“Midweek Material” curates articles, podcasts, videos, etc. on a variety of topics including law, marketing/sales, productivity and more.
Content as a differentiator, as well as [Podcast]:
- Content marketing mistakes to avoid
- The importance of experimentation
- A Cleveland Clinic case study
You have to be able to press forward and differentiate in a way that creates an experience that ultimately makes you the favorite, or holds the attention, or creates exception. That is the real difference today. For businesses, their content, their blog, their resource center, their website, it’s as important, and I would argue even more important in some ways than the products and services that they put into the marketplace. Because it is for most consumers the first and continual way that they’ll interact with that brand.
Using Content as a Business Differentiator [Michael Stelzner, Social Media Marketing]
Five cultural factors that maximize innovation [Article]:
Group conformity and tribalism are basic survival instincts, but these tendencies can imperil companies’ innovation success. Industry norms shape employees’ sense of what is possible, discouraging them from bringing forward ideas that sharply break with convention. When ideas do materialize, people water them down to fit those norms. This conformity bias leads us to follow the crowd, even if it is to our organization’s detriment.
Fear factor: Overcoming human barriers to innovation [Laura Furstenthal, Alex Morris, and Erik Roth, McKinsey]
Sales lessons learned the hard way (that we can learn from) including taking full responsibility, trusting your gut, and being yourself [Article]:
That was it, that was the realization. I realized it ultimately is on me. It’s my responsibility, I needed to take full ownership. And then everything changed with me. Because when you own the results and you own the failures, suddenly it becomes very clear what to do next.
5 Painful Failures from 5 Great Salespeople – And How They Made Them Better [Paul Petrone, LinkedIn]
How to clear the “fog” around how a potential customer will interact with your business [Podcast]:
They have a little bit of fog in their brain about how this works. What’s the process going to be like? If you can clear away that fog and show people that there is an easy way forward, then what you are going to do is allow people to feel more comfortable stepping in and doing business with you. Is there still going to be follow-up, is there going to be some more research, 100%. But if you have too much fog when you first go to somebody’s Instagram account or website, they are out. We don’t have the time, we don’t have the space, and frankly, we get a little bit nervous and scared.
The Video Your Business Needs to Win Over More Customers [Dr. J.J. Peterson and April Sunshine Hawkins, Marketing Made Simple.]
Andrew T. Daniel 