How many times have you had a sales person ask, “What’s our Value Proposition?”

The question I always ask next is, “Why do you ask?”  This is sort of a snotty response, and it doesn’t endear me to the sales team, but it has a purpose.

In my experience, too many sales people simply take the value proposition given by marketing and restate it to the prospect.  This is the worst use of a value proposition.  If you are in Marketing and you enable your sales team this way, then you are not helping.

A value proposition is a list of reasons why a prospect might benefit from buying your product or service, and it usually contains a number of elements.  The first is identifying a need, the second is some sort of differentiation, and the third is some sort of proof.

For example, “If you want fine flavor, then the smooth taste of Camel cigarettes is what nine out of ten doctors recommend.”   Parsed, the need is fine flavor and health, the differentiation is smooth taste, and the proof is that doctors recommend them.

While value propositions are good for internal dialogue and evaluation, as you know, simply stating the reasons why you should buy a product or service is bad sales form.  It’s also lazy.

When a prospect asks you, “What’s your value proposition?”  They are simply saying, “I don’t have time for this… just give me the Cliff’s Notes version, and I will decide.”

But the process they are going through is: 1) Do I really have this need? 2) Is this really any better? And 3) Do I really believe this, or do I trust you?  There is no way that a single “Statement” or “Value Proposition” will ever do justice to a prospect in answering these questions.  But if you fail to answer any of these, your sales and marketing efforts will falter.

So instead, slow down, and go back to basics.  Take your Value Proposition and turn it into a set of questions to determine whether the prospect has the need you believe your product or service can fill.  Then determine the prospect’s perception of the value to satisfying that need.  If it’s worth solving, then look at what their current vision is for solving that need.  Only then can you begin to explore an alternate vision and differentiation.  Your differentiation may be simply that you are not spouting a value proposition, but guiding the prospect through a process of discovery and helping them see things differently.  Proof doesn’t come until the prospect has a vision of capabilities they might need.

But please don’t just give your value proposition.  You might as well sit back, light up that Camel, and wait for good health to flow your way.

Do Great Things!

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry With Qualified Leads
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)

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I asked my three year old grandson the other day (proud photo inserted), how many cookies did he eat?  I told him he could have two.  He answered very quickly that he had eaten three, and held up three fingers.

Now let me ask you:

       1.  How much do you weigh?
       2.  What’s your college grade point average?
       3.  How far did you run?

A lot of people answering these questions tend to minimize their weight, inflate their grade points, or say they ran 5 miles when they only actually ran 4.4 miles.  Why is this and what does this have to do with marketing or sales?

We tend to live in a world that values appearance or image more than truth.  None of the three questions I asked can really be verified easily.  They also don’t seem very important, and the consequences of exaggerating don’t seem to hurt anyone.  Some would call exaggerating answers to these little white lies. 

In marketing and in sales, we are often responsible for appearance, and we often have the opportunity to tell little white lies.  For example: “We’re the leading vendor of XYZ.”  (When we forgot to add… in the five state region).  “We’ll be able to deliver that service by the 15^th.”  (When we know it won’t be until the 1^st) 

Of course the issue is that there are difficulties in determining the boundaries between a small exaggeration and a bigger exaggeration, and we seem to easily slide into…

• “You don’t really need a down payment, you qualify for the loan.”
•  “These real-estate derivatives are rock solid.”
• “You can’t go wrong.” 

You don’t really need a lecture on telling the truth.  But sometimes we forget that telling the truth, even what I call “Micro Truths”, helps build trust.  And in marketing and sales, this is the single biggest factor in whether someone does business with us. 

Telling a Micro-Truth is sometimes harder than it seems.  Try answering the small questions with your own personal Micro-Truth next time.  For example, “Why were you late to the meeting?”  Answer simply, “I just forgot,” rather than, “I was on the phone.”  Take responsibility.  See what happens.  People will trust you more.

