We have a client who’s an accomplished executive speaker and wanted to book more bookings. We were tapped to help.
 
If you, too, want to build business by building your live audience outreach, this article is for you. Or if you know someone with the same desire, share it with them. 
 
Teaser: we’ve got a killer tip to help you, toward the end of this article. 
 
The lay of the land
 
First off, we’re not talking about using some high-priced speakers’ bureau that books A-list celebrities at Fortune 500 corporate events. We’re talking about getting our client booked at things like regional association meetings and conventions of larger national business organizations. 
 
The point here, in case it wasn’t glaringly obvious to you, is to place our client in a target-rich environment. This isn’t about ego or garnering some kind of Tony Robbins-like adulation. It’s about presenting to business prospects, and then getting opportunities to close them, afterward. It’s a very narrow use-case of biz-dev. 
 
So. No big booking agency. No chanting crowds. But there are tons of these more-realistic gigs, across the country, all the time. And they’re booked, typically, ages in advance: we’re talking anywhere from six to 12 months, easily. 
 
How do you find them? 
 
These days, there are digital exchange platforms that connect speakers (such as our client) with event planners (i.e., people who seek to book speakers for their gatherings). An obvious one is eSpeakers; we’ll talk about that one here. 
 
Load up your ammo
 
If you want to get booked as a speaker on a site like eSpeakers, you need to stand out. For the purposes of this article, we’re going to assume that you, like our client, are a stellar speaker with a great stage presence, absolute command of your thought-leading/breakthrough material, and have also done this before/are a published author/have been featured on podcasts, and so on. 
 
Yep. A high bar to start. 
 
Assuming all of that, you’ve got to let all of those eSpeakers-seekers know. Which means that, after you sign up for a (pretty darned affordable) eSpeakers membership, you’ll need to upload a lot of stuff about yourself to entice that audience. And herein is the gist of this article.
 
Here’s what you’ll want to upload, with some notes and thought-starters to help you along: 

• Your bio. You already have one, right? Well, this one should be tailored just to speaking engagements. You want to show off how many events you’ve spoken at; you might want to include, for example, an aggregate audience total (“Has presented to more than 50,000 people”). Include locations (“…across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico”). Be sure to mention any awards won; if they’re not recognizable, like Oscars, just say “Award-winning speaker…”. 

 

• Your headshot. Sure, a basic headshot is fine. But what’s better is a shot of you, on stage, doing your thing. Guess what? AI can help. Start with preferably a low-angle pic of you (as if taken from “the audience”) and ask a common tool, such as Grok, to add the catwalks and lighting way up in the stage ceiling behind you. 

 

• Your programs. These are the different topics you’re available to speak about. Each needs a sexy title, a bullet list of take-aways, and an “ideal audience” (such as “middle managers and their teams who are eager to take their sales production numbers to the next level”). These need to entice, entice, entice, and sell, sell, sell. 

 

• Your sizzle reel. Your what? This is a brief (about three minutes) compilation of clips of you on stage, doing your thing. Bookend it with an intro title, featuring your headshot and bullet-list of top credentials, and closing titles that include audience testimonials, your website, and where to book you. 

 

• Other stuff. You’ll want a nice 3-D image of your book, if you have one. You’ll want to create a doc known as your Presentation Rider, which includes all of your on-site requirements (time allotment for sound check, technical requirements, video recording limitations, etc.). You can also include discrete video clips of you, speaking at different engagements; these can be longer slices of the quick clips you’d featured in your sizzle reel. 

 
The best tip you’ll get
 
What’s the best way to find out how to put the best stuff up on a site like eSpeakers? Simply visit the “other side” of the site and pretend that you’re an event planner. 
 
Use the filters to drill down to direct competitors of yours. Take a look at them. You’ll easily see who the most impressive ones are. Then you can simply see what they’ve included in their “packages,” and use that as a baseline for you to, well, blow out of the water. 
 
Need help with a challenge like this? Contact us! We’d love to help you. 

​Wait, it’s December already? We must have blinked. 
 
Because it’s already time for the round-up of our top posts for consultants from 2025—an annual tradition here at Copel Communications. Here, then, is your chance to catch any articles you may have missed, or to brush up on others you may want to re-visit: 

• The most stress-reducing marketing tip you’ll read this week. This is, without a doubt, the most counterintuitive advice you’ll ever encounter. And you’ll love it! A ridiculously easy way to boost your marketing effectiveness. 

