How well do you interview?

Steve Portigal (@steveportigal) author of Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights is next weeks podcast guest. Steve is fascinated by the stuff of a culture – its products, companies, consumers, media, and advertising. As he says, all these artifacts and the relationships between them are the rules that define a culture — the stuff Read More …

Transformative Scenario Planning & CAP Do

In my Lean Sales and Marketing work, I have become quite intrigued with the CAP-Do Cycle and Scenario Thinking. You can find out more information on the Lean Sales Method page and Planning with Scenarios. Both of these methods have taken traditional Lean thinking, and we might say turned it on its head. Instead of Read More …

My Marketing plan, any questions?

The traditional marketing outsourcing strategy is that you will find someone or an agency that has done wonders for friends of yours or can produce an outstanding portfolio of accomplishments. You will interview them, and those items of brilliance will be demonstrated. You will hire one, and they will probably deliver outstanding content. You may Read More …

3 Steps of Simplification

Irene Etzkorn, my guest on the Business901 podcast What it takes to Simplify, is a worldwide authority on simplicity. As executive director of Simplification, she built the Simplification practice of Siegel+Gale. Her clients include the nation’s top banks, brokerage firms, insurance companies, utilities, and health care providers. Irene and Alan Siegel have recently authored Simple: Read More …

Lean Sales and Marketing Workshop – Engagement

Sales and marketing can no longer operate in a vacuum. It has become a process output that intertwines across many of the departments within the organization. As companies have become flat, their decision making is increasingly being done by committee. As a supplier, you must mimic your customer decision-making path and as a result your Read More …

Dan Pink’s version of the World of Selling

I have been a Dan Pink fan for many years. His latest book, To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others, did not overwhelm me with new knowledge. I felt that the book was the sales version of his previous book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. There is not anything Read More …