Do you try new skills, and if you aren't great from the start lose interest? Or, do you take it as a challenge to succeed by finding an alternative path? There is no wrong answer here, but you need to know which you do and why. VisionEdge Marketing's President, Laura Patterson gives us a great illustration as she talks about training for triathlons, despite being a weak swimmer. Here how she applies this to our continuing conversation about changing patterns to break or prevent bad habits.
If you missed the first part of this conversation, you can listen here:
In this episode Susan and Laura cover four actionable items to change patterns, versus changing habits. What can you control? Here are four ideas to take control and gain an edge in business and life. This was taken from a recent blog post by today's guest, Laura Patterson, President, VisionEdge Marketing. She and Susan drive through this hard truth list. You either embrace it and expand your effectiveness, or freeze in place with no desire to change your approach. If that's you, you can now choose to mix it up, or be left behind.
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Digging into your company's data may seem like a task you can shove to the bottom of the priority list. Perhaps you delegate it to several people once a month to make sense of the numbers and put it into a story recap format with a bullet-point action list. They all use the same numbers, but are they all telling the full, accurate story? If not, you may not take the action that will either fix or continue the path to growth. Today, Susan welcomes Nick Amabile. His love of numbers, puzzle-solving, and detective work culminated at a young age and set him on the path to building DAS42. Founded in 2015, DAS42 is comprised of data analysts, scientists, business professionals, and engineers who provide end-to-end data services—including data strategy, tech stack integrations, application implementation, and enterprise analytics training. From this episode, you'll have a checklist of what you need to do and consider before you hire a temporary or permanent data concierge firm.
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In Susan and Paul Furiga's penultimate episode in this series, Paul reminds us that for many organizations, the overwhelming volume and variety of social media seems to create one of the biggest storytelling roadblocks imaginable. And, it also creates some of the best opportunities even though social media is a double-edged sword. In this episode, guest Paul Furiga answers the question of what comes first, a story or social media.
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Paul Furiga tells us to walk the toothpaste aisle of any large grocery store and you'll be confronted by a confusing reality asking yourself the question, "Aren't most of these toothpastes pretty much the same?" In this episode we learn how developing the story behind your story is the true secret sauce to power your business to new heights. But a consumer purchasing something is a completely different experience than an employee purchasing on behalf of the company they work for. The story we tell needs to take that into account and adjust accordingly or there will be a complete miss on addressing the needs of the B2B buyer.
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Here we are tackling chapter six of Paul Furiga's book, Finding Your Capital S Story." You need to know the answers to these questions before you can create your story.
- What is your organization's purpose?
- What is the market demand for what your company does?
- What competitive position distinguishes you from your competitors? What really sets you apart?
- Who is your client? It's not everyone. AND where are they? What communication channels do you use to sell your purpose or unique position?
- What is your call to action? Don't leave us flat.
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In this fifth chapter, Paul explores experiences that led him to focus on storytelling for companies as a career and a passion. We're going to dig into the story of his own company, explore the application of the principles that drive your Capital S Story, and meet some common heroes that we're going to refer to as archetypes. Paul Furiga is our guest as we continue the series with him. He says, "In most organizations, you're a Capital S Story and your brand are lonely souls living separate lives inside your organization, and they've probably never been introduced to each other. And your story should drive your brand. They should be connected." Tune in for the episode of Sales Lead Management Radio, "When you stray from your archetype your story falls apart."
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Susan's guest, Paul Furiga, author of Finding Your Capital S Story, opens this episode telling us, "In the old days before smartphones and Twitter, I would say that a small S story is something you read in the newspaper, and it's in the bottom of the birdcage tomorrow. Now we don't read newspapers that much anymore. What we do is we look at our Twitter feed and then we swipe that story away. So it's the same thing. The point is that the stories that we consume most of the time, don't rise to the level of answering the most important questions about your organization. That's why we created this term called the capital S Story. And the capital S Story is a story above all other stories that answer these questions. Why somebody would buy from you, work for you, invest in you, or partner with you. These questions get to the very nature and character of your organization. And that's why your capital S Story is a story above all others.
Join them for a continuing discussion of why your story drives your brand.
This is our third episode in the series of Paul Furiga going through his book, Finding Your Capital S Story. We get to go down the history of advertising and where it lost its way and how the founders of advertising from over a hundred years ago as a whole have almost been forgotten (Have you heard of John Wanamaker?) at least their original methods and thinking behind the use of stories to relate to their target audience. What we are facing today is not how it started, and we have lost our way as we go in for the easier, messier quick kill and the splatter shot effect.
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The brain has been proven to be hardwired for storytelling - both telling and listening. Learn how across cultures, countries, languages the stories we tell are the same at their core. Paul Furiga is back to help guide us to identifying our Monomyth, or Heroe's Journey. We talk about Bridgette Jones, Yoda, and how our brains align when we hear those core stories told by others. Join us as we learn about Carl, Joe, the Monomyth, and Déjà vu from his new book, "Finding Your Capital S Story."
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This is a series about Finding Your Capital S Story - the new book by Paul Furiga. In this episode, we tackle the first chapter that I found fascinating - the science behind storytelling and how our brains are hardwired for storytelling. Paul will explain how well-known brands effectively employ storytelling for their success and what we can learn from them, without copying them.
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Kevin McCann of the Executive Strategy Group, gives actionable logical, simple, but wildly important tips in this episodes. Here's one to start, if we take something just as fundamental your website. Take the first, top five pages of your website. Look at your navigation. Print out those pages. Go grab a yellow and green highlighter. You'll have to listen to this episode for the insights and assessment you can do right now.
Then, he praises one of his partners, HubSpot, but admits there is something missing. On the buyer persona, typically, it's, "Who is your ideal customer?" What vertical industry are they in? The standard demographic, size of company, title, revenue, growth, trajectory, vertical industry, et cetera. You'll have to listen to get the rest of what's missing and how he solves it with Revenue Growth Mastery
He also goes through what is the REAL pain you are solving. It's not what you think 90% of the time. "The value of your offer needs to be relevant to the impact that the customer is experiencing with their challenge. Most sales reps totally miss that."
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In this episode with Ledge, we talk about taking our secret sauce for granted. To many of us, what we do is a no-brainer, but to most others, it is not. It's awesome, inspiring, valuable. He explains the four values that everything Add1Zero.co does checks back to these four focus items Revenue, Integrity, Calm Confidence, Shared Abundance. When our success fades, or explodes, we can usually attribute it to how far we have or haven't strayed from the core values and concepts.
Listen to this conversation. You'll have homework. That's good. It means you have valuable takeaways. If you missed the first episode with Ledge, you can listen here.
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Passion is not enough. As a revenue generator - deal closer service provider, Ledge tells us he doesn't need to be passionate about what you do. He needs to be passionate about closing deals for you and generating revenue for you. Then you will be able to channel more of the passion you have for your business. (20:31) "...sometimes folks will try to negotiate and say, well, if you're really passionate about it and you want to be involved in this, maybe you can cut your rates. And no, I'm not at all ... I'm passionate at the price I just quoted you because I'm going to make you millions of dollars. And that's what I'm passionate about. We build revenue machines. The end." Join us for part 1 of a 3 part series. Take notes!
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This is part of a series of interviews with industry leaders about artificial intelligence’s impact on the marketing and sales departments' current and future headcount. We interview Paul Teshima, a former Eloqua executive and CEO of Nudge.ai (acquired by Affinity in March 2020). The executives interviewed so far seem to believe that AI will create jobs while also changing the job description of those in both sales and marketing. Paul may have a different opinion. The host is Jim Obermayer.
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