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Is Your Brand Message Archaic?

January 24, 2012

Desktop computers, fax machines and the floppy disk drive – at one point each of these technological advances were fundamental components of our daily lives, but now, most are considered archaic.

The same may be true for your classic 30,000-foot brand messaging. It’s obsolete.

The proliferation of new media channels and mobile devices creates buyer demand for information and insights that are relevant to them and their needs, when and where they need it. They don’t have the time or the inclination toward the big, bad company-centric branding campaigns of the past. It’s now a 3-foot brand message – the distance between your customer and their digital access screen of choice – that counts.

Unfortunately, the coolness factor associated with the technology involved has skewed some of the focus toward the medium, but it’s still the message that really rules. And, it requires you to re-think your brand messaging development approach.

Insights not Promotions

People want ideas. They want to be inspired. Insights are for sale in this new messaging environment where re-tweeting stuff that impresses you is part of the daily routine. Unfortunately, research shows that your prospective decision-makers believe only 10-14% of company selling messages offer anything unique or relevant.

That means 90% of the stuff you put out is seen as the same as your competitors. After a while, your prospects and customers will just tune out the blah, blah, blah. And now you are faced with breaking through a physical barrier more difficult than penetrating the earth’s gravitational field.

Make your Brand Live Inside Your Customers’ Story

Here’s how you do it. Instead of telling a brand story that is all about you, translate your messages to live inside your prospects’ and customers’ story.

All humans live in story. Your story is the window through which you look at your world. Your story affects how you make decisions. Developmental psychologist refers to this concept as your “schema.”

Pretend for a minute that you are a sea captain living in the early 14th century and you believe that the earth is flat. Your long-range planning tool is a spyglass – a little telescope that you can pull out of your pocket and extend so that you can see far distances. This is your risk avoidance tool. It helps you determine where the earth “ends” so you don’t risk falling off.

Now imagine that there’s an inventor who happens to be living during the same period. He has discovered a great new navigational technology – the compass. He brings it to you and says, “With this new invention you can sail your ship due West and discover the other side of world.” Would you be sold? Probably not. Why? Because you live in a “flat world” story. You believe if you buy this technology, it will kill you as you blindly sail off the edge of the earth.

This analogy holds true today when your sales and marketing team tell the brand story about who you are and what you do. Your story needs to be translated into your prospects’ world. What top companies have figured out is that everything they do must be translated from a story about you to a story about your prospect. Otherwise, your brand risks becoming archaic like the desktop computer, fax machine, floppy disk drive and the spyglass.

Learn how to tell a story that sells watch – The Power of Story.

Leave a Comment » | Deliver Conversations that Win, The Power of Stories | Tagged: Brand message | Permalink
Posted by Corporate Visions Inc.

Why Your Brand Message Does Not Convert Into Sales

January 10, 2012

Your company brand message tends to be all about you. It tells the story of who you are, what you do, who you’ve helped, and how you’ve helped them. Sales professionals learn the corporate story and then go tell it to prospective customers. You assume that if your prospects knew as much about your company and solutions as you do, they would buy from you, right? Unfortunately, that’s not the case.

There should be a difference between your brand message and your field message. Your field message should be about who? That’s right – your prospect. Not a big deal, you say? Well, actually it is. Your brand message is most often communicated through the written word – things like your website, brochures, advertisements, white papers, analysts’ reports and even PowerPoint slides (which are written words projected on a screen). Field messages are customer conversations, most often delivered through the spoken word – a completely different dynamic.

The Dating Game

To get a better understanding of this, go back to the time in your life when you were dating. Think of your brand as the clothes you wore, your hairstyle, the perfume or cologne you spritzed on, or perhaps the car you drove. Collectively they represented your brand and were designed to attract that other person into a relationship with you. Your corporate brand has the same purpose.

Now what happens to you when you go out on your first date and your brand message does not turn into a field message? He or she will later tell their friends, “What a conceited, self-centered, egotistical person. All they talked about was themselves. There would not be a second date. Yet, this is exactly what salespeople are forced to do when delivering a brand message that’s all about your company.

Everyone Lives in a Stories: Even Your Buyers

Why is it important to translate this brand story about you into a story about your prospect? The answer lies in how the human brain works. Humans live in story. Your story is the window through which you look at your world. Your story affects how you make decisions. Developmental Psychologist refer to this concept as your “schema.”

