Don’t Nobody Bring Me No Bad News

My daughter recently appeared in The Wiz, an updated, musical retelling of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. While the story is similar to the original, all of the music is different, and contains a distinct mid-1970s urban, disco feel. It’s a trip.

In one scene, the Wicked Witch of the West, named Evilene, sings a song called, “Don’t Nobody Bring Me No Bad News.” Watch this clip on YouTube to get a flavor (don’t worry, there’s a point to be made here):

Before The Wiz ever hit Broadway, Shakespeare was penning these words for his play Henry IV: “Come hither, sir. Though it be honest, it is never good to bring bad news.” Before that, the Greek philosopher and writer, Sophocles, created this dialogue for his character Antigone, “No one loves the messenger who brings bad news.”

Bring Your Client Bad News

Some of you may think it’s your job to always keep the client happy. You think a successful client relationship is one where everyone is always smiling. In other words, don’t nobody bring me no bad news.

You might even avoid bringing in that smarty-pants from the Headquarters Products Group because she’s always stirring the pot, challenging the client, pushing them to think differently. You don’t want her to “screw up the relationship.”

Then, one day, you are caught completely off-guard when you hear that your great client is piloting a concept with one of your competitors. “Don’t worry,” you’re told, “it’s just a small side project the senior executives asked for because they were at some conference and heard about a new approach that supposedly addresses some problems we didn’t even know needed fixing.”

What just happened?

Deliberately Provoking the Client

Someone else was willing to challenge your customer’s status quo. Someone other than you was able to get the senior executives’ attention by telling them something they didn’t know, about a problem they didn’t know they had.

In other words, they were able to gain strategic executive altitude and wrest your client’s attention away from you by bringing them some bad news:

• They were willing to push the customer out of their comfort zone.
• They helped the customer see their competitive challenges in a new light.
• They highlighted specific painful situations and made them unmistakably urgent.
• They had the guts to create constructive tension and use it to their advantage.

This is counter-intuitive to many companies and salespeople, who are afraid the customer will shoot the messenger. And, put all of your current business at risk.

Throughout history messengers have been vulnerable to attack. In ancient war times, news would be carried by fast runners, who would be sent to battle fronts to report back on victory or defeat, or to request reinforcements. If the news was not good, and the receiver chose to vent their anger, these messengers could meet an untimely and violent death.

But in today’s hyper-competitive, increasingly complex selling environments, where you need to cut through the clutter of sameness and overcome the rise of risk aversion to get your customer to care about your message, you might have to be the bearer of a little bad news.

A March 2009 Harvard Business Review article titled, “In a Downturn, Provoke Your Customers,” captured the essence of this concept and coined the phrase “provocation-based selling.”

Briefly stated, the provocation concept contained three components:

• Identify a critical problem facing your customer – one so ominous that, even in a downturn, they will find the money to address it. Critical problems meet the following criteria: they seriously jeopardize your customers’ ability to compete, they’ve proved stubborn to solve, and you are a credible source of advice on them.
• Formulate a provocative view of the problem – a fresh perspective that frames the problem in a jarring new light. Rather than finding out how your client’s executives currently view the problem you’ve identified, you determine how they should view it and deliver insight around it.
• Lodge your provocation – to win support, convey the magnitude, difficulty and urgency of the problem with an executive who has the power to approve the solution you’re proposing – without putting him on the defensive. First, you may have to convince a sponsor/referrer of the idea and get them to make an introduction.

During the early “Warring States” period of China, the concept of chivalry and virtue prevented the executions of messengers sent by opposing sides. This continued as an invisible code of conduct in war where a commanding officer was expected to receive and send back emissaries or diplomatic envoys sent by the enemy unharmed.

Today, your customers are essentially saying, “If you want my attention, tell me something I don’t already know, about a problem I didn’t even know I had.”

They aren’t looking to shoot the messenger. Take your messenger role seriously. Provoking and challenging your customer will be rewarded.

By Tim Riesterer
CMO and SVP Strategic Consulting at Corporate Visions Inc.
Co-author of Customer Message Management

You Need to be a “Challenger” if You Want to be a Winner!

Relationship builders come in last and challengers finish first.

A fresh report on the types of sales approaches that win and the ones that do the worst reveals results that could come as a surprise to you, but as Yoda says,  “You must unlearn what you have learned. Try not! Do, or do not! There is no try!”

According to the Corporate Executive Board’s Integrated Sales Executive Council (iSEC), the sales persona that is most successful in winning business is “The Challenger.”  The one that performs the poorest is “The Relationship Builder.”

You can download a summary of the report, Replicating the New High Performer.  But, here’s the gist:

“The Challenger” salesperson is a teacher. She brings a unique perspective to the customer, asserts her perspective and insight, takes control of the  process, and tailors the message to the recipient on the customer’s side.

According to iSEC, in order to build more “Challengers,” companies need to get three things right:

1. Messages: You need to arm your reps to bring a unique perspective or point of view to the customer…in order to “teach.”  In other words, you need to have something worth teaching.

2. Tools: You need to give your reps the tools and skills to master the teaching message (per point #1), and you must equip them to tailor that message to different people and executives on the customer side.

3. Training: Your reps need to develop a greater sense of assertiveness (without being aggressive) so they can start taking control of the sales conversation and confidently guide the dialogue.

Corporate Visions is featured in the iSEC report as a provider of teachable messages and delivery skills. They highlight a CVI case study with our Volvo client, and they are wrapping up another one with our ADP client.

Being a Challenger does not mean being arrogant. The emphasis is on teaching the customer something.

When you get in the room with a customer, are you focused on providing a fresh insight? Do you add value to their day?

Or are you focused on your relationships and giving your customer a hug? (Just poking a little fun at one of the popular business books.)

Challenge your customers like a mentor encourages a protégé.  Help them overcome their initial reluctance to be the hero they are called to be.  Be the “Yoda” to their “Luke Skywalker.”  You get the point.

Download a summary of the report, Replicating the New High Performer.

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.

Differentiate or Die

In the beginning, choice was not a problem.

This is the first sentence in one of our favorite books of all time, “Differentiate or Die,” by Jack Trout. Either you’ve got a product or service that you can say is different, or you don’t have much at all. Read it!

Book Description
“Any damn fool can put on a deal, but it takes genius, faith, and perseverance to create a brand.”-David Ogilvy

In today’s ultra-competitive world, the average supermarket has 40,000 brand items on its shelves. Car shoppers can wander through the showrooms of over twenty automobile makers. For marketers, differentiating products today is more challenging than at any time in history yet it remains at the heart of successful marketing. More importantly, it remains the key to a company’s survival.

In “Differentiate or Die,” bestselling author Jack Trout doesn’t beat around the bush. He takes marketers to task for taking the easy route too often, employing high-tech razzle-dazzle and sleight of hand when they should be working to discover and market their product’s uniquely valuable qualities. He examines successful differentiation initiatives from giants like Dell Computer, Southwest Airlines, and Wal-Mart to smaller success stories like Streit’s Matzoh and Connecticut’s tiny Trinity College to determine why some marketers succeed at differentiating themselves while others struggle and fail.

More than just a collection of marketing success stories, however, “Differentiate or Die” is an in-depth exploration of today’s most successful differentiation strategies. It explains what these strategies are, where and when they should be applied, and how they can help you carve out your own image in a crowded marketplace. Marketing executives in all types of organizations, regardless of size, can learn how to achieve product differentiation through strategies.

Recommended reading from Chuck Laughlin, Founder, Corporate Visions Inc.