Do You Take the Stairs?

Fun theory shows once again that human decision-making isn’t rational.

I always like to think that logic and rational thought rule when my prospects make a decision.  But, time and again I’m proven wrong.  That’s why you always hear us say in Power Messaging – “people decide on emotion and justify with facts.”

When I ran across this video it showed once again how emotional decision-making can be.  You and I know that taking the stairs instead of an escalator will provide more exercise.  And, we are fully aware that exercise is good for us.  (There’s plenty of research and data to prove that.)  So, it would be logical to assume that if we know what’s good for us, we’d always take the stairs instead of the escalator.  But, we don’t.

Watch this less than 2-minute video to see an interesting social experiment on getting more people to take the stairs.  It proves once again how we underestimate the power of emotions to impact a decision.

It’s the same when you go into a sales pitch with too much information.  Too much data.  Too many rational arguments.  You leave wondering why your prospect has paralysis by analysis.  It’s because you put her there.  And, as a result, she can’t clearly see enough reason to change from the status quo.

In fact, recent research indicates that 40% of sales cycles end in no decision.  Meaning your biggest competitive enemy is no longer an arch rival competitor, but prospects doing nothing.  In truth, however, this could be your biggest opportunity.  Taking market share from tough competitors is always difficult.  Getting a prospect to make a decision vs. waiting may be your next big growth opportunity.

Loosen the status quo with emotion
Just like the stairs were transformed into a piano, you need to create some emotion and excitement in your sales message.  If you want to loosen the status quo, you need a story that inspires your prospect to see the need for change.  Think about the video.  They were still stairs.  Weren’t they? They were still healthier for you than taking the escalator.  Right?  The “product” called stairs and the benefits of using them didn’t change.

Only the brand new story and the experience created around the stairs changed.  In fact, the stairs themselves became a giant prop to help sell the concept of stairs.  It engaged people’s body and mind in the product called stairs.  It made people want to try the stairs in a way that rationally explaining the benefits never did.

Where can you inject emotion?
You need a great story for your products and services.  The greatest stories are facts, wrapped in emotion.  For example, “the King died.  The Queen died.”  Those are the facts.  But, when you add emotion saying, “the King died, and the Queen died of a broken heart,” then you have a story.  You have a story that pulls people in, engages them and connects in a way that just the facts can’t.

We worked with a corporate, after-hours cleaning services company that offered a unique approach to cleaning.  It was a multi-color, microfiber cloth system that eliminated 90% of bacteria compared to just 33% with traditional cotton cloths.  You would think that fact would be enough to get prospects to bite.  It wasn’t until the company added a mini-story (drama and props) about how the multi-color cloths helped make sure your cleaners weren’t using the same cloth to clean your bathrooms as they did to clean your office telephone that they really got people’s attention.

Don’t be afraid to make your sales messages connect emotionally with your customers.  Help them see the need for change.  Help them see change is coming fast.  Help them see the impact of not dealing with the change vs. the impact of successfully adapting to the change. Creating enough emotional contrast between their current pain and the potential gain they can achieve by working with you.  And, then make your solution critical to their survival.

Lost in Translation, Part II – Context is King

Ever heard of the Rosetta Stone? One man spent his entire life unlocking its secrets. We know you don’t have that kind of time, so just watch this video to get up to speed:

It wasn’t until the discovery of this stone in 1799 by Napoleon’s troops that the modern world was able to decipher hieroglyphics. This stone carried the key to finally cracking the hieroglyphic code.

It contained a carved text made up of hieroglyphs along with Egyptian and Greek translations, which enabled scholars who knew Greek and Egyptian to work backwards to finally understand the hieroglyphs.

In some ways, sales people need to be like the Rosetta Stone. They must translate your product and services details into something the customer will understand and care about.

Context is King!

Customers know what they are trying to accomplish, and they understand there are challenges that are causing them pain. They are looking for a partner company to share a unique insight and clearly align their offering with these challenges, demonstrating how they will provide relevant value in meeting the customer’s objectives.

This is called “context.” Without context there can be no translation. Or the translation will be questionable because you are forcing your customer to do the heavy-lifting.

