch with them; they weren’t going out trying to drum up business by cold calling businesses.
As a direct result of that campaign the company landed an alcohol company with more than 50 labels under their umbrella. They decided to sign up with one label to start, and signed another within 3 months. That initial contract was worth more than $100,000 by itself. without including any other client work that came through because of the campaign.
And that’s how I got the company I worked with more than $100,000 in new business! Since then I’ve gone back to performing full time, and I now have time to build this site, but it was a ton of fun working with awesome people who were excited to do good work.
Takeaways
- Show some personality
- Use technology to get the right information to the right people
- Have a system in place that communicates value from multiple angles
- Educate your potential customers on what you do, why it’s valuable, & how they could do it themselves (Then they’ll see how hard it is, and wind up just hiring you to do it for them!)
GET CONNECTED
Want to find out how I might be able to help your business? Please don’t hesitate to reach out.
