Rodney's blog

Sales people are the comedians of the business world; marketing executives are the actors. We could hypothesise that there are parallels between the types of professionals attracted to sales compared to marketing folk. By way of analogy, here are 10 theoretical...

Picture this:

You’re presenting your keynote at an important seminar or conference, and can’t remember what comes next. You freeze. You look at your notes and they’re not numbered. You make a mental note to embrace pagination.

You haven’t lost the audience yet. You haven’t lost face yet. You haven’t lost the deal or your job or your career. Yet.

You need time. Maybe just a few seconds.

Use any one of these ‘filler’ words to buy you that time, to gather your thoughts and to save the situation.

Board members and senior executives sometimes need their writing to be read. At other times, boring writing is their ally. If you want to be read, use comedy. ...   ...   ...   ...   ... Chairman’s – mock/faux – Report to Stakeholders The winds of change blew through...

Comedians deliver their messages concisely; so too do business communicators. We can all learn from the way that screenwriters name their films, and the way that film marketers create slogans that persuade us to watch them. Check out these titles. Do they tell the...

Never eat at a fish-and-chip shop next to an aquarium or a potato patch. Never dine at a sushi bar on a jetty. Never eat at a steak-house never to a rodeo. Never visit a dentist next to a cake shop. Never eat at a restaurant next to a dog pound. Never go to a pub next...

Have you ever wondered what comedians do to drum up performances? Here my 20 favourite sales and marketing activities: Doing nothing. Fiddling with my LinkedIn profile. Fiddling with my website. Writing jokes for possible future performances. Ditto for upcoming gigs....

It’s great to be here. By ‘here’ I mean in this three-dimensional presentation space. It has to be three-dimensional; otherwise this keynote would be a bit flat. I do like the shape of the room, the way it’s formed, configured and fashioned. The combination of...

Clarification1 with footnotes2 The3 remarkable4 thing5 about6 precision7 Is8 its9 arbitrariness,10 For11 as soon as12 we13 probe14 life,15 places,16 time17 We’re18 bound19 to find20 no21 borders.22 Of course, a title doesn’t entitle the reader, only what’s read. Like...

All probabilities are really 50%. Either a thing will happen or it won't. All the world is a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed. All work and no play will make you a manager. Any theory can be made to fit the facts by means of appropriate additional...

To beg your indulgence, to begin with, I'd like to begin at and in the beginning, as clarity begins at home. Lets start from scratch, or even before then, at the itch. After all, or before all, or above all, all in all, the journey of a thousand miles begins with a...