Five things on my mind this week:
1. Insight I’m agreeing with
I watched a talk that cold email expert Alex Berman gave last year. When asked about the success factors of cold email outreach, Alex said:
The biggest factor I’ve found is your website. It’s not even the content of your email, it’s not your subject line, or anything.
It’s: does your website actually speak to the client?
I think this applies to almost all forms of lead generation in the high-end B2B services space, which is where Alex and I both work.
2. Musical performance that is blowing my mind.
3. Book I am reading again.
Robert B. Cialdini, Influence.
I must’ve flunked the first read because I keep finding new ideas, good ideas, useful ideas.
The fallacy of one-to-many communications for example. If you are having a stroke in a crowded park in a large city, your best chance of appealing for help does not lie in the crowd; there is not as much safety in numbers as we think. So don’t yell out help and expect something to happen.
This is what you’d say instead: “You sir, in the blue jacket. I need help. Call an ambulance” (Cialdini, p. 116).
With your personalized, 1-on-1 appeal, you have transformed the mind of your audience from bystander to rescuer.
This is very close related to the first bullet.
4. Marketing campaign I’m impressed with
Drayton Bird’s ongoing event enrollment emails and videos are part of one of the best marketing campaigns I’ve ever seen.
Am I a filthy, lying, rotten rat?
5. L’esprit de l’escalier et les coworkings
By the way, I’m mis-using the expression l’esprit de l’escalier. It translates literally to “staircase wit”, in reference to the amazingly witty remark or comeback – that you don’t think of until the next day. Or until you’ve already begun to descend the staircase.
Here’s a #protip esprit de l’escalier (should’ve included in this article, Mechanics of consultative selling) for owners of co-working offices: provide “broadcast studios”. And they should be priced for individuals, not groups.
In most co-works, conference rooms are priced for a group of people, sometimes $20, $30, or $50 an hour. And if they do rent private offices, the acoustics and lighting is usually terrible. Just by figuring out ways to orient a significant portion of seats towards natural light, you’ll win. I think a successful independent consultant only needs two to three hours per day “in studio”.
Bonus: Quote that I’m contemplating/enjoying
“here is an Undiscovered Beauty, a Divine Excellence just beyond us. Let us stand on tiptoe, forgetting the meaner things, and grasp of it what we may.
– Bernard Maybeck, creator of the crown jewel of the Craftsman style
That’s what’s been on my mind this week, yours?