 

• Trade-show prep made easy. You’d be surprised how much stuff is already yours, for free. And how many “wheels” have already been invented. Get the tips here. 

 

• Is your business branding missing out on a blend word? Wait, what’s a “blend word” Or a portmanteau, for that matter? You’ll love this article; we’ve gotten great feedback from it—and it can really help boost your business, too. 

 

• A ridiculously easy trick for generating fresh marketing content. It’s staring you in the face: A source, right in your office right now, of endless custom marketing content for your biz. Read the article to find out where. 

 

• How to out-Google Google to broaden your marketing reach. We’re not SEO gurus, but some of our clients are, and we learned some wild tips that we freely share in this article. Take advantage! 

 

• Selling a client story is more than anonymizing a client story. You want to tell the world how you helped a client succeed. But sometimes, there’s a slightly different path to take, which will generate more business. Find out what it is. 

 

• So you want to be a podcast guest… What now? If you’re a thought leader, there’s nothing better than a podcast guest appearance for showing off your expertise, and engaging with new prospects. But becoming a guest is hardly straightforward. See how you can crack the code. 

 

• ChatGPT Doesn’t Wear Shoes. And if you think it does, stop reading right here. Seriously: This article points up a big weakness in generative AI, which you can easily exploit, to your sales advantage. 

 

• Sometimes it’s okay to ask the customer what they want. Wait—was Steve Jobs wrong? And if so, how can you profit? This is one of those staring-right-at-you revelations… you’re welcome! 

 

• You’ll never believe the best way to tease your webinars! You’ll likely laugh out loud when you discover this surefire trick to boosting attendance at your next webinar. Who said marketing isn’t fun? 

 

• How to McDonald-ize your B2B demo videos. Can you make a custom marketing video, showcasing your services… without any video footage on hand? And if so, how? Cash in on all the years of process improvement that we, and our clients, have been honing in this field. 

 
Phew! That should be enough reading and tips to tide you over for a little bit. 
 
But how about next year? Any topics you’d like us to address? Contact us and let us know! 

​We love continuous process improvement here at Copel Communications! 
 
In this article, cash in on all the tweaking and optimizing we’ve been doing, literally for years, with different clients of ours, to make things as efficient and repeatable as possible. 
 
Today, we’re going to talk about B2B “demo” videos. Does your company ever make these? We’re talking about those “watch this screen and see what happens” kinds of explainers which also, of course, sell.
 
So it could be a product demo. A software demo. A service. A SaaS platform. A training session. There are tons of these. They are common. And chances are, if you need to make one of these, you probably need to make a ton of these. 
 
And this is where optimized efficiency—that “Big Mac-ifying” of the process—really comes into play. 
 
In this article, we’ll describe (in broad strokes, with the details purposely blurred) how we do this for a couple of clients of ours. Pay attention: We guarantee that there are elements of this process, perhaps many elements, that apply to your situation. And the more that apply, the more you can benefit. 
 
The challenge at hand
 
As we’d stated above, we’re going to anonymize these specific client assignments. But you’ll get enough detail to follow the process, and recognize opportunities to improve your own workflows. 
 
In the first example, this client of ours will do a screen-sharing demo of the prototype of a use-case solution they create for their clients. And they do lots of these. The big opportunity here: If you could anonymize these brilliant solutions, and pare them down into, say, little two-minute stories, you’d have marketing gold. You could use them to quickly populate, say, a dedicated playlist on your YouTube channel. You could use that to show to prospective clients, who stand to be awed, once you hit the critical mass of sheer videos posted to that playlist. Not to mention your ability to feed the voracious appetite of the SEO algorithms and web crawlers of YouTube, Google, and so on. It’s one big virtuous snowball. 
 
Turning those client demos into marketing videos, incidentally, was not as obvious a choice as you might think. You’re starting with a lot of sensitive material. You need to see the bigger marketing picture, strategically… and be able to literally blur the lines of sensitive information, tactically, once it comes time to execute. 
 
So. This client does more than have one of their reps conduct (and record, via Zoom) the client demo of each new prototype. The prototype itself is based on a use-case that was presented/sold to their client beforehand, in order to get the green-light to make the prototype. Follow? 
 
Between the raw footage of the demo Zoom call and that original use-case PDF, we’d almost have everything we need to script the video. But not quite. So here, after lots of back-and-forth and tweaking with the client, the third of our three pieces of input evolved. In this case, it’s a super basic Excel sheet. In one column, it lists the timecode of the demo video; in the column beside that, there’s a quick description of what is happening on screen at that time. 
 
