The Fine Art of Selling Technology

Recall the last time you attended a concert, whether classical, country, rock, blues, jazz. You anticipate the event. You enter the concert hall, take your seat, hear all the buzz of excited concert-goers around you. The atmosphere is charged and the concert has yet to begin!

The artist walks onto the stage. Everyone jumps to their feet, wildly cheering and applauding. Electric anticipation of what will follow.

The artistry is starting to happen.

The music begins.  You hear the lyrics and opening chords. You recognize the melody! The notes begin to float forward from the stage.

The charged particles of  energy from the audience in the auditorium flow towards the artist on the stage. Artistry happens at the interface of these two force fields. The artist and audience feed off each other throughout the concert. It’s an artistic tsunami.

It is magic, it is communication, it is insightful, it is inspiring.

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Are You What You Tweet?

Chris Brogan writes me an email letter at least once a week. I look forward to his letters. They are personal. They are intimate. It’s like we are having coffee together, chatting. The way it’s supposed to be. You have to subscribe to receive his letters. They are not retweetable. That’s not their purpose. They are communication. And he invites a response.

I like that. A lot. It makes a difference to me. Because communication is the hallmark of humanity. And Chris Brogan is all about bringing human into everything we do.

His letter to me this Sunday is titled: “What Does Day One Look Like?” He focuses on what it would be like if he were to start over, like many of us engaging in social media. From square one. No umpteen bazillion Twitter followers. A blank slate. His letter focuses on his taking a break from Twitterland as well, to determine its effects… or not. His letter to me this Sunday inspired me to write back to him, as well. [Read more...]

Don’t kid yourself, nobody “gets” what you do.

There are no less than 85 engineering disciplines currently listed on Wikipedia

Differentiating yourself is up to you. Because no one understands how you think, your training, the tools you use to problem solve, cause-and-effect relationships you see that they simply miss, or why and how you use statistics so comfortably.

Which isn’t a bad place to be, at all…….

Next time you are in a meeting, instead of diving into solving individual issues, let folks talk. Ask good questions. Spin the problem out to it’s true context. Thank people and let them know why expanding the issues helps your brand of engineering solve the real problem.

Root causes can be the result of really large contexts.

Folks may begin to see you as more than “an engineer.” More like someone who speaks their language. A resource. They just might begin to ”get it.”

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