Remember These 29 Things…?

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On the eve of the mid-term elections, I am struck by the tactics for messaging used by the major parties and the parallels for Sales and Marketing.  The first is that those that keep their message simple and consistent are much more likely to get their point of view accepted.  CSO Insights indicates that companies that have consistent messaging have 35% more of their salespeople achieving forecast and win deals 20% more often more than competitors.  The second thing is that we are all risk averse.  Our little medulla oblongata (lizard brains) in the back of our skulls that generate our flight or fight response take precedence over our frontal lobes where reason happens.  So messages based on loss or fear tend to trump those based on reason.

In the B2B environment, Sales does most of the messaging.  The words that come out of their mouths create it.  When Marketing does not provide consistent or coherent messaging, Sales makes stuff up.  They see what works by trying a lot of different things.  As a result they are most often wrong, but their feedback from prospects is immediate.  Marketing on the other hand needs to figure out what the correct message is.  This is very difficult, especially if you don’t talk to customers.  It takes longer to think up, test, train and refine the correct message.   The best message is often a simple story.  The shorter the better.  Not twenty nine different things.

One place for Marketing to get good input on messaging is from the Sales team.  But often the Marketing  attitude is that the Sales team doesn’t know anything about messaging.   Marketing, talk to Sales.  Sales, listen to marketing.  It’s that simple.

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