Example: “00:32 – 00:41  User logs into platform, using two-factor authentication with an emailed six-digit code.” 
 
Someone on the client side makes that little Excel, typically only about ten rows deep, for us. It takes them about 30 minutes. 
 
And that’s all we need! From there, knowing this client well, we can pen the video script using a basic three-act structure: 

• Act One: The problem which this demo will address 
• Act Two: The demo of the prototype, showing it in action 
• Act Three: The call-to-action (“Book your initial consultation today!”) 

 
Even easier
 
As you can clearly see, the big lift, for the client, in the scenario above, is to create that little Excel sheet for us. But more recently, we’ve started making videos, for a different client, with no Excel required. 
 
That’s because, for the cool things that this client is creating (we can’t share details, sorry), they already create three PDFs which are not only goldmines for us, but they’re also all we require to start scripting. The three PDFs, broadly speaking, are: 

• The output deliverable, shown in a graphical format 
• The metrics by which the first deliverable is measured 
• A “heat map” comparing the first PDF to the second one

 
These PDFs are so detailed that we’ve been able to write video scripts from them, using their details as the visuals, with the simple addition of a basic voice-over. So there will be shots such as “Zoom in ultra-tight on the detailed box at the lower right of Page 3, and pan across the different functions listed in its flow chart.”
 
In other words, no “lift” from the client at all! It reminds us of Craisins. 
 
Huh? 
 
You know Craisins. Those “dried cranberries” originally created by Ocean Spray. While making cranberry juice, they would throw out all of the skins of the actual cranberries used. Until someone got the great idea of drying the skins and adding sugar to them, and coming up with a clever portmanteau name like “Craisin,” which implies “cranberry + raisin.” 
 
(Read our article about portmanteau names and how you can profit from them.) 
 
Think about that: All those cranberry skins were not being used. Today, they’re a massive source of newfound revenue. 
 
Ditto for the three abovementioned PDFs. They were used to create a client deliverable, and then effectively shelved. 
 
Today, they’re the basis of a “found money” marketing effort. With very little effort!
 
Need help “McDonald-izing” some of your existing deliverables and processes into efficient marketing gold? Contact us. We’d be delighted to help! 

Intrigued? 
 
“ChatGPT doesn’t wear shoes?” Has Copel Communications completely lost its few remaining brain cells? 
 
Not yet. Stay with us on this. And learn how—no kidding—this observation can help your business make more money. 
 
Here’s a dirty little secret. While we specialize in marketing here at Copel Comms, we’re really “closet salespeople.” Think of the playwright who shudders at the prospect of getting on stage… but is completely comfortable writing a powerful speech for the play’s leading man to deliver. That’s us. 
 
Okay. Shoes? ChatGPT? Is there a thread anywhere in this story forthcoming? 
 
Sure there is. As we’d said, stay with us. 
 
ChatGPT, and all of the generative large-language-model AI platforms of its ilk, have really changed the way that people sell. The way that you can sell. And, upstream of that, the way you market. 
 
Shortly after it appeared on the scene, ChatGPT basically torpedoed email-based marketing and outreach—and thus the sales that those were supposed to generate. The reason is simple: It used to be that only reasonably intelligent English speakers could create grammatically correct outreach notes. ChatGPT eliminated that requirement. 
 
Since its advent, every mouth-breather who can click a “Generate” button has been able to churn out grammatically flawless… spam. 
 
Yep. Spam. 
 
The ISPs quickly clamped down on this. The spam filters got tighter. Even now, Google (in a related story) is tweaking its algorithms to filter out AI-generated content. 
 
But ChatGPT is old news. The platform debuted during the pandemic, for goodness’ sakes. 
 
The “old news” aspect of this story is good news for our clients and businesses like yours. We’re seeing an uptick in the effectiveness of email outreach again. Isn’t that nice? 
 
And, just like in the old days, quality matters. Remember the ol’ “three-legged stool” of email marketing? It consisted of the quality of: 

• Your list 
• Your offer 
• Your email which presents the offer

 
Guess what? That’s true again. 
 
Which gets to shoes. Specifically, “shoe leather.” We’re talking about the old days, when salespeople would “pound the pavement,” going from business to business, to the point where they would wear holes in the leather soles of their shoes. Hence “shoe leather.” 
 
ChatGPT does not wear shoes. It doesn’t understand how you can (and perhaps should) “pound the pavement” to actually generate sales. 
 