I just read a survey that said that only 30% of Americans trust corporations.  Marketing and sales own this problem.  So tell me… how many moons of Jupiter were discovered on your shift?

Do Great Things.

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry With Qualified Leads
lee.stocking@gmail
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)

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Over the last series of posts, I’ve discussed the subtleties of messaging in relation to how we think and how the brain works.  I have a strong conviction that most B2B messaging is still stuck in the facts and figures mode, and most companies are trying to use reason and logic alone to persuade prospects to buy their products.  As a result, they are missing huge marketing and sales opportunities, especially when positioning for market growth.  This doesn’t mean that facts and logic aren’t valuable, simply that they are not sufficient in themselves.

For those sales and marketing organizations that take the time, the discipline, and the effort to invest in messaging, the rewards are shorter sales cycles, greater market share and improved financials.  Creating and implementing effective messaging is really hard work and requires thinking differently.

Here is a summary of key points from my last set of posts on messaging.

1. A good understanding of segmentation must proceed effective messaging.  How can we sell or market if we don’t understand who our clients are, how they behave, and how they think?  There are four common levels of segmentation.  To this list, I add an additional one, that of narrative segmentation which translates persona into action through response to familiar stories which are etched into our unconscious.

• Demographics
• Buyer
• Persona
• Behavioral
• Narrative

2.  95% of all thought is unconscious. If we only use reason, and logic, and facts, we are not addressing a big influence in communications.

3. We think metaphorically.  Metaphors are created in the brain as a result of learning and provide a basis for thinking.  (Again, most of this thinking is unconscious.)  They can be expressed by language.  I am not endorsing the use of common language metaphors, such as sports metaphors, in market messaging or sales except as an occasional way to capture attention.  Rather understanding how we think using metaphors will allow you to use language that is much more powerful in crafting your message.

4.  The most powerful metaphor is the frame

• Frames limit the discussion or debate
• They tie the debate to an emotion
• They do this using a readily available story or narrative
• They can be either positive or negative
• Their effect is related to how neurons connect and brain chemistry
• Positive frames are better than negative frames, but the two can be used together

5.  Narratives are built upon metaphors and are universal in their nature.  They transcend culture and language.  Narratives and stories resonant on an unconscious level.  They are the next level of messaging.

In my next post, I’ll give an example of how to put these together in action.  Meanwhile, what is your story?

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Driving Sales Through Customer Focused Marketing
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (24×7)

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In today’s communications era, we spend a good deal of our attention responding to the negative frame or alert.  For example, one often hears such headlines as, “Tune in at ten, and learn how soccer moms are selling crack to finance extra school activities.”  The negative is predominant in the media.  Why? Because it attracts our attention.  The adrenaline alert or response is wired into our genes and brain chemistry so we can jump into the trees to safety when the leopard slinks by.

Stress, fear, or worry, activate the norepinephrine system in the brain that is closely tied to these negative emotions.  Associated with the activation of this system is a reduced capacity to notice.  Our brains need to focus on the leopard and not the beauty of the leopard’s spots.  So if I want someone not to notice the detail or logic of a position, using fear or the negative frame is a good way to accomplish it.  You’ve heard the expression, “Nobody ever went wrong buying IBM.”   The truth is, of course they have.  Maybe they bought too much, or paid too much, or didn’t get the support the wanted, or are still using Lotus 123.  But the frame is a negative one designed to create some uncertainty.  Many people don’t even think about it.  From a sales standpoint, the story in my post Rationality is Crazy, illustrates the impact of fear and lack of attention through the process of asking a plausible emergency question.

However, recent research (O’Keefe & Jensen, 2008) indicates that the negative frame will only take you so far in influencing behavior through messaging.  Their research finds that there is a slight positive effect at persuasion for messages that were positively framed.  It may be simply that we prefer thinking about the beautiful lady and not the leopard, pleasant thoughts compared to dark thoughts.  There is other evidence that framing in a positive way helps activate the dopamine circuitry in the brain that is associated with positive emotions, happiness and satisfaction.  Does the combination of the positive and negative have some synergistic effect?  Is it better to just say smoking causes lung cancer, or if you quit you will have whiter teeth, or both?  There is some evidence that the combination is more powerful than either alone.  But too much negative wears us out.  That’s why news media add puppy stories next to murder stories.  Sometimes the transitions are ludicrous.

