Tag Archives: decisions

Story in Business

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A Fairytale Life

“You’re living in a fairytale.” That is probably not true, but you do live inside a story? Your story is the window through which you look at the world. It’s the context that you have created in your mind that defines your existence. It influences the decisions you make and how you make them. Your story has been evolving since birth. It’s formed by your experiences and knowledge as you go through life, and it’s critical to your survival. Let’s say that in your story, you believe the earth is shaped like a table. You likely would not sail your ship far out to sea for fear of falling off the edge. Your story defines how you see yourself fitting into the world around you.

Not only do you have a story, your family also has a story. Communities have a story. Political parties have a story. Countries have a story. Religions have a story. All of the greatest social movements in mankind’s history have been fueled by a story. Martin Luther King: “I have a dream!” John F. Kennedy: “We will put a man on the moon in this decade.” Companies also have a story. A company story tells how and why they were founded and what they do that creates value in the world.

A Broken Story

One of the challenges facing companies today is that they have lost control of their story. It happens with changes in leadership, mergers or acquisitions, or with rapid growth or downsizing. It’s easy to recognize the symptoms, but the cause is not often linked to a broken story. Symptoms of a “story-less” company are:

  • High turnover in your employees
  • Eroding brand loyalty and receding market share
  • Diminishing profitability
  • Poor analyst reviews and stock performance
  • Difficulty with recruiting new talent
  • Poor communication across departments or functional areas

Each of the above challenges are greatly impacted by your story.

Inside Your Story

Over the past few years, I’ve had the opportunity to work with one of the world’s largest sales organizations, approximately 38,000 sales representatives around the globe. During a sales forum in Boston, where 300 sales reps had gathered, I asked the question, “What’s inside your corporate story?” Their answers were impressive. Comments I heard were, “Our heritage”; “Our mission and vision”; “Our passion and commitment.” One person said, “It’s our soul.” Now, there is a sales professional who understands the power of story.

I liken your company story to your corporate inertia. It’s how you attract top talent and turn them into loyal employees. It’s how you attract venture capital and shareholder investment. It’s also how you attract prospects and turn them into lifelong customers.

Central Character

“Who is the central character of your corporate story?” is the next question I asked my audience. They unanimously answered, “We are.” “Our story talks about us, our company, our solutions, our customers and partners. Our story is all about what we do.” Take a look at your corporate brochure. Go to your website. Read your annual report. Take a look at your product brochures and advertising. Collectively, they tell a story about whom?

“Who should be the central character of your story?” “Our customers!” was their answer. How do you make your prospect the central character of your story? Like a major motion picture, your client’s story has a plot and there are subplots. How do you create your story with your prospect as the main character and you as best supporting actor or actress? Give them the main plot while you take the subplot that enables theirs to become a reality.

Inside Out vs. Outside In

The reason this concept is so important is this: If you are trying to sell a Global Positioning System (GPS) to a sailor who believes the world is flat by telling him “You can sail your ship due west and discover the new world.” How successful will you be? If he buys your solution, he believes you will KILL him! Rather you should ask, “What if you could sail your ship along the coastline with greater efficiency? What if you could avoid many of the risks you face today out on the open ocean? Imagine if you could get to your destination in half the time it’s taking you today?”

By telling your story from an “outside looking in” perspective, you will make it easier for your prospects to choose you. Why, because they will feel safe.

The First Step

Look at your sales messages as a subset of your story. Do a search on all the words “we” or “our” and replace them with “you” or “they.” Then go through and fix all the grammar and sentence structures so that the content makes sense. Here is a before and after example:

Before:

We have been in business for 50-years.
We help our clients maximize their investment by…
Our broad set of solutions makes us the leading provider for this type of service.

After:

Customers come to us because they want the assurance they are working with a vendor who has been solving these challenges for over 50-years.
What’s most important to them is maximizing their investment by…
What if you had the broadest set of solutions from a leading provider, ensuring you receive the highest level of service possible?

Summary

Your corporate story is critical to your growth and long-term success. It is a good bet that it needs rejuvenation. How well is it being told by your field sales organization? Who is your story about? Does it capture your passion and commitment? Is it simple, clear and focused? Does it represent what is unique about you and why your prospects would care about that difference? Does it tell the story of how you are changing the world?

If you would like further insight into the Power of Story, or would like to understand how you can renew your story, please contact us at…

~ Dean Schantz, Corporate Visions’ Consultant

Anticipatory Emotions

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Coke or Pepsi?  It’s an age old question, and now, in a world that’s run amuck with choices, it never seems to stop:  GM or Ford, Honda or Toyota, Nike or Reebok, tea or coffee, your company or your competitors?  We are all faced with so many choices everyday that it’s a wonder we are able to get anything accomplished.

Now, imagine having the ability to look into your brain and understand why you make the choices you do. Even better – imagine having the ability to understand why your customers make the choices they do and understand how to influence those choices before the purchasing decision is made!

The emerging world of neuroscience and its somewhat controversial application to the world of marketing (neuromarketing – marketing to your mind) offers some fascinating insights.

