This edition comes to you with free positive vibes for everyone in ‘brace for incoming’ mode as they approach the school holidays. In my house, our food shop has 8x the usual amount of snacks this week, and there’s an aggressive work / family activity / holiday club schedule taped to the fridge.
And for those of you with no kids but the dread of 6 weeks of everywhere you go being too busy to move, you may have some positive vibes too. We see you.
Dive into this week’s edition for tips and insight, and a preview of our upcoming podcast appearance.
Designing a pitch process that works… and advocating for the partners you want
We’d been talking about professional ghosting recently, and so when Sam sent me this article on how to get ghosted less, I was fascinated to dig in.
It turned out to be a great coaching piece on getting your pitch and follow-up process dialled in. If you’re involved in sales and pitching for an agency, or trying to get your internal stakeholders to approve the partner you have your eye on, you’ll want to read this…
The prospect isn’t (usually) a bad person: they thought they could get this done (because you’re helping them to do their job and they see their job as valuable, why wouldn’t the company invest?) but maybe a thousand others are asking for the same money and it only goes so far. We’re on the same team and it’s my job to help them make the best case for it.
Do you avoid trouble or embrace gains?
A couple of weeks ago, I went to a workshop where the amazing Lysa Morrison MBA and Chris Cook showed us many ways to lead with influence.
There were so many good insights, but the idea that keeps bouncing around in my head is that we all have a preference for whether we think about moving away from something we don’t want or toward something we do.
The idea is from neuro-linguistics, and it can be a practical way to boost your marketing message or copy. If you cover both angles in a campaign (or when pitching), you can resonate with people on both sides.
I’ve heard the advice to avoid negative and fear-based messaging in the past, but with some people, a message about what they will avoid by choosing your solution will resonate more than what they will gain.
It was interesting to consider how my preferences (moving towards, all day long) influence my default language.
What’s yours, and how is it showing up for you?
Hear all about it
You’ve probably seen in our LinkedIn feeds already, but Sam and I recently recorded an episode for the brilliant Paul Banks on the Marketpulse: Pros & Pioneers podcast.
The full episode is out in August, but to keep you going here’s a clip of me ranting about your internal team’s time not being free.
(With apologies to everyone who’s heard me bang on about before…)