Positive frames seem a little more difficult to develop than negative frames.  But they are worthwhile.  Again, a frame limits the debate, ties it to a familiar story or metaphor and links it to emotion.  While brand taglines are not typically places where you see great positive framing, I can think of a few strong examples in the consumer market.   My favorite is Hallmark’s “When you care enough to send the very best.”  Breaking it down… I am caring.  I belong to the group of caring people which is an “Inclusion narrative,” not those other selfish bastards, which is a “Fundamentalist narrative.”  And, I have taken the market position of best.  Everyone else is second best.  Every time you hear this on TV, it is positioned with a caring loving scene guaranteed to make you cry.

Another example is Allstate’s “Your in good hands with Allstate.”  The image of hands, of protective and caring hands, allows us to identify with touch and feeling, and is juxtapositioned against the catastrophic background scene, but with someone helping the victims.

The problem with negative framing is that it creates negative emotion regardless of your intent.  In the abortion debate, one side positioned originally positioned itself as “Pro-choice” and the other side as “Anti-abortion”.  The first is positive and the second is negative.  The value of the position doesn’t matter because in the second case, you are against something.  In response, the other side became “Pro-life” and framed themselves positively.  Who can be against life?  In doing so, they also co-opted the term “Pro.”  But which is more intuitive… life or choice.  The balance of messaging swings back toward the life frame.

And in the balance of messaging and framing, try to be positive more often than negative.  Just do it.

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Driving Sales Through Customer Focused Marketing
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (24×7)

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What’s a two year-old’s favorite word?  It’s “NO!” of course.  And why do they use this word?  Just to piss us off?  How engaging!  But that’s exactly why they learn and use the word… to be “engaging”.  In a discussion of the way the brain works and metaphorical thinking, this is the single most powerful metaphor we learn to use.  Here’s a quick way to improve your odds of engaging.

One of the keys to successful selling is controlling the sales process.  This is different than controlling the customer or client.  People don’t like to feel manipulated, so “selling” techniques such as asking which pen customers would like to use to sign the contract, lose the sale faster than a used car salesman saying, “Isn’t she a beaut.”

However the only single and slightly manipulative sales word I use is “No”.  There are lots of ways to use the negative, but let me explain the context.

Let’s say you’re cold calling.  You say hello, introduce yourself and quickly explain the purpose of your call, and provide some reason for the client to talk to you.  Then you pause and ask, “Have I caught you at a good time?”  What do you think the most common answer is?  The most common answer is “No!” regardless of how compelling your introduction is or whether they really have time.  And we get the same feeling as when confronted by a two-year old.

What’s happening here?  Even if your prospect was perfectly neutral in their interest, what we’ve experienced is a person’s natural tendency to “disagree” in order to engage.  People are wired like this since they were two.

Another example might be illustrated by commenting on the weather to a friend.  “Isn’t it a nice day?”  Ever get the answer, “But it’s going to rain.”  Even if you reverse the statement, “Looks like a rainy day,” you will often get disagreement, “Oh, I heard it might clear up.” What is happening is that people will use disagreement or the negative to engage in the conversation.  After all, what’s the response if you simply said yes to either of the above statements?  The conversation dies and goes nowhere.  Remember that the brain learns and thinks using metaphors.  As children we see the reaction from the word “No” and learn to use it to engage.

