In this task, teams were charged with selling Donald’s new product, Trump Ice (bottled water). The winner was simply team who sold most in a given period of time. Nick, a salesman by trade, was immediately confident his team would win if they would just step aside and let him work his magic.

Ereka, project manager for Nick’s team, urged Nick to sit with her at computer and research market and customer base for bottled water. Nick wouldn’t even hear of it. To quote, “Telling me how to sell is like someone telling Pope how to pray." So off went Nick using his same “high energy” sales pitch on every customer and focusing on what Nick wanted to sell - instead of finding best benefits for clients.

What happened? Nick flopped time and time again. A teammate (Bill) jumped in during one sales meeting and helped client to understand benefits of buying Trump Ice. Bill made sale.

In boardroom, George immediately noted his disappointment in how little team seemed to know about their prospective customers. And Donald chimed in by saying he had no idea why Nick thought his sales skills were so great when he had no clue about customers he was selling to. Ouch!

The bottom line? The team lost. Why? Because Nick was busy trying to sell what he wanted to sell, and in way he wanted to sell it, with no regard for customer whatsoever.

The moral of story? Know your customers. They are ones with money. It doesn’t matter what you like. If *they* aren’t happy with your site, your copy, your graphics, your product, or your service… they’ll abandon you cold.

When you’re creating a business plan, when you’re writing copy, when you’re creating a website, or developing a brochure. It’s not about you… it’s all about them. If one of richest and most profitable businessmen in world tells you target market research is vital to success, you can bet it is a wise strategy to follow.

...................................... When telling a story, leave out extraneous ...................................... It's easy to get caught up in all details of a story--how this new client didn't decide to hire me for six months, for instance--when what your readers want is meat of story. Certainly, details make story more vivid, so don't leave them all out. But, do make sure point of your story doesn't get lost in parentheses.

...................................... When telling a story, tie it back to your point ...................................... Unless article is just one long story (like a case study, for instance), make sure you don't get so enthralled in tale that you forget to bring it back to reason you started telling it in first place. An easy way to make this transition is to summarize story's point in one sentence and move on to rest of your article in next.

...................................... When telling a story, remember people ...................................... We're all curious about other people. So, when you're telling a story in your newsletter, make sure you flesh out main character of your story. And make sure to remember other important people while you tell your story, too--your readers--and make sure main character is one they can relate to.

Ultimately, Dan decided to have me write his complete newsletter, but not before he wrote a few complete stories on his own. By following these five guidelines, you, too can learn to tell a complete story.