What happens if you leave the translation of your message up to your customer?

• It’s hard work! It takes a ton of effort to listen to a message that’s all about your company, your product and your technology and try to figure out what that means to me – the customer. People like to hear ideas and answers for their problems; they don’t like to be sold product features and have to intuit how it helps.
• It’s confusing! Your customer wants to know what they will be able to “do” with your product. What they can “do better” or “do different” in order to succeed.  Forcing them to translate your product features and capabilities into something meaningful can become frustrating and futile.
• It’s boring! How long can you sit in any conversation listening to someone talk all about themselves before you tune them out?  If you ask the right questions to uncover their pains, issues and challenges, then you can focus your entire message on your customer. Putting your product and your message in their world – in their Story. You’re making it more relevant and more exciting for them.

Language translators didn’t need more hieroglyphs in order to finally come up with a translation. They had thousands of years of hieroglyphs. What they needed was the hieroglyphs to be put into the context of a language that made sense to them.

Similarly, your customers don’t need another company capabilities presentation or credentials dump. They’ve heard the same thing a thousand times. What they need is your company to put your offer into the context of what they need to accomplish.

Does this mean more work for you? Yes! Is it going to be harder to do? Probably!

But know that most of your competitors aren’t taking the time to do this. You have an opportunity to be your customers’ Rosetta Stone.

You’ll not only translate a better message, you’ll win more business by doing it!

— by Mike Miller, Consultant, and Tim Riesterer, SVP of Strategic Consulting & CMO at Corporate Visions Inc.

If you’re in sales, check out The Power of Story webinar to find out more about translating your message into your buyer’s world.
If you’re in marketing, check out the Bridge the Messaging Gap webinar to see how you can translate your 30,000-foot level brand message into a 3-foot level field message that’s ready for your sales team to use.

Lost in Translation

Whether you’ve traveled abroad or not, you can certainly appreciate the humor in this clip. Watch this funny TV spot:

It’s safe to assume that all of us have experienced the wish for conversation intervention. That’s when you were desperately hoping someone would intervene in a conversation because you didn’t understand what was being said.

Well, how about your customers? What language are you speaking to them? Are you making it easy for them to get your message? Are you making it easy for them to understand? Or, are you expecting them to do the translation?

One of the big challenges of selling (especially in the business-to-business space) is that you rarely sell to just one person. The more complex your product, the greater number of buyer types you have to interact with, and accordingly, so does the number of languages you have to speak.

Once, while traveling through Luxor, Egypt, I visited the local Souk, or marketplace. It wasn’t long before I had a bunch of kids swarming around me, trying to barter off their wares. It was fascinating how shrewd these young kids were.

First they spoke in French. When I didn’t bite, they tried Italian. Getting nothing there, they tried German. Still nothing.  “Strike three, you’re out,” right?  Finally, they spoke in English.

“English, English, English! We love English!” They yelled loudly and now every other little kid in the area knew that when they came up to peddle their goods, they had to speak English.

They were brilliant!  Even at this very tender age they’d identified one of the basics of sales and communication. If you want to make a sale, you need to figure out the language the customer speaks.

I bet you know your product specs, features and capabilities inside-out, but how adept are you at changing up your message to match the buyer type you’re meeting with?

You get relegated to who you talk like.

How often have you found an executive who wants to spend time talking about product features and specs – the ISes of your solution?  It’s incredibly rare. Even if they want to, they often have so much going on that they simply don’t have time.

Instead, they only need to know the high level message – the MEANs of your solution. What value are you going to bring to their business? How are you going to make them more efficient? More competitive? More profitable? How are you going to help them solve the critical issues they’re challenged with, and either put them back on the road to success, or help them achieve greater success?

 

Put your story in the customer's context. The conversation differs depending on who you're talking to.

 

On the other end of the spectrum, your key influencers are probably the technical buyers. Unlike the executives, these guys are interested in getting their hands dirty. They do want to spend time on the nuts and bolts of your technology and product. And boy, is that a completely different language and experience than the executive conversation.

But you’re still selling the same solution or product. How different can that conversation be? And on top of that, you’re not sure if they’ll buy, and changing the message every time is time consuming and hard work! Isn’t it better to talk to more prospects, instead? They know what they’re looking for. Why not simply share the exact same message with everyone, saving time and letting them do their own translation?

