Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

Here's What we Get Wrong About Persuasion

New email subscribers receive articles first thing, with additional resources. If you work and live with others, persuasion is not a “nice to have” concept—it's essential to living a fulfilled and productive life. Would you not want better relationships with your family? Think about it, these are the people you grew up alongside—siblings, parents—or helped grow—teenagers. How about getting raises at work or better jobs? Would you want to improve dealing with emotional situations? How about getting help to meet goals? In business, we'd love to find more value in the things we trade. We might want to solve broader... Read more →

What can a Company do to Deliver Experiences and Satisfaction?

The best companies are defined by priorities, not bound by capabilities. Horace Dediu uses Apple as a lens to analyze business strategy#: Apple, since its inception, has always been oriented around its customers, not its products. The questions asked by management are “what can the company do to deliver experiences and satisfaction” rather than “what products can the company build”. Here's the difference: A priorities-driven company habitually re-designs its processes and its resources. A resources- or process-driven company re-designs its priorities as its capabilities change. It's not just semantics. Further down: Companies sell objects or activities that they can make... Read more →

What's in a Name?

Naming things is not easy. It's a science, and an art. We need to think about the meaning of the word and the sound, what it evokes and how it rolls out. At the same time, we factor in the business objective, the nature of the challenge (e.g., do we want to stand out in a competitive, noisy market? Or blend in a network that needs us?), and cultural assumptions (e.g., are we global or local?) It's your baby Naming a business is sometimes more challenging than naming our own child–I know the feeling, the business is your baby. In... Read more →

"Walk, Climb, or Fly" Gets Real on Going from Surviving to Thriving at Work

Mini book read. Twelve years ago, Leigh introduced me to her research and observations about operational styles in a conversation about fitting in at work. She was developing this concept to figure out where she fit. But as it's often the case, when we set out to solve a problem we have, we end up addressing something many others are facing. The problem is the reason we take dozens of assessments over the course of our career. You've been probably weighed and measured in multiple ways—personality traits, selling approaches, aptitudes, teaming scores, evaluations, you name it. Lack of engagement is... Read more →

A Personal Journey Relies on Mindset. A Brand's Journey on Mindshare.

This post is part of a new series on conversations worthy of attention. Sara Blakely has had quite an interesting career and story#. She founded Spanx in her late 20s. The company made $4 million in sales in its first year (2000) and $10 million the following year (2001). In 2012, Forbes named Blakely the youngest self-made woman billionaire in the world. That's a span of more than ten years. A lot happens in ten years. Imagine staying with an idea and working to develop it for that long. In a recent interview at CNBC, Blakely says, “if you're starting... Read more →

Authenticity, it's Your Call.

We may not know what's real today, but we surely know how to spot a fake – the result of a mediated, manipulated, and focus-group-tested effort. Take for example customer conversations. So much work goes into cramming all sorts of meaning into scripts, that at the time of delivery they sounds hollow and insincere, if not a little robotic. If you watched Bicentennial Man#, you may be inclined to believe that robots want to have more heart. You pick up the phone to call a company's customer service line, already regretting having done so and steeling yourself for the obligatory... Read more →

"The Transparency Sale" Explains Why Unexpected Honesty Works

Mini book read. Ask any person, and they'll tell you they avoid being sold to by anyone—even on behalf of the brands they love. We may enjoy buying things, but on our own terms. To vet products or services we rely on ratings and reviews, word of mouth, and the opinion of the people we know. Flip the situation and now we're the ones selling—even if it's only an idea. How do we convince the other person or party to hear what we have to say? Are we comfortable communicating the value of our product and service knowing they've done... Read more →

“What is it that Makes X Reasonable Behavior?”

This post is part of a new series on conversations worthy of attention. Human behavior is a fascinating and never-ending source of learning. If you work in marketing, communications, brand strategy, public relations, advertising, and in general in trying to persuade people to do something — a fairly accurate definition of business in search of results — this is where you keep coming back. Economists have figured it out as well. There is no such thing as rational behavior — we rationalize after the fact. But we forget human nature in our haste to fit in with the spreadsheet crowd.... Read more →

Communication Has an Instruction Manual. Are we Using it?

A recent social media snafu that made the Italian news involves communication between a government organization and citizens. Thousands of people poured into a Facebook page created to answer questions about social security benefits, generating a chaos that put a strain on the social media managers who run the community. The social media manager for “Inps for the family,” whose page was flooded with comments, requests, accusations and in many cases insults succumbed to the temptation to blast#, that is to “expose the stupidity of the other to the public.” Doing this, the blaster becomes the hero of the pack,... Read more →

"Crucial Conversations" is a Guide for When the Stakes are High

Mini book read. When we meet a challenge with a response that is equal to it, we're successful. But when the challenge is on a higher level, we cannot meet it with the same response and expect the same results. This type of challenge has changed our lives. Everything moves faster. Technology had made some things exponentially different, including our stress levels. If technology changes, humans don't — certainly not at the same pace. We inch our way forward, and our responses — especially the lack of response (ghosting) — miss the mark. Conversation is the best tool we have... Read more →