It’s Not What You Want to Say That Counts; It’s What They Need to Hear.
You’ve got a client meeting on Monday. You’re staring at a blank computer screen and your first thought is, naturally, “What do I want to say?” Unfortunately that is never the most effective way to communicate.
Like many of you, I live with a persistent underlying hum of fear. Salespeople: from Willie Loman to Crazy Eddie, to insurance agents, stockbrokers and car dealers, we have to steel ourselves for the occasional unavoidable contact.
One common failure of marketers everywhere is our tendency to overthink things. We assume our audiences will see and hear our story with the same intellectual rigor we applied to its creation.
We’ve all heard it: “It’s not personal, it’s just business.” I’m not sure what the genesis of that familiar phrase is, but it always felt like it was designed to rationalize or excuse some form of unethical or, at the very least, antagonistic behavior.
As our individual universes get more complex we, as a society, have leaned further and further in the direction of specialization to solve our problems. This approach permeates virtually every aspect of our lives.