by David Crankshaw on June 17, 2009
Do you trust gravity?
Imagine you are standing outside with an apple in your hand. You let go of the apple and it falls to the ground. The apple does this every time you drop it.
You’ve never seen a time when the apple didn’t drop to the ground. Or heard rumors that someone else did. Or been told an alternative theory to what happens if you let go of an apple.
If someone was willing to bet you a thousand dollars that the apple wouldn’t drop to the ground, you’d take the bet immediately.
Why are you so confident?
Because there’s no variation in your experience. The apple always falls to the ground.
If only prospective customers felt as confident in you as they do in that apple falling to the ground. But they don’t. Unlike their experience with apples, they’ve had a lot of variation in their business dealings and it’s left them cautious about you and your offer.
On the other hand, you are completely confident in your offer. You’ve spent your whole career building the kind of capability that your customers need.
You know you are trustworthy. You know you can help this person and their company to improve productivity, lower costs, or increase revenue. Your current customers know they can trust you.
Why can’t this new person trust you? Your suspicion is that they aren’t listening or they don’t understand or they just “don’t get it”. They seem irrational.
But it’s not possible for a prospective customer to trust you. Too much variation in their experience has shown that, no matter what you say or demonstrate or prove, there is a reasonable probability that you won’t fulfill.
If you don’t fulfill there will be a serious consequence, both to the buyer personally and to the buyer’s company.
Buyers are taking a risk and they have to manage it.
Instead of asking them to trust you, convince them you will help them to manage their risk. Do this by answering their questions and demonstrating you know how to solve the kinds of problems they face. Start with a small project and offer a guarantee. Show who else has worked with you and that you’ve done this type of project before.
You can’t persuade new buyers to trust you, but you can persuade them that their risk is low.
by David Crankshaw on June 16, 2009
At the beginning of Pan’s Labyrinth , Ofelia meets a faun in an overgrown ancient labyrinth.
The faun assigns Ofelia three tasks. She must complete the tasks before the next full moon if she is to prove herself to be Princess Moranna and return to her father’s kingdom.
As a publisher of information for your buyers, you also have three tasks. It is only if you accomplish these tasks that your buyers will read, understand, and act upon what you have to say.
Not to worry, these tasks are not hard or mysterious or life-threatening like the ones Ofelia faced. They are straightforward principles that you will recognize from material that you have read in the past, material that has moved you and caused you to act.
Create value for the buyer.
The reader of your marketing material asks only one question: Is there something useful here for me?
Your readers are holding ongoing conversations at their companies about their goals and challenges, about resources and priorities. They want to solve the problems they face. If your readers see that your information can help them, they will welcome you to their conversation.
How do you know what creates value for the buyer? Study the buyer’s journey from being unaware of the problem to becoming aware and making decisions to solve it. What questions are they trying to answer at each stage of their journey? Information that addresses each of these problems creates value.
Make it sticky.
Even the most valuable material will go unread unless it engages the reader. Some material is naturally engaging like ghost stories and gossip. Most of it is not, including business and technical ideas.
Find the core of your idea and express it as simply as you can. Explain it using concrete information and examples. Surprise your readers with something unexpected to get their attention. Enhance your credibility by letting your readers test your ideas for themselves or by invoking the credibility of others. Engage their emotions by helping them to feel something about a particular person or group. Tell a story that lets them mentally imagine the world you want to create for them.
Make it persuasive.
Marketing and sales is a process whose aim is to find, win and keep customers. Your ideas must not only create value and engage the buyer, they must persuade the buyer that they have the kinds of problems that you know how to solve, that their interests and your abilities are aligned.
Ideas that create value for your buyers.
Ideas that are engaging and will stick with your buyers.
Ideas that persuade buyers to act.
With these principles you can take aim once and for all at material that is too much about your product and not enough about buyer problems, that’s dull and flat instead of engaging and memorable, that asks for action but fails to persuade.
With these principles you can complete the three tasks.