Because this is your big chance to be different and stand out from the crowd. Imagine if only one of those children I met on the streets of Egypt identified me as an English speaker and began explaining his wares in a way I could understand. Meanwhile, the rest of the children continued to babble on in foreign languages, only confusing me further. This would be an easy purchase decision. I’d choose the one that helps me understand. (I’d probably even pay extra for some additional guidance and advice on how to get around town.)

It’s the same in your customer conversations. Are you clearly aligning your story with the customer’s context and what they care about? Or are you carrying on in your native tongue?

— by Mike Miller,
Consultant, Corporate Visions Inc.

Check out our new The Power of Story webinar to learn more, and stay tuned next month for Part Two from Mike Miller!

Put Your Deck on a Diet

It’s that season again, the season for thanks, for family, for spirit and giving. But if you’re like me, you’re still in a food coma from one holiday meal or another, so it’s also the season for looking down at your stomach and saying, “Whoa, where’d you come from?”

Yes, it’s about this time of year a lot of us start making promises that include dropping that five, 15, 25 pounds we’ve been trying to lose since… forever. There are so many options out there for diets… low calorie, low carb, low fat. Atkins. Jenny Craig. Grapefruit. Avocado-only. South Beach. South Deck. Wait, what? South Deck?

That’s right, the South Deck Diet. Last month’s edition of The Feed showed you how your company’s packaging, collateral and presentations can get “plump” from letting too much well-intended input clutter your message. (Just like we tend to plump up around the holidays from all the well-prepared food.)

This month, we’re giving you a proven, five-step lifestyle change to get your slide deck looking leaner, hotter and healthier.

Step #1: Detox by watching this introductory video.

Step #2: Cut your intake. You can’t force your prospect to digest content if they don’t know how it helps them.  Take an honest and naked look at your marketing and sales slide deck and ask yourself:  Is it everything on the menu, or just what the buyer is looking for?  Is it loaded with extra, high-calorie content that contains little nutritional value?  Or does it deliver high-energy nutrients in every slide?

Challenge yourself to cut your slide deck by 75%.  (This means if it’s 100 slides, you need to lose 75, for your ideal figure of 25). Less is more. Increase your font size, and keep your slides to five bullet points or less, each one on a single line, if possible.

Also, don’t throw in ingredients that your buyer won’t understand. Propylene glycol alginate, carrageenan, and lecithin probably don’t mean anything to you when you read the back of an ice cream container, so don’t use unknown acronyms, abbreviations, or tech-speak in  your deck  or your delivery. You are looking for a decision, so use the slides that make it easier for a prospect to make that decision, don’t just pass out a lot of information.

Step #3: Dress for your body type. Nobody’s perfect. But you can make sure your deck flatters your company’s strengths and unique differentiators.  Show the parts of your solution that really make you stand out from your competition. Never show slides that you’re not willing to talk about, or that look like everyone else. Use the “B” key to black out the screen when telling stories, asking questions and after you present to keep eyes on you.

Step #4: Use the Buddy System. All successful South Deck Dieters have a support system.  Grab a colleague and show off your slimmer self.  Let them see and hear the new presentation.  And, ask them to hold you accountable to your deck dieting goals.

Step #5: Rest & Maintain. Once you’ve trimmed the fat, don’t forget to keep your newfound slim and sexy deck sharp by giving it a break. Force yourself to step outside the comforts of a PowerPoint-only presentation. Use it, but don’t abuse it. Spice up your presentation by adding in a healthy amount of variety. Try using a flipchart or a whiteboard. Bring in a physical object to help you illustrate a point. Tell a story. Finally, revisit the slide deck now and then to make sure it hasn’t gained back any of the excess baggage.

Stick with these five steps, and you’re sure to get results!

Enter our Slim Down Sweepstakes to win a Slide Deck Makeover by sending an email to newsletter@corpv.com with “Slim Down Sweepstakes” in the subject line. One lucky winner will receive a full makeover from one of Corporate Visions Inc.’s professional consultants, for one presentation.