Ideas for profitable
communication
by Baruch ter Wal
Be a fanatic (for the fans)
April 17th, 2012
It turns out that ‘The Satanic Verses’ was a homily on branding.
Below is my précis of Salman Rushdie’s novel, The Satanic Verses. Apologies to Rushdie and anyone who’s read it. If you haven’t read it, you can use this at highbrow parties, especially as it explains the novel’s title.
So it’s a little after 600AD, and Prophet Mohammed is writing the Quran. It’s a sort of serialised text. Mohammed periodically goes to a mountain cave, where the angel Gabriel reveals more of the verses to him. He then comes down, and preaches what usually amount to new rules (Do’s and Don’t’s). Mohammed’s ability to attract new followers is inhibited by all these rules, which are viewed by many people as a bit of a drag. Luckily, after coming down from the mountain one day, Mohammed has new verses which allow people to keep acknowledging their existing Gods. This builds up the numbers, but some of his more devout followers question the verses: they seem to contradict earlier parts of the story, and display a jarring woossiness. After a time, Mohammed realises he’s losing his hard core of support. He goes back up the mountain, where it is revealed to him that the verses did not come from God, but rather were interposed by Satan. [The nature of this revelation, as recounted in the novel, meant Rushdie had to go into hiding for a couple of decades.] On Mohammed’s return, he declares the verses satanic, inspires and galvanises his followers with his no-compromise approach, and the rest is history.
The novel demonstrates the power of fanaticism: sticking to a personal truth that may turn many people off, but turns some people on. You can’t brand a middle-of-the-road, wishy-washy offering.
In modern terms, what would you think of Mark Zuckerberg if he kowtowed to the Chinese leadership and Facebook was allowed into China on the condition that it censored expression and handed over personal data to the authorities? What would it do to Facebook’s brand? Can you imagine fanatical fans of that company?
An exercise: What profitable opportunities would you say ‘No’ to, because they go against your principles?
An even harder but potentially more important exercise, for a true fanatic: What profitable opportunities would you say ‘No’ to, because they don’t draw fully on your specialness?
Be remarkable
April 12th, 2012
Being remarkable means doing stuff that people will naturally remark upon.
Sometimes you’re the one who has to do the remarking, as in this seminal passage.
Han Solo: I’m captain of the Millennium Falcon. Chewie here tells me you’re lookin’ for passage to the Alderaan system?
Obi-Wan: Yes indeed, if it’s a fast ship.
Han Solo: Fast ship? You’ve never heard of the Millennium Falcon?
Obi-Wan: Should I have?
Han Solo: It’s the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs…
I can help you tell a remarkable story, but it really helps when you do remarkable things. There’s been quite a bit of that going on, so sorry for having been publicly quiet for a while.
Captain Courageous
November 29th, 2011
There’s a scene in the movie ‘Gladiator’ where Russell Crowe and his buddies are getting charged by a numerically superior group on horses and chariots.
Russ gathers his motley men together and tells them to “Hold…Hold” – hold their ground against their instincts. It looks brave, but in fact it is the only way for them to succeed.
Building a brand requires that same kind of logical courage. If you find that special intersection point where your expertise, your passion and an important problem all intersect, then you need to spend almost all of your time there. As a leader you need to invest all of your marketing budget there, focus the entire design brief there, network there. You might even need to fail there for a while.
If the results aren’t coming, you need to back yourself and be patient. Look again at the definition of that intersection. I promise you that if you’ve really found that zone, it will always lead to good things eventually. So hold.
When you stand your ground, you also stand for something.
Be brave…not a dick
October 3rd, 2011
When Kiwi businesspeople pursue international opportunities, there’s a band of experts on hand to tell us that we have to come out of our shells. We need to step it up, turn up the volume. But then another band of experts tell us to retain our authenticity. Which band do we listen to?
I must admit that I cringe when I see people taking the first path, coming over all fake and desperate. Apparently I’m not alone, since most people I know opt for the second path. Authenticity provides a comforting moral high ground as well as an excuse for not going out there and doing anything really scary.