Through his research, Stanford neuroscientist Brian Knutson has zeroed in on some primitive aspects of decision making.  As he states, “We come equipped to assess potentially good things and potentially bad things…”  Knutson calls this ability “anticipatory emotions.”  He believes, “…that these anticipatory emotions – the intuitive or more emotional regions of your brain are already priming the decision making process…and foreshadowing outcomes…well in advance of when your cognitive areas are brought in to evaluate options….”

It’s one of the challenges you face every time you go on a sales call or presentation.  The anticipatory emotions that your customers experience when accepting a sales meeting appointment run the gamut from:  this is going to be a waste of time (#1 fear of executives); they’re going to pressure me into making a commitment that I don’t want to make; it’s not going to be informative; they are going to bore me, and so on.  Have you ever received that last minute call canceling your meeting because “something urgent just came up!”?

The anticipatory emotions of your customers, the ones that are already priming your customer’s decision making process and foreshadowing outcomes well before you even walk through the door, are often times anticipating the worst outcome.  So, when you start the meeting by turning down the lights and firing-up your laptop (or sitting across the table from your customer and pulling out a color copy of your slide deck) so that you can talk about yourself and your company for the next 60 minutes, you have just validated their worst fear and expectations.

What if you were able to grab your customer’s attention right out of the gate?
What if your customers were on the edge of their seats, riveted by your message?
Imagine creating a different type of anticipation – the desire to listen to how you can help their company?

Do something different! Change your audience’s expectations!

Use ‘What If’ questions to highlight how you’ll solve their problems using a solution that only you can uniquely provide.  Create positive anticipation in their mind.

Use ‘Mini-Dramas’ to help them visualize the challenges they are faced with.  Through the use of ‘Mini-Dramas,’ you will also show them that you listened during discovery; you heard their pains and challenges. Doing this will create some positive anticipation for them to see how they can do it different.

Illustrate your uniqueness and differentiation through compelling ‘Word Plays’ and ‘Number Plays’ that are relevant to your customer, creating excitement and anticipation with what they’ll be able to accomplish with you.

Use ‘Grabbers’ to create positive anticipation in your customer’s minds. You’ll not only change their emotional state around your sales call, but also their expectations around you, your company and the solution you can provide.

-Mike Miller, Corporate Visions’ Consultant

A Quick Guide to Great Discovery

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Most sales calls are a combination of discovery and presentation. Sales calls, early in a sales cycle, have huge discovery segments. You are trying to understand the prospect’s issues and how you might be able to solve them. You ask questions on issues you know your solution addresses. You try to uncover pains and desires that you can solve.

I have a suggestion for you.

When conducting discovery, try to uncover problems that your solution addresses in a unique fashion. Let’s say your software solution is uniquely able to help companies collaborate on projects across the organization and with outside contributors. What are you looking for in your discovery? Examples of projects the prospect has worked on with external contributors where bad things happened because of an inability to collaborate effectively (e.g. cost overruns, missed dates, and missed inputs). Ask for these examples. Get the prospect to share with you the pains he/she felt during this time (personal value). What did it mean to the company in lost opportunity (business value) and costs (financial value)?

Keep track of these examples. When it comes time for you to give your presentation on your solution, be sure to bridge back to them. Remind the person what it meant to them, how painful it was, etc. Remind them that the solution to this problem is something ONLY your company can solve. If they want this capability you are the ONLY solution for them.

You solution has “Power Positions” – the unique capabilities only you can provide. For each of your Power Positions you want to find examples, in this account, of where your unique capabilities will make a difference. Find those examples during your discovery and make them come alive! Give them value. Lots of personal, business, and financial value!

When you do this, you get the prospect to change their buying criteria to include capabilities only you can deliver.

Some would call this creating an Unfair Competitive Advantage. Me, I prefer to think you are being in service to the prospect. You are making it very easy for them to make a decision for you.

By Chuck Laughlin, Founder & CEO, Corporate Visions Inc.



No One Ever Got Fired for Buying IBM

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“No one ever got fired for buying IBM.” This phrase is often called the most powerful marketing phrase ever created.  In the 1980s, if you had to decide what computer hardware to buy for your company, these words rang through your head.  It made your buying decision pretty easy.  And, if you were a competitor to IBM, that same sentence made your job nearly impossible.  Your product could be superior in every way – features, price, warranty, etc – and you still couldn’t beat IBM.  What is it about the idea that ‘no one ever got fired for buying IBM’ that made it so powerful?  Is there a lesson there that can be applied to anyone doing sales messaging?  The science of neuromarketing provides answers to these questions.

What motivates people to buy?