Example: We recently penned an email (is that a mixed metaphor? We actually used a keyboard) for a client of ours, directed toward their current clients, introducing a referral program for their services. 
 
Per best practice, the offer was “two-sided”: “Refer a client to us, and they’ll get a massive discount on our services. And you’ll get an Amazon gift card. Everyone wins!” 
 
So. It was a matter of taking this good offer (Leg 2), turning it into a compelling message (Leg 3), and sending it out to our client’s list of existing customers (Leg 1). 
 
Another dirty little secret: The client’s list of clients was small enough that no automation was needed. So “Dear [First Name]” was typed in as “Dear Linda,” and so on. 
 
Sure, it was old-fashioned manual labor. But it was effective. Proving that pounding the pavement, in its modern iteration, can still yield sales. 
 
And proving that ChatGPT doesn’t wear shoes. 
 
Need help with a marketing challenge? Contact us. We’d be delighted to help! 

​We don’t know a company in the world that enjoys the prospect of exhibiting at a trade show. It’s often the epitome of stress. 
 
But you can alleviate a good chunk of it. Hence this article. 
 
Grab the lowest-hanging fruit
 
Sure, you’ll want to promote your presence at the upcoming show. That means creating ads and memes for social sites such as LinkedIn. 
 
But what if that were already done for you? 
 
Duh. It is, in most cases. The hosting company will typically create artwork that you can use for your own purposes. It’s in the “Exhibitor Kit” you got when you signed up, and/or it’s available for download on their website. 
 
These will be pre-created ads that say “Hey [Industry]! [Our company] will be at [Name of Trade Show] in [Location] on [Dates]! Look for us in Booth [Number]!” 
 
Granted, these won’t be stunning. Often, they’re stunningly generic. But they are there and you’re effectively getting them for free (with your paid entrance fee). So download ‘em, populate ‘em, and post ‘em. 
 
And if you belong to multiple LinkedIn groups—you do belong to multiple LinkedIn groups, don’t you?—be sure to post these things in every group you belong to, at regular intervals. 
 
That’s one little bit of pre-trade-show stress reduced. 
 
By the way, be sure to take advantage of all the stuff that the exhibiting venue gives you in advance. Submit all the information about your company to help populate, say, the mobile app that visitors will use to navigate the venue. You certainly don’t want to be left out of that. 
 
Update what you bring
 
Is your booth or stand-up display skin still showing that outdated version of your company’s logo? Or artwork featuring people wearing Covid-era masks? Now’s the time to re-visit those materials, and update them as needed. 
 
This also applies to things like handouts, leaflets, flyers, brochures, and even business cards (you have them ready for that new sales rep you hired, right?). 
 
Note that all of the above-mentioned materials are fairly production-heavy, as in turnaround time. So prioritize those first. Get the input out the door and into the vendors’ hands, allowing ample time for both revisions and delays. 
 
Also consider the promotional items you’ll bring. We had a client who would prioritize what kinds of goodies to give away at their booth based on whether or not they would fit into a carry-on bag, LOL! It’s true. Whatever works for you. 
 
Speaking of updating your materials: You’ll want to tweak your slide deck, for whether you’ll be showing it at your booth, presenting in a conference room, or entertaining prospects in a hospitality suite. Fortunately, unlike those printed materials such as booth skins and brochures, you can update your slide deck with just a few clicks, no vendors or turnaround time required. 
 
This is similar to your website. You do have a big tile on your home page advertising your upcoming presence at the show, don’t you? 
 
Don’t reinvent the wheel
 
Here’s a classic question: “How do we get more prospects to visit our booth and give us their contact info?”
 
It’s a valid question. It’s also one that’s been brainstormed, and answered, a zillion times. So don’t reinvent that wheel. Use the latest iteration of Google, a.k.a. ChatGPT. Simply ask it that exact question. It will effectively search the entire internet, and give you a list of suggestions, from giveaways and contests to customized swag bags. 
 
Speaking of not reinventing the wheel: We had a client employ a little desktop carnival-wheel game, wherein visitors could spin for prizes. Again: Ask ChatGPT: What are some good prizes? Obvious answers are discounts on your services, loss-leader free services, Amazon gift cards, “Spin Again” slots, and so on. 
 
Speaking of Amazon: these little wheels are easily found there. They’re inexpensive. And they’re made of dry-erase/white-board material, so they’re easy to customize—and re-customize, say, when you run out of a certain prize. 
 
And be sure to pre-write the “Congratulations!” emails you’ll be sending to all the prize winners, since you’ll have their email addresses—and will have input them into your CRM. 
 
