In my e-book, Saying the Wrong Thing Louder Doesn’t Make It Right, I talked about how one of the reasons referrals and face-to-face meetings work for marketing professional services when other forms of marketing fail is because we are conversational in the former but often turn to corporate-speak in the latter. Over the weekend, I was reading some David Maister’s Strategy and the Fat Smoker; Doing What’s Obvious But Not Easy
. David is much smarter and a better writer than I am, and he makes this point much better than I did. David tells us that in order to win a client’s business, we must have a conversation. He outlines the following characteristics of that conversation:
- It’s person-to-person, not role-to-role. People use normal language, not “corporate-speak”
- Both sides talk, and what one says depends on what the other has just said.
- Both parties are engaged in joint problem-solving; neither is trying to win or prevail
- It’s designed to allow people with different views to learn from one another
Take a close look at the list above. When you go on a sales call or are speaking to generate leads, are you conversing? Or are you “telling”?