Your story needs to be translated into your prospects’ world. What top sales performers have figured out is that everything you do must be translated. From the written word to the spoken word. From a story about you to a story about your prospect!

You job is to take the story that you tell and make it a story about your prospect that provokes them to see the world differently, while also being a story that makes them feel that moving forward with your solution is the surest and safest thing they could do. Just like in a court of law, whoever tells the best, most believable story wins.

Want to learn why stories work and how to use the Power of Story in your messaging? Watch this instant webinar: The Power of Story: How to Tell a Story that Sells.

1 Comment | The Power of Stories | Tagged: Brand Messaging, Field Message, The Power of Story | Permalink
Posted by Corporate Visions Inc.

Coaching through Story

December 12, 2011

Ever skydived?

Years ago, Corporate Visions’ CMO, Tim Riesterer, completed his first, and only, static line parachute jump (static line means no tandem expert; you are on your own).

He started in a class that walked you through the basics of the jump on the ground. Knowing your equipment. Mastering a stable position. Navigating the countryside from the air. And, negotiating a safe landing on the target.

Seems simple enough to remember, right?

Wrong. Turns out, when you’re hanging off an airplane strut, staring down at 3,500 feet of nothing but air between you and the ground… you can barely remember your own name.

While sales presentations may not have quite the same life-or-death terror-inducing effect (or, maybe they do), your brain reacts in the same way. How many times has your sales manager given you a list of suggestions before you walk into a sales meeting… but the moment you get up in front of the room, you forget everything she said?

Since you’re reading this blog, you either are a manager, have a manager, or will one day be a manager. And you need to know how to get coaching to stick, even in the heat of the selling moment.

That’s where Power Messaging techniques come in. Both your presentations to prospects, and the coaching sessions to get you there, require the same approaches to make them great.

Here’s just one example.

Stories to Make it Stick

Paul George is a consultant at Corporate Visions, but before joining us, he was a sales manager. One of his account managers had planned to tell a story as a kick-off for a very important meeting with several executives of a large hospital. The most influential decision-maker in this group of executives was the hospital CFO.

After handshakes and introductions, the account manager stood up and said, “I’d like to begin today by sharing a story.” No sooner had he gotten those words out of his mouth when the CFO stood up and interrupted, “Look… I’m busy and don’t have time for your stories. When you get to the meat of your proposal, have someone page me and I’ll come back to the meeting.” With that, he turned abruptly and walked out of the room.

Can you imagine the kick in the gut that this account manager experienced when the CFO did that? Every bit of positive energy was sucked out of the room as that executive walked out the door.

This is the story Paul now tells when he’s coaching people to just get on with the story – don’t preface it with an introduction.

Recently, Paul was at a client site when a rep who’d received this advice stopped by to say hi. He told Paul that a short while ago he was in front of a prospect, getting ready to start his presentation by saying, “I’d like to tell you a story…” when Paul’s anecdotal example about the CFO came rushing back into his head. He told Paul, “I didn’t want this guy getting up and leaving the room.” So, he told his story, but he didn’t announce it first.

Think about what happened there. Even as this rep was preparing his message, he’d forgotten a key piece of coaching. But in the actual moment itself, he was “rescued” by coaching that had been told to him in the form of a story.

Coaching Pays Off, Literally
Coaching, especially when delivered in a memorable and impactful way, has a quantifiable impact on sales performance and the bottom line. A third-party survey company recently identified that coaching after Power Messaging has been shown to increase quota achievement by 40%, and deal size by 2-3 times. So, as powerful as Power Messaging is for sales reps, it’s even more potent when your frontline managers coach to it in the field after the training event.

If you’re a Power Messaging alum, and feel that your sales managers would benefit from knowing how to coach to (and use) Power Messaging techniques, pass this along to your sales leaders:

http://www.brainshark.com/cvi/powercoaching

Leave a Comment » | Coaching, The Power of Stories | Tagged: Power Coaching, Skydiving, tim riesterer | Permalink
Posted by Corporate Visions Inc.

Do You Take the Stairs?

November 16, 2009

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.

Leave a Comment » | The Power of Stories, Your Buyer's Mind | Tagged: Coverall, emotion, grabber, marketing, Prop, sales training, Sell with emotion, selling, story in selling | Permalink
Posted by Corporate Visions Inc.