Reading Time: 2 minI’ve frequently shared my distain for any company that pushes cold outreach. Blair Enns recently wrote an excellent post where he breaks down the three tiers of lead generation: Tier I: Inbound leadsPeople that find you via your content or referrals from others, with no specific action on your part. Tier II: Warm OutreachThese are […]
Business
Feedback is a gift
Reading Time: < 1 minIf given in the right spirit, feedback from others is an amazing thing. The book “Thanks for the Feedback” offers great ways to share productively with others, and I touched on a few other ideas in a post from last year. If you can stay open to feedback (and hopefully it’s delivered in the right […]
AI is going to kill SEO
Reading Time: 2 minIt may take quite a while, but peak SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is behind us, and the relevance of it will only go down from here. That’s not to say that SEO isn’t important, as it still can be a major source of traffic for many sites, but the value will slowly erode over the […]
More content leads to shorter sales cycles
Reading Time: 2 minIf the sales cycle with your company seems to be getting longer and longer, that may indicate a lack of content production on your part. Without solid, regular content, people can’t get to know and trust you until they’ve had direct conversations with you. While those conversations are essential in every case, if you can […]
You need less data, not more
Reading Time: < 1 minMany agencies will produce monthly or quarterly reports for their clients that are 20 pages long, full of charts and graphs and data. Everything in there is useful, but very few clients will take the time to read through a 20 page report. Over the years at GreenMellen, we’ve worked to reduce the quantity of […]
Experts lead the process
Reading Time: < 1 minAre you an expert at what you do? If so, then you should be leading the way in conversations with your clients. Not in a pushy, obnoxious way, but you should be the one to drive things forward. In his book “The Business of Expertise“, David C. Baker compares it to other professions. When you’re […]
Cause blindness can lead to bad things
Reading Time: < 1 minAs preached all throughout the book “The Infinite Game“, having a stated cause for your company is essential. However, if you become too confident in your own cause, you can see your competitors as being inferior and you might miss ways that you could improve. From the book: Cause Blindness is when we become so […]
It’ll be interesting to see how you guys figure this out
Reading Time: < 1 minBo Burlingham’s book “Small Giants” covered 14 businesses that chose to stay small, as opposed to being bought out or going public, and the things they did to help them succeed. There were a ton of great lessons in the book, and I encourage you to check it out for yourself, but a great one […]
Don’t make a bigger mistake
Reading Time: 2 minSometimes you will execute something perfectly, yet another person might think you’ve made a mistake. Depending on who that is, it might be worth owning up to your “mistake” rather than making a bigger one by trying to correct them. In his pursuit of excellence, Danny Meyer shares these thoughts in the book “Unreasonable Hospitality“, […]
Excellence doesn’t need to be perfect
Reading Time: < 1 minIt’s been said that “perfection is the enemy of done”, in that people will work so hard to make a product or idea absolutely perfect that it never gets finished. However, something doesn’t need to be perfect for it to still be excellent. In his book “Unreasonable Hospitality“, author Will Guidara puts it like this: […]