Excerpt from episode 214
Blindsight, with Matt Johnson & Prince Ghuman
The Attention Merchants, with Tim Wu
Excerpt from Episode 175
Sell The Way You Buy, with David Priemer
Excerpt from Episode 175
This book’s premise may get a ‘duh’ reaction out of you, but much in sales is dictated by how a buyer feels. Reality is, few of us have the EQ to know what we’re feeling, and our lazy brains don’t want to think too hard about a purchase. To Priemer, it’s the salesperson’s job to help the buyer work through their own thoughts & feelings.
Elements of this book reminded me of ‘Stumbling on Happiness,’ ‘Making Websites Win’ and ‘This I Know’ and none of those is a sales book.
Love this line “Sellers operate as though their buyers are out there sitting idle, just waiting for a solution like theirs to appear on their doorstep. Of course that is (sadly) not the case.”
Another nugget, “most companies think they are selling a pain killer, but their messaging sounds like they’re selling vitamins.”
One of the book’s major messages is that beliefs matter. “First, consider what your organization believes to be its key offering, the thing that differentiates it from your competition. Next craft a statement or series of statements you can use across your sales and marketing efforts, beginning with the phrase “We believe” or “At our company, we believe that” to tell the story…..And if your customers believe what you believe, they will undoubtedly lean in and say, “Tell me more!”
When you insert your own product into the ‘beliefs’ story, say how it solves the problem in a way that circumvents typical solutions (e.g. throwing a lot of money at a problem). By doing so, you’re pre-emptively handling their objections.
His scenarios on Discovery Questions and Objection Handling are excellent. I’d recommend someone who needs practice (and who’s not getting it through real world experience) to read this book.
Friction, with Soon Yu
This is an excerpt from Episode 175
Hello $Firstname, with Rasmus Houlind
Episode 180
‘1 to 1 Marketing,’ sounds wonderful. Don Peppers & Martha Rogers wrote a series of books in the 1990s called this. We have thrown all kinds of technology, content, and persona construction at it over the last 25 years. But it still eludes us. Architecting communications that converses with each person, at their own point in a conversation with our brand is hard. Is it marketing’s job to actually have 1:1 conversations? And with what’s at stake if we screw up personalization, can we implement or maintain it without losing our jobs?
Today’s guest is here to help answer that.
Since getting his M.A. in Information Studies from Aarhus University, our guest has lived at the intersection of data and communications.
Since 2020 he has been the Chief Experience Officer at Agillic, an omnichannel marketing software, where he works primarily with large companies involved in omnichannel marketing, customer experience management, and customer lifecycle projects.
He’s on a mission to ensure that the end user gets consistent, timely and relevant communications across channels – be it web, email, app, text, social – or even in-store. He often presents keynotes on Omnichannel Personalization and sits on the jury for that at the Danish eCommerce Awards.
His first book, written together with Colin Shearer, was a bestseller on Omnichannel Marketing. We’re talking with him about his book “Hello $Firstname,” which came out in 2023. Joining me from Copenhagen, let’s welcome Rasmus Houlind.
Chapters & Timestamps
0:00 – Intro
2:30 – Book’s Main Theme
37:48 – Public Service Announcement
38:41 – Quantifying the value of Personalization
1:00:25 – Rasmus Contact details
People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show
Rasmus on LinkedIn
Rasmus works at Agillic
Book has versions available for North America & Nordics
Plato’s theory of forms (here is a YouTube video on it)
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Example in book used the Financial Times
Episode Reboot
Download a free abstract of the book