So, how can we use this tendency to engage customers?  If you want to risk being slightly manipulative, simply begin by using the negative.  Consider the following two statements:  1) Have I caught you at a good time?  vs. 2) Have I caught you at a bad time?  They are equivalent in absolute terms.  But remember people tend to disagree in order to engage.  Their natural response is “No” to both questions.  Answering “No” to the first question doesn’t get you a continuing conversation, but answering “No” to the second question gives a positive response or at least an admission that they may have a minute or two.  In actual practice, asking the negative question here gets a positive response 60% of the time!

This can be expanded to other negative questions.  For example, “Next week isn’t too early to discuss the proposal?”  Or, “You don’t think your boss will be surprised, do you?”

Is this manipulative?  Well, yes, it is. I have never used either of the last two statements and don’t recommend you do, but you should be aware of the language.  However, when used to engage and extend an initial conversation, so both parties can find out if there are mutual reasons to engage, then I believe it’s OK.  But you wouldn’t want to push it, would you?

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Driving Sales Through Customer Focused Marketing
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (24×7)

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I once had a competitor say to a prospect that if they bought from us, we would nickel and dime them to death.  Of course this is a lousy way to sell, and I would never advocate disparaging your competition like this.  But having been presented with this “negative frame” and hearing it repeatedly in the marketplace, I had to do something.

The last thing you want to do when confronted with a negative frame is to deny or argue against it.  Because, even though it may not be true, arguing against it only reinforces the frame.

It’s like trying to answer the question, “When did you stop beating your spouse?”  Even if you’ve never even thought of such a thing… even if you’re not married, you can’t answer the question because it sets the frame deeper.  Remember frames are based on metaphors in the brain and connected to stories and emotions.  They are not subject to reason.

There are only two things you can do with a negative frame.  The first is to ignore it.  This is hard to do, but it is the prudent choice 95% of the time.  The second is to re-frame it into a positive.

In the case above, we had our sales team quietly answer, “Of course we nickel and dime you… unlike others, we look for every cent of savings until you’ve saved tens of thousands of dollars.”  We turned the frame positive, then changed the subject.

Recently, someone framed Taco Bell as having only 65% beef in their taco meat.  It’s not true of course.  What did they do?  They started an ad campaign saying their tacos contain 88% beef and the rest is secret ingredients. They then list the secret ingredients.  What people eat and consider food is a deep-seated metaphor. You know what I remember?  Taco Bell doesn’t use 100% beef in their tacos, they use 88% and some other stuff.  I hadn’t heard of this issue until I read their ad. They confused jumping on the issue quickly with how to respond to the frame.  Now millions more know about it.

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Driving Sales Through Customer Focused Marketing
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (24×7)

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The point behind the discussion on metaphor is not that their expression in language should be used to excess to convince people that they should buy your products or services.  If you use classical metaphors unsparingly in your messaging, you wind up sounding foolish.

The occasional use of metaphorical language helps with making a point, and the over-the-top metaphor helps jar our brains into saying, “Stop, what’s going on here?”

While it is fun, it is not necessary to make up metaphorical language about beavers.  Rather the point is that we think metaphorically.  A metaphor exists in the brain as a connection of synapses and neurons. It can be expressed by language. So there is a distinction between metaphorical thought and the language metaphor.  Knowing this, we can create messaging based on language that fits naturally into the narratives we already have in place in our heads and that are activated by metaphorical thinking.  The most influential metaphorical language construction is the “frame.”

Framing is a method for choosing the language of a debate and tying it emotionally to an easily recognized story or narrative through the use of metaphorical thinking.  You find it most frequently used in politics, mostly in dirty politics from either the right or the left, although it can be used in business.

A couple of quick nonpolitical examples will help explain the frame.  If I ask a child, “Would you rather eat your peas with a fork or a knife?” I am framing the debate to a choice of utensils, and not whether the child wants to eat their peas.  (This doesn’t always work with kids).  If I am trying to introduce a friend to a new group of people and I say, “She has a heart like a river, it just keeps flowing,” I have framed their impression of her to generosity and tied it to the positive image of a flowing river.

