Elevator pitch

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Some time ago, I wrote an article about how software buyers were mired in the "skepticism swamp." It's even worse now.

If you're selling software, you have to be able to overcome the massive amount of disbelief that has built up in buyers' minds, thanks to all the promises that have been made to them - and broken. Everyone promised higher productivity, increased efficiency, and plug-and-play. HA.

What everyone delivered was installation headaches, integration nightmares, missing-in-action service, and navigation that required that you know the program intimately before you could do anything useful with it.

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George Lucas, being interviewed recently by Kara Swisher of The Wall Street Journal, was pontificating on the difference between circus and art. He said that YouTube is circus - which the movie industry calls "throwing puppies on the freeway," because you just create something and put it up and see what happens. He then said that art, on the other hand, is "where the person contrives the situation and tells a story, and hopefully that story reveals the truth behind the facts."

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I get a lot of calls from PR folks. Each call is a sales call, which is why I'm talking about it here. Anyone who sells for a living - and that includes CEOs and entrepreneurs - can learn from the mistakes that PR houses make. This article will also help you manage your PR folks, who are probably making these same mistakes.

PR people call me because they have a story they want me to "buy" and write about. Their methods, for the most part, are pitiful. It's sad, because just about every person who calls is a decent human being who wants to do a good job.

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Working with CEOs and entrepreneurs, I identify and eliminate barriers to revenue and turn stalled or slowing companies into revenue-growth machines. I have become a revenue engineer. I am an industry of one, and happy to be here.

I'm bringing this up to talk about self-reinvention, a skill that all of us must master in this age of fast-moving markets. As you learn more and become more experienced, and apply those lessons and that experience to your next job, you need to know what you are good at, what you can provide, and what you should call it.