Many companies, Bredemarket included, have benefited from the efforts of evangelists. But don’t take those efforts for granted.
I recently said good-bye to a former Bredemarket evangelist who became silent and indifferent over time. I positively thanked them for their past support, carefully avoiding the topic of why and how that support ended.
(Maybe I should have asked, but I doubt I would have received an answer.)
And I remain thankful for the Bredemarket evangelists who are still there.
Sales involves people who say no…usually many more than the people who say yes.
To keep moving forward in business (and elsewhere) and to survive the rejections, you have to distance yourself from the naysayers and focus on those who say yes.
“A purple squirrel is a candidate so rare and perfectly matched to what you need that finding one feels impossible. Someone who checks every single box, including boxes you didn’t even know you cared about.”
Then Welsh provided an example of a purple squirrel, a man named Sagar Patel who worked for him at PatientPop.
On paper pyramids
At the time PatientPop had less than $40,000 in annual revenue, so it didn’t have a huge marketing department. It didn’t even have Bredemarket as a product marketing consultant because Bredemarket didn’t exist yet. And anyway, at the time I knew next to nothing about PatientPop’s healthcare-centered hungry people, physicians who needed to attract prospects and clients via then-current search engine optimization (SEO) techniques.
Google Gemini.
Patel could have launched into a complex, feature-laden SEO discussion, but his target physicians would have responded, “So what?” Doctors want to doctor, not obsess over choosing trailing keywords…and understand the benefits of a solution immediately.
“So Sagar grabbed some notebook paper and drew five sides of a pyramid. He labeled each one, describing his ‘5 sides of local SEO for healthcare providers,’ and then taped them all together.
“He made himself a little paper pyramid to use in his sales pitches.”
Google Gemini. My prompt asked Nano Banana to create a “realistic” picture.
Was Patel’s paper pyramid an effective sales tool for PatientPop? Read Welsh’s article to find out.
What’s your paper pyramid?
Too many companies wait months for the perfect marketing solution instead of doing something NOW and refining it later.
Bredemarket’s different. I ask, then I act.
I ask, then I act.
Once I’ve set my compass, I get my clients a draft within days. Last week alone I turned out drafts for two clients, moving them forward so the content is available to their prospects and clients.
With my suggested schedule for short content—three day drafts, three day reviews, three day redrafts—your new content can become your online “secret salesperson” within two weeks or less.
Don’t believe me? This post alone is chock-full of links to other Bredemarket posts and Bredemarket pages, all of which are functioning as “secret salespeople” for me every single day.
If you want secret salespeople to work for you, talk to me and we’ll devise a plan to improve your product marketing awareness RIGHT NOW.
A tech journalist, writing on their personal social channels, noted that they recently bought a laptop bag luggage strap…and was immediately added to the company’s mailing list.
Because when you buy one laptop bag luggage strap, you obviously need seven more.
Google Gemini.
But it’s really bad when you buy a refrigerator and the seller thinks you want more of THOSE.
Bredemarket is not a B2C business, and 99% of Bredemarket’s business is already conducted online. But even I need to remind myself that my prospects and clients may not be in an office—not even a home office—when they do business with me.
I still receive “snail mail” at home. And every time I look at it I get enraged.
In fact, I’m this close to opening most of the pieces of mail, removing the postage-free reply envelope, and returning it to the originator with the following message:
Thank you for contributing to rampant identity theft.
How do companies, possibly including YOUR company, contribute to identity theft? Read on.
Snail mail, a treasure trove of PII
Let me provide an example, heavily redacted, of something that I received in the (snail) mail this week. I won’t reveal the name of the company that sent this to me, other than to say that it is an automobile association that does business in America.
John Bredehoft
[HOME ADDRESS REDACTED]
John Bredehoft…
You and your spouse/partner are each eligible to apply for up to $300,000.00 of Term Life Insurance reserved for members – and with Lower Group Rates ROLLED BACK to 2018!
… SCAN THIS [QR CODE REDACTED] Takes you right to your personalized application
OR GO TO [URL REDACTED] and use this Invitation Code: [CODE REDACTED]
So that’s the first page. The second page includes a Group Term Life Insurance Application with much of the same information.
And there’s the aforementioned return envelope…with my name and address helpfully preprinted on the envelope.
What could go wrong?
Google Gemini.
Dumpster divers
Now obviously the sender hopes that I fill out the form and return it. But there is a very good chance that I will NOT respond to this request, in which case I have to do something with all these papers with personally identifiable information (PII).
Obviously I should shred it.
But what if I don’t?
And some dumpster diver rifles through my trash?
Perhaps the dumpster diver will just capture my name, address, and other PII and be done with it.
Or perhaps the dumpster diver will apply for term life insurance in my name and do who knows what.
Thanks, sender, you just exposed me to identity theft.
But there’s another possible point at which my identity can be stolen.
Mailbox diverters
What if this piece of snail mail never makes it to me?
Maybe someone breaks into my mailbox, steals the mail, and then steals my identity.
Or maybe someone breaks into a mail truck, or anywhere on the path from the sender to the recipient.
Again, I’ve been exposed to identity theft.
All because several pieces of paper are floating around with my PII on it.
Multiply that by every piece of mail sent to every person, and the PII exposure problem is enormous.
Email marketers, you’re not off the hook
Now I’m sure some of you are in a self-congratulatory mood right now.
John, don’t tarnish us with the same brush as junk mailers. We are ecologically responsible and don’t send snail mails any more. We use email, eliminating the chance of pieces of PII-laden paper floating around.
Perhaps I should break the news to you.
Emails are often laden with the same PII that you find in traditional snail mail, via printed text or “easy to use” web links.
Emails can be stolen also.
Google Gemini.
So you’re just as bad as the snail mailers.
What to do?
If you’re a marketer sending PII to your prospects and customers…
Stop it.
Don’t distribute PII all over the place.
Assume that any PII you distribute WILL be stolen.
Because it probably will.
And if you didn’t know this, it won’t make your prospects and customers happy.