Let’s look at the example of Kevin, a highly trained engineer in a company comprised of engineers.  He has the reserved personality that you expect from someone who chooses engineering as a career.  If you ask Kevin, or his peers, how they make buying decisions, they’ll tell you that they are rational and logical in their approach.  In fact, they can sometimes seem so focused and unemotional that you might wonder if any of the decision is based on emotion.  At the moment, Kevin is involved in a project that requires him to bring together subcomponents from a number of different vendors to make his product.  He was meeting with a vendor recently who wanted to be the supplier for one of the subcomponents.  Kevin listened patiently to the salesperson, but for most of the presentation, Kevin was focused on the fact that he already had a vendor who could provide this subcomponent.  For Kevin to change to this new vendor would be a painful transition.  He’d have to write new specifications, get the new vendor through his contracts department, etc. Then, at the end of the presentation everything changed for Kevin.  The sales person got to his last slide and said, “Look, I don’t want to make you feel like I’m pushing you, but you should know that I’m already providing these components to several of your competitors.”  On his last slide, he had a list of all of the companies Kevin needed to compete with.  Suddenly, Kevin was focused on the fact that his competitors were using this supplier; if he didn’t, then his competitors would start with a lower product cost than him.  Since he charged a premium for his product because of the built-in service, he would end up going to market with a price point so high that he would never win any business.  Needless to say, Kevin ended up buying those subcomponents from this new vendor after all.

Now, notice what happened to Kevin.  He started off the presentation focused on the pain he would experience if he switched from using his current vendor to using this new one.  In fact, he went into the presentation with no intention of switching vendors. Through the beginning and middle of the presentation, Kevin’s mind never changed, even though the vendor was telling Kevin all of the great things he’d get by using this vendor’s solution. Then, on the very last slide, the vendor showed Kevin that, if he didn’t change his strategy, he would put himself in a bad market position because of what Kevin’s competition was already doing.  Suddenly, Kevin wasn’t focused on the pain he would experience by making a change in vendors; instead, he was focused on the bigger pain he would experience by going to market with an overpriced solution.  It was emotion that caused Kevin to change his mind about what this vendor was offering, not pure, rational thought.  And it was a particular emotion – PAIN – that caused Kevin to change his mind.  Through most of the meeting, the vendor tried to sell Kevin on the benefits of his solution, but that wasn’t working.  It was ONLY when the vendor made Kevin aware of the pain he would experience by staying with his original plans that Kevin realized he had to move forward with this new vendor.  Now this vendor has Kevin’s business.  So, is Kevin typical in the way he makes decisions?

A recent study illustrates just how important it is to frame a customer’s current situation as a negative, just like Kevin’s vendor did in that last slide.  People are much more motivated to move away from a painful situation than they are motivated to move towards a positive situation.  As reported in Science Magazine, in an article titled ‘Frames, Biases and Rational Decision-Making in the Human Brain’, emotion is an important part of all decision-making and people are more likely to move away from something framed as a negative.

The study presented people with a choice, but the choice was framed in two different ways.  The choice was to keep the $100* they were given or risk that $100 by gambling it.  If they gambled, the participants would automatically lose some of the money.  If they did not gamble, they would lose the exact same amount of money. The fascinating thing is that whether or not the participants chose to gamble depended on how the question was framed.  When the participants were told that they would keep 40% of the money if they did not gamble, only 43% chose to gamble with their money.  When the participants were told that they would lose 60% of their money if they didn’t choose to gamble, 62% of the participants decided to gamble with their money.  What is fascinating about this study is that the math produces exactly the same result for the participant, regardless of which way the question is framed.  Yet, framing the decision as LOSING 60% of their money motivated more people to gamble than framing the decision as KEEPING 40% of their money.

The participants’ brains were scanned as they were making these decisions.  The scans revealed that the amygdala (the part of brain thought to control emotion and ‘fight or flight’ reaction) was active throughout all participants, regardless of whether they behaved rationally or irrationally. This finding suggested that everyone experiences an emotional reaction when faced with such choices.

What is even more intriguing is that the study asked the same people both questions!  In other words, the same people switched their answers simply because of the phrasing.  When the participants were asked about why they switched, they said that they recognized it was really the same question, only phrased differently, but they couldn’t stop themselves from changing their answer.

Now, you can see why the phrase ‘No one ever got fired buy IBM’ is so powerful. [By the way, this phrase wasn't said by IBM employees; it was said by their customers.] What does this mean to your sales messaging?  If you want to get customers to make a decision to buy your product, you can’t just make a rational argument, and you can’t just talk about the benefits of your solution.  Instead, you have to help your customer see the pain associated with doing nothing.  The more vivid you can make that pain, the more motivated they will be to ‘gamble’ on your product so that they can move away from that pain.  One of the best ways to make this emotional connection is through a ‘Customer Story with Contrast.’  Share a customer story with your prospect and emphasize all of the pains that customer faced (financial, business and personal pains).  Don’t just give the customer data points; instead, talk about the financial, business and personal pains that customer was experiencing before moving to your solution.  The story you are sharing should be closely related to the experience your prospect is living today.  Then, tell your prospect how your solution solved your customer’s financial, business and personal pains.  It is that focus on the pain that is so effective and powerful.  When you do that, your customer will be motivated to fix their problems with your solution.

* The study was done using UK pounds, which is about $100 U.S.

by Erik Peterson, Corporate Visions’ Consultant