For the love of QR codes
 
How can you not love QR codes? They apply to almost everything we’d mentioned in this article. Put them on your flyers. On your swag. Business cards. Everywhere. Link them to the most appropriate page on your website—which, in this case, might be a special landing page for trade-show attendees, replete with some kind of promotion/savings for visiting that page (and providing their contact info, booking a call, or other similar call-to-action). 
 
Everything we’d mentioned above is stuff that you can, and should, do well in advance. The sooner you do it, the more pre-show stress you alleviate. 
 
Need help? Contact us. We’d love to pitch in. 

​Boy do the months ever sail past. Time, already, for our annual round-up of our top posts for consultants from 2024. Here’s your chance to catch any you may have missed, or to brush up on others you may want to re-visit: 

• How to clone your favorite client. You already know who your favorite client is. How do you 2x them? Find out here. 

 

• Wait, what… we actually use ChatGPT? Do you know how often people ask us if we consider this tech to be an existential threat? It’s not. The trick is in how you use it… as we reveal here. 

 

• The business gift that keeps on giving… follow-on work. We credit our brilliant clients with the most brilliant ideas. This one may well top the list. You’ve got to try this trick. 

 

• What should you give your clients for free? Do you draw a line in the sand, based on billing? Of course not. Discover the tips and cool stories here. 

 

• The advantages of the hard-to-schedule on-site work session. When should you go in-person, when virtual would be so much quicker and easier? The answers might surprise you. 

 

• What is a marketing “content package”? And why would you want one? Put it this way: When does delivering more, cost less? Up your marketing game with these tips. 

 

• Wait, what… you sent a printed letter? And got business from it? Is “old school” the “next wave”? Find out which use-cases qualify for what you’d otherwise guess is an obsolete marketing technique. 

 

• Can you write a good “next steps” email? (And how much is that worth?) We spent an hour writing a single email. And made money off of it. Find out when, and why, you should, too. 

 

• You’d be surprised by how many emails we ghost-write for our clients. We had to cloak it anonymity, but this article includes the story of the email we ghost-wrote which netted our client millions. 

 

• When should—and shouldn’t—you respond to that RFP? At what point do you commit your team to pursuing that opportunity… and at what point do you conclude, “No, that would be a race to the bottom”? 

 

• The easiest marketing videos you’ll ever make. Even if you’ve never made a marketing video in your life, you’re already sitting atop a video goldmine. Intrigued? Read on. 

 
As we start working on next year’s articles, we’d like to take this time to thank you for tuning in to our 2024 entries. We love sharing the love, and your comments make our day. 
 
Have suggestions for an upcoming post? Contact us. We’d love to hear from you! 

​Every hear of a “paper edit”? Probably not. 
 
Let’s dive, quickly, into the topic you tuned in for: Making the easiest marketing videos you’ll likely ever make. 
 
It gets better. They’ll also be among the least expensive to produce. 
 
And they’ll also be among the most powerful. 
 
Salivating yet? Let’s get started. 
 
Recycling is good for the planet… and your business
 
A client of ours recently recently pitched a new prospect via a Zoom call. Specifically, they “ran the demo” of the company’s offerings, which included both a PowerPoint slide deck and a demo of specific SaaS (software-as-a-service) offerings. 
 
The call went great. Our client closed the deal. What could be better than that? 
 
How about closing lots of deals? 
 
From the exact same call.
 
You’re smart. You’re already way ahead of us here. Why do we even try to build any suspense? LOL! 
 
The key: Our client recorded the Zoom call. With the prospect’s permission, of course. Important point: the recording did not show the prospect on screen. Only our client, who was presenting. 
 
That recording is worth its weight in gold. It’s a verbatim capture of the best possible sales pitch, with our client hitting it out of the park. 
 
The entire video ran about 20 minutes. 
 
And in it, our client—the one who was running the demo—was making killer point after killer point, with each one nicely illustrated by either a powerful preso slide or quick SaaS demo. 
 
We watched this video, and realized that it was marketing gold, being served to us on a platter. 
 
The paper edit
 
“Paper edit” is an old-school video editing term, which surprisingly isn’t so old-school or even outdated. It’s exactly what we created in this case. And it’s what you can do, too. 
 
(You know you’ve got some good recorded Zoom pitches by now. And if you don’t, you know you’re just itching to record your next one.) 
 