In a common political framing example, reasonable people might agree that a high tax rate is bad for individuals and businesses.  Reasonable people might also agree that no taxes might have severe consequences for funding critical institutions like education and defense.  So there is likely to be an “optimum” level of taxes.  Debates rage back and forth on what this level is.  Sometimes logic is used, but the issue is complex and has many sides.

However, if I want to “frame the debate” and reduce it to language that defines the debate, I could use either of the following two examples depending on whether I was for lowering taxes or increasing taxes.

In the first case, I might say, “We’re drowning in taxes.  Aren’t you for tax relief?”  The term “tax relief” frames the debate as “taxes are too high.”  The word “drowning” creates a graphic narrative and ties it to an emotion of panic, fear and even death.  In the second case, I might say, “Patriots don’t freeload, they pay taxes.”  The word “freeload” limits the debate to paying a fair share and the word “patriot” creates a both a positive image and invokes an inclusion metaphor.  You’re a patriot aren’t you?

Why go into so much detail?   First, frames and metaphors are the building blocks of narratives and storytelling, as well as sales and market messaging.  I’ll cover more about them in upcoming posts. Second, it’s helpful if you understand when a competitor or even a prospect uses a frame.  In general, frames are manipulative.  But sometimes it’s difficult to even tell when you’ve been framed.  You wouldn’t want that would you?

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Driving Sales Through Customer Focused Marketing
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (24×7)

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I had an employee once who escaped from communist Czechoslovakia.  He was a mathematician and computer programmer and had helped the Soviets create a similar 16-bit computer to the Digital Equipment PDP-11.  One day he went home, told his wife to take 30 minutes and pack her things.  To avoid the police, they locked their apartment, said goodbye to no one, not even their parents, and left their lives behind.  They crossed the border into Austria under the carriage of a railway car.  If they’d been found, the penalty would have either been death or years in the gulags.  From there they made their way to Italy, then the UK and finally to asylum in the US.

The interesting thing is that he found a job doing image processing for a company that sold this technology to P.O. Box 1, Washington DC where it was used to analyze aerial photography of military installations in the Soviet Union and Eastern block countries.  After hiring him, he helped me by being the lead programmer on a project that subsequently sold over $20M in product.   I haven’t kept in touch with him, but he had a successful career.  And while I moved from California where we originally met, ironically and years later, our children knew each other and were friends in high school.

We are our stories.  It is who we are and how we think.  Our brains are wired for stories and narratives.  We identify with familiar stories.  They evoke emotions and expectations and hope.  I could have said instead, I once hired a refugee who helped me on a project, but this would not have triggered the same emotions or visions or identification.

You may be, but it’s unlikely that you’re a refugee from an eastern block country. So how is it you identify with my friend?  You did… didn’t you?

It’s because the narrative is familiar.  There are characters in a narrative and they play roles.  In this narrative the roles are hero, victim, villain, and helper.   The hero (my friend) is inherently good, while the villains (the soviets, the police) are inherently bad.  In this case the hero is the victim and he rescues himself with helpers along the way (me for one, though I had very little to do with his success).   This narrative could be called either the “Self Rescue” narrative or perhaps the “Rags to Riches or Success” narrative.  In either case you are already familiar with these particular narratives.  You would know the characters and the outcomes even to the extent that they are independent of country or culture.  They are ancient and in our DNA.

So tell more stories.  If you want to sell something, convince someone of your position, or market your products or services, you first need to tell a story. Perhaps a rescue or a hero triumphs story.

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Driving Sales Through Customer Focused Marketing
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110

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If 95% of our thought is unconscious, how do sales and marketing address this in their communications?  The first step is understanding how the brain functions.

We all know what we think.  Or think we know.  What we don’t know is how we think.  How is it that we arrange all the facts and observations from our environment into some logical structure from which we can take action?  The answer is that we don’t.  The brain possesses a set of filters and shorthand that allows it not to be overwhelmed by input and allows us to function efficiently.

