Category: Selling

Trust-Based Marketing

How afraid of heights am I? Well, let’s just say that if I were any taller, I’d be scared to stand up straight. And so during a recent trip to Costa Rica, when my wife and two sons asked if I wanted to join them in a paragliding adventure, my first response was, “I believe you have mistaken me for somebody else.” After all, if cleaning the leaves out of our house gutters (on the first floor) causes my hands to sweat, I can only imagine what kind of deluge […] Click to read more…

Lessons From King Henry

You know me, I don’t like to brag, but… I just conquered one of the most difficult challenges known to mankind. Peace in the Middle East? Harder. Cure for cancer? Please, you are not thinking big enough. No, my friend, what I did was successfully transition my family of five from one cell phone carrier to another. (Insert loud cheering noise here.) Not only that, but despite the fact that we live in four different states across the country, by the time the dust had settled, we each had new phones in our […] Click to read more…

Shower the People … With Insights

(Listen to this post, here.) You know me, I don’t like to brag. But… … last weekend I successfully replaced the water temperature regulator in our shower. Now, I understand. For you, this may not be a big deal. Maybe you’re the kind of person who rebuilds car engines, or renovates kitchens, or knows how many volts can fit inside an ohm (or whatever). I am capable of none of those things. So, when the hot and cold water in our shower decided recently to start switching places quickly and […] Click to read more…

Winning the Content Game

(Listen to this post, here.) Amazon doesn’t know it, but its delivery drivers are unwitting participants in a game that my son Evan and I have been playing for the past several months. Here’s how it works… Like most of us, Evan orders a lot of things on Amazon; he might get two or even three deliveries in a single week. And Amazon, you may have noticed, now has its drivers take pictures of the packages after leaving them at your door. The pictures appear with the delivery confirmation emails. […] Click to read more…

Lessons From a Toaster

(Listen to this post, here.) When it comes to household appliances, I am not usually prone to blanket generalizations. But, in this case, I am going to make an exception: My toaster is way smarter than my coffeemaker. You may find this surprising, since coffeemakers, with all their bells and whistles, are the alpha males of the small appliance community: sleek, powerful, sexy. Toasters, on the other hand, have been around forever – I guarantee you that Harry Truman owned one. And they have barely changed in decades: a couple of […] Click to read more…