Here’s the task. Take that 20 minutes of raw footage, and convert it into as many little McNugget-sized videos as you can. They should run anywhere from about ten to 30 seconds each. 
 
So you just need to park the video in a window on one side of your screen, and a blank Word doc on the other. Watch the video and look for the organic “start” and “end” points of each little mini-video. Write down the time codes for each. Then come up with a title for that specific mini video. Lather, rinse, repeat, and you’ll have a “paper edit” which you can hand off, along with the big raw-footage file, to your favorite/least-expensive video editor. You will have done the heavy lifting; at this point, your editor simply needs to follow your instructions. 
 
They’ll need to create a master “set of bookends” first: This will be the opening title card, underlying music bed, and tail-end/call-to-action (CTA) title card. Once you approve those, you’re off to the races. Your editor will be able to crank these out like a machine.
 
In our case, the 20 minutes of raw footage yielded more than 20 different short videos. They were so simple to create, that we didn’t even need our usual high-end editor for this assignment. Rather, we handed off the footage and the paper-edit doc to our client’s digital marketing firm; they were able to make these little vids for us—and put them to use, too, since they were able to easily fold them into the account’s digital marketing strategy. 
 
Sure, we continue to make slick, highly-produced videos for this same client. But they’re more expensive and less frequent. These little videos are awesome for keeping the world informed and teased, while easily building up your social presence on platforms like LinkedIn, simultaneously boosting the brand and impressions. 
 
Need help with an assignment like this, or others? Contact us. We’d be delighted to help. 

​From time to time, we at Copel Communications are invited to make a presentation, via Zoom, to a business or networking group, to talk about what we do and how we do it. 
 
When the time comes for us to present, the Zoom host invariably asks us, “Would you like control of the screen so you can show your deck?” 
 
Imagine their surprise when we say, “No thanks. No deck.” 
 
So do these presentations, pardon our French, suck? 
 
We don’t think so. The feedback we get afterward generally says otherwise. So what’s our secret sauce? Why do we hate PowerPoint so much? What’s going on here, and, most importantly, how can you benefit from this approach? 
 
We don’t hate PowerPoint
 
That line above (“Why do we hate PowerPoint so much?”) was pure bait. We don’t hate PowerPoint, simply because we shun it for our own presentations. Truth be told, we make a decent chunk of our income here at Copel Communications from writing PowerPoint decks for our clients! 
 
But our business is all about communicating. It’s in our name. And we can communicate this, quite well, thank you very much, without the crutch of a deck of slides. It’s been said that no one wants to hear a sales pitch, but everybody wants to hear a story. So the trick is to frame the pitch as a story. 
 
Have a hook. Use teasers. Sure, we’ll toss in a visual (not a deck), when it’s appropriate, such as the cover a brochure we’d written, or simply a photo of our long-suffering dog, just because. 
 
There are times when PowerPoint is unavoidable. If you’re a CFO presenting sales trends and forecasts to the board, you’ll need those line graphs and bar charts. If you’re presenting on demographic distribution, a scatter plot is de rigueur.
 
But most of the time, if you do opt to use PowerPoint (or Google Slides, or Apple Keynote, or whatever), go for the minimum.
 
Speaking of Apple. Watch any old keynote presentation by Steve Jobs. He used slides. (Trivia: the in-house app which Apple created to make his slide decks is what morphed into the app called, appropriately enough, Keynote.) And those slides are minimal. An entire slide would say something like “Lightest Mobile Phone on the Market.” And that’s it. 
 
Take a page from that playbook. Put the onus on your presenting skills (including writing, practice, and polish). Which segues, quite conveniently, to our next topic: 
 
Cognitive dissonance
 
How many times has this happened to you: You’re sitting through some presenter’s PowerPoint, and they say, “There are three big things our company specializes in.” And at that point, they bring up a slide with four Big Things. And the first three don’t even match what the presenter is describing. 
 
So you’re forced to decide, on the spot: Which is more important? What I’m hearing? Or what I’m seeing? Because you can’t really do both at once, unless they’re verbatim. 
 
Meaning, you either 1) ignore the text that’s staring at you on the slide, and close your eyes, shifting your attention to your ears to listen to the presenter, or 2) you cover your ears (or mute your speaker) and read what’s on the slide, effectively ignoring the presenter. 
 
Gee. 
 
This, to us, is the all-too-common hallmark of PowerPoint sloppiness. If you’re going to show your audience Three Big Points, then have them match, on screen, what you’re saying, aloud. 
 