One shorthand structure the brain uses is narratives.  Narratives are shorthand stories that allow us to reduce complex ideas into short sequences of information we can use for processing.  You might be aware of these when you watch a movie.  For example; the “Chick Flick.”  Boy meets girl.  They like each other.  Unforeseen circumstances present obstacles to their love.  They split.  But then they overcome the obstacle, find each other again and live happily ever after. We recognize this narrative. It’s familiar.  We don’t need to think through all the details of it to understand it.

Underlying the narrative is a set of words or metaphors that is even shorter.   They are: Girl, Boy, Difficulty, and Love.  With these words, try not thinking of Romeo and Juliet, or maybe Sleepless in Seattle.  These four words used together and by themselves allow us to construct the narrative.  In a similar fashion, the words; Buyer, Seller, Money, and Purchase allow us to construct most of the information we need to understand a transaction.  Add the single word ‘Swindle’ and we may understand that the buyer has paid too much and has been tricked and that there is conflict.

With four words plus one we have activated a potential narrative.  One narrative is the “Triumph Narrative” where the swindled buyer gets his money back.  Another is the “Fool Buyer” where the buyer gets what he deserves.  We can create these narratives with a device called frames.  I’ll cover frames in more detail in another post, but frames are short word devices that contain three things: first they frame or limit the discussion or argument in a particular way, second, they tie the experience to a story, and third, they evoke emotions.

For example, “Cut and Run” (originating with the act of cutting a purse string and running away with the purse) has a negative connotation.  We can all imagine the act.  It is cowardly.  It creates anger.  So if one is positioned as “Cutting and Running,” we create an association between some current action and cowardice, then reinforce it with the emotion of anger.  We have no chance to think about the situation differently because our brains are hard wired through experience, metaphor and narrative to associate cutting and running with a negative emotion.  A whole unconscious thought process takes place in a few words that connects an action or situation to a negative emotion.  (A frame can also be positive and create a positive emotion. For example, and in the same cut and run vein: Robin Hood (a thief) had a heart like a river.  It flowed broadly and nourished those less fortunate.)

The point behind this post is that if we want to change minds, we need to change brains, because most thought is unconscious.   Even in a B2B marketing or sales world, relying on logical persuasion, features, advantages and benefits is a poor and partial way to get a prospect to buy.  Understanding how the brain works, how we think, and how to activate the narratives we want, will make our sales and marketing jobs easier.   These are subjects for upcoming posts.

* Latin for “I think, therefore I am.” Attributed to Rene Descartes.

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Driving Sales Through Customer Focused Marketing
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110

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How about your messaging?

About ten years ago, I had the opportunity to talk to the CEO of Priceline, then a leading Web 1.0 company.  He said something that stuck with me; that there were four key reasons why people used the net.   They were: 1) To get information, 2) For price or lower cost, 3) For convenience, and finally 4) For entertainment.  He maintained that the most successful sites combined elements of each.  It was the fourth reason that I found somewhat interesting at the time, the idea that people would come to a site, even a business site, for “Entertainment”.

There is value in using humor and fun in corporate messaging.  They provide entertainment.  Humor has the ability to break down barriers to truth and allow us to see things in a new light.  Fun is the enjoyment we get as a result.  It seems to me that many times in the B2B marketing world we are way too serious.  We are so wrapped in the drive to get new customers, make revenue targets and meet deadlines that we forget about the aspect of humor or fun in our messaging. We may provide information, competitive pricing and convenience or utility, but if we lose the entertainment value we lose part of the human connection.

Some of the seriousness of B2B messaging is lessened by the informality of the internet.  This is especially true in blogging where genuine voice is appreciated. Of course one can go over the top.  It would be odd to hear a medical pacemaker company say their device can “Take a licking and keep on ticking,” (an old Timex tagline) Or maybe not.  It’s something I would want if I had a pacemaker.  Alternatively we could say that the device has a mean time between failure of .63 trillion seconds. Which will you remember?

Personally, I tend to err on the side of humor at the risk of going over the top.

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