Part of me is pretty sure that we need to do scary things, though. I had a chance recently to talk to Rob Adams about the dilemma. His advice is summed up in the title of this post. He loves the New Zealand culture, and wants us to stay true to it. But being understated and phlegmatic doesn’t mean we have to be cowards. So make that call you’re afraid to make. Walk right up to that guy who could open a massive door for you. Tell that lady what you think a fair price is for your product, and why. There’s no need to be a dick about it, though. What’s required is bravery, the courage to put yourself out there. And it should be you who’s out there, not some dick version of you.
It’s a pretty simple formula and, once I understood it, I started seeing it all over the place (thanks Lance, Rowan, Nicole, Pel…). I’m trying my best to put it into practice. I’ve got a ways to go, but definitely recommend you try it.
Time to nod
August 23rd, 2011
Here’s a new metric to assess your sales material.
Every good sales guy knows that if he can get the prospect nodding, the deal is just about done. That’s why good salesmen nod so much when they’re talking to you – it’s infectious.
Your sales material should also be moving you closer to a deal. Question: How much reading does it take before a prospective customer (or partner, or investor) is nodding? I call this ‘time to nod’, or TTN (because all metrics must be abbreviated). If your TTN is more than 10 seconds, you’re in trouble.
There are lots of ways to get a nod. It doesn’t have to be a communication of your complete value proposition. Empathetic statements work well. “Most business owners find moving poor staff on to be a huge challenge.” You can do old-school questions: “Does the time required to resolve bugs in this environment exceed three days?” A great diagram that sums up the customer’s current situation is another good technique.
What you’re doing is demonstrating your familiarity with their situation, and also your expertise.
Get them nodding with points like these, and you make it easier to get a nod when you show them how your service takes the pain away.
You knew all of this already, right? Even so, go look at your website and brochures and measure your TTN. Then start editing.
My biggest screw-ups (part 3 in an occasional series)
July 18th, 2011
Lee ter Wal is not actually the first business Shaun and I founded. In 2001 we started a web design outfit with a couple of talented guys called, I kid you not, runtheotherway.com
Calling it that wasn’t the screw-up. The screw-up was that we started the company because we wanted to run our own business and be cool. That’s not really enough of a vision. Our first client was a magazine who negotiated a discount by featuring us on their cover all pimped out in Zambesi and Versace. The story (of the business and the article) was about us, not about our customers.
The other day Peter Thiel said that being an entrepreneur wasn’t a useful goal. It’s a side effect – like becoming rich or famous. He said that you should become an entrepreneur if that’s the best way to achieve a goal you’ve become passionate about. If you can better achieve the goal within a corporation or NGO, you should be there.
Runtheotherway lasted 18 months. My memory and filing is a little vague, but I think our second business is 8 years old today. The vision for Lee ter Wal was about partnering with geeks to communicate complex stories. We’ve been lucky to work with lots of cool geeks in organisations large and small. Some of you probably don’t call yourselves geeks, but we affectionately think of you that way anyhow.
Our mission now is to ramp up the ‘partnership’ bit of the vision. We’ve been putting fees at risk, depending on whether a defined outcome is achieved, and taking equity instead of cash. I really like what that does to the designer-client relationship, so I’d be grateful if you could keep your eye out for opportunities to work in that way. Don’t worry about the title of this post. It’ll be fine.
Please be nice for those 9 months
July 10th, 2011
When I start work with a new client, one of the objectives is often to reduce the length of the sales cycle.
Sometimes this is doable. A well designed website or webinar can reduce the number of meetings required, cutting out cost and time.
But sometimes there’s not much you can do to speed up a client’s decision-making process: it’s about them, not about you. That was the case for Mike Carden of Sonar6, faced with a stubborn 9 month sales cycle. At the ICE Ideas conference last Friday, Mike explained how Sonar6 responded to this fact of life.
They use provocative, viral messages to get more possible leads into the sales funnel. And once they’re in the funnel? Mike described his strategy in this way: Be likable. People will engage in ongoing conversations with people they like. And they will tell refer friends to people they like.
So being likable is an essential part of keeping prospects on the hook while a new customer is gestating. Check out how they do it, or the way MailChimp or Dropbox do it. Would making ‘likability’ your top criterion change your digital approach to customers?
To follow and participate in the initiatives coming out of ICE Ideas, check out www.3000.org.nz
Attracting attention in the elevator
June 13th, 