Even better: Have each bullet appear when you mention it. Don’t bring all three up on screen at once; when you do that, people don’t know whether or not to read ahead. You’ve already lost them. 
 
It sounds simplistic—heck, it is simplistic—but have your audience “follow the bouncing ball,” like a sing-along video. We think that many presenters are afraid to do just that, because it seems like it’s dumbing-down or pandering. But nothing could be further from the truth. It’s respectful of your audience. And it makes your points drive home. Where they belong. 
 
Our favorite quote from Jeff Bezos, who never allowed slide decks in his “six-page memo” executive meetings: “PowerPoint is easy for the presenter. But hard for the audience.”
 
To recap: You can, and should, use PowerPoint, when it’s appropriate to do so. But use it sparingly. And if you can avoid it—if you can captivate your audience without it—by all means, do so. 
 
Need help with that next presentation, regardless of modality? Contact us. We’d be delighted to help! 

​"Ghost Email Writer.” Kind of an odd role to put on your resume, no? 
 
It’s on ours. More importantly for you, however, is the answer to this question: 
 
Which business emails that you need to send are so important that they would warrant having a pro step in to pen them?
 
That’s what we’ll explore in this article. 
 
Touchy subjects
 
There is a common thread when it comes to emails that we ghost-write for our clients. It’s generally what we’d call “the big ask,” which kind of goes hand-in-hand with “the humble brag.” Both of these are hard to do. They put you, as the writer, in an uncomfortable situation. 
 
Err in one direction, you look like a jerk. Err in the other, you appear too meek. And in both of those situations, you don’t end up getting what you’d wanted. Talk about a fine line. 
 
First things first: You don’t really need to hire a professional writer, like us, to write an email like this. You can really work your tail off, and polish it, run it by colleagues, and even push it through ChatGPT if you want it to sound generically-correct enough. The question is: Is that worth your time? If you’re reading this article, chances are, it’s not. (Spoiler alert: We charge a mere pittance for things like these, for our clients, especially considering the upside ROI they deliver.) 
 
But so far we’ve been dealing with generalities. Let’s dive in and give you two real-life examples. 
 
Ghost-Written Email Example 1: To a former client
 
We recently helped a client create a series of marketing videos for their B2B consultancy. On their website, they’d had an ancient, but great, testimonial from an old client of theirs. They hadn’t spoken to this client in ages. 
 
Can you guess where this is going? 
 
Of course. A written testimonial, on a website, doesn’t do you much good when you’re creating marketing videos. Talk about a big ask: We wanted this former client to record themselves, on camera, giving a testimonial about this company that they’d worked with, a long time ago. 
 
Yikes. 
 
And so our client asked us to ghost-write the big-ask email for them. Confession: It wasn’t easy. 
 
But the finished product went something like this: It opened with a “Hello, old friend, we hope you’re doing well,” followed by “we’re so glad that our company has helped your company succeed.” We also thanked them for letting us use their written testimonial on our website. 
 
And that was the segue to the videos we were making. We’d already had the first one produced by the time we ghost-penned this email, so we included a link to it, so that the former client could watch it and see how good it was. 
 
Then we got down to the big ask: Could they simply read that same testimonial on camera, and send it to us? We even included its text in the email, like a script. We noted that, “By our estimation, this should take about, well, 15 seconds! So hopefully it’s not a huge ask.”
 
And we closed by saying, “Just as we have helped your company, you’d be doing us a huge solid by helping ours.”
 
The email worked. The old client was flattered by the request, and promptly obliged by recording and sharing a quick video. Bonus: Our client’s firm suddenly became top-of-mind for this former great client. Talk about a nice dollop of biz-dev! 
 
Ghost-Written Email Example 2: To “the secret handshake club”
 
Whereas the previous example was written to be sent to one specific, known person, this next one was intended to be sent, one-to-one, to a select number of very exclusive recipients who were all total strangers to the sender.
 
We need to be very cagey here, as this one is super sensitive. That said, it’s one of the best emails we’ve ever written, and it’s ended up netting our client millions. 
 
This client of ours had carved out a profitable B2B niche doing technical “cleanup work” for large enterprises. But they longed to broaden the business, and their client base, to include the specialists who helped those enterprises create the situations that inevitably required cleanup afterward.
 
Those specialists were the targets of the email. We can refer to them here as “the secret handshake club,” because that’s how close-knit, clubby, and insular they are. 
 
Our pitch, which we ghost-wrote for the owner of our consultancy client, went something like this; note how it combines the Big Ask with the Humble Brag:  
 
“Hello Mr. or Ms. Secret Handshake Club Member. I would like to help you as you advise big enterprises as they embark on big initiatives. Full disclosure: I’ve never done this before. But I have helped numerous enterprises with the ‘clean-up’ that’s come from all the overlooked issues in these initiatives, which I’m uniquely qualified to spot, given my experience. Would you have time for a quick call this week?” 
 
Guess what the response was? 
 
It was awful. That’s right. It’s a secret handshake club! Most of the sends ended up with no response whatsoever. The few that did respond, had some choice suggestions for our client, which we can’t reprint here. 
 
But then one—just one— Secret Handshake Club member wrote back. “Okay,” they said. “I’ll bite. Contact my assistant to book a call with me next week.” 
 
And that was all it took. 
 
That call led to a test project. That test project turned a toe-in-the-water tester into a new client. That client effectively provided entry into the Secret Handshake Club. 
 
Fast-forward to today, and that consultancy client of ours now splits their billing, 50/50, between their classic “cleanup” projects and Secret Handshake Club assignments. 
 
And it all started with one inexpensive, yet really well-crafted, ghost-written email. 
 
Have a challenge that warrants a ghost-written email? Contact us. We’d be delighted to help. 

​It’s funny how some things in business are cyclical. Way back in the day, we toiled over printed outreach, a.k.a. “direct response” a.k.a. “mailers” a.k.a. “junk mail” a.k.a. “printed spam.” 
 
Of course, all that went out the window when things went electronic. Spam postal mail was superseded by spam email.
 
Ah, progress! 
 
Yeah, we can afford to be a little snarky here. Stay tuned. Because the very recent tale we’re about to spin holds profit potential for your business, and your outreach. 
 
Dialing up the numbers game
 
First things first: You invest in direct response to drum up new business. It’s like cold-calling. (We could—and may—write another article on that topic, speaking of business cycles and swinging pendulums.) 
 
Direct response is a numbers game. If you send out to 100 people, your odds of getting a response aren’t very high. If you sent out to 10,000 people, your odds go up accordingly. 
 
Direct response is also often described as a three-legged stool. The list is one of those legs, and its quantity is just as important as its quality. You don’t want to send to people whose addresses (physical or electronic) have changed, not to mention their title… or even their company. 
 
The second leg is the quality of the offer. You’ve got to have something that’s really targeted and worth their time, ideally solving a problem they needed solved yesterday. 
 
The third leg is the outreach piece itself. That is, the email, or the letter, or the catalog or brochure or whatever. That’s the crux of this article. 
 
A matter of cost
 
Print is expensive. Postage is expensive. There’s a carbon-footprint consideration to it, too. So the whole marketing community breathed a collective sigh of relief when things went from postal to email, decades ago. 
 
And for a long time, it worked. Correction: It still does… to an extent. But things have definitely changed. 
 
You’ll cringe when we mention it, but a big disruptor here is ChatGPT. When it hit the scene, it made it easy for anyone to instantly generate a well-enough-worded email, which they could then blast out to whomever. 
 
And boy did they ever. It practically broke the internet. 
 
No, that’s an exaggeration. To put a finer point on it: it practically broke every ISP’s spam filter. We have clients now who can’t even send emails to their own, known clients without their getting trapped in spam filters. It started with ChatGPT: The clients’ clients’ spam filters have been closed down so much, to deal with so much incoming junk, that even their own trusted vendors sometimes get locked out. 
 
Some of those longtime trusted vendors happen to be clients of ours. And they’ve been switching back to postal outreach. And it’s been working. 
 
Where have all the emails gone?
 
One of these clients of ours recently sent out a catalog. Well, not really a catalog. Call it more of a thought-leadership piece that was really a very handy resource for C-level executives to have on their bookshelf. (We’re purposely being cagey here; we can’t reveal too much.) 
 
Now this “catalog” isn’t any good unless it gets opened. In other words, tucked inside the envelope with it was--gasp—a cover letter.
 
Yep. We worked on that one. Short, but vital. 
 
It teased what was in the “catalog.” It teased the benefits of working with the company that created it. And it invited the reader to book an all-important demo to learn more. 
 
Guess what? Envelopes were opened. And demos were booked. By the exact same execs whose spam filters had blocked every other form of recent outreach to them—including electronic versions of the exact same catalog. 
 
Email isn’t dead. But boy is this pendulum ever swinging toward print right now. 
 
Need help with thorny issues like these? Contact us. We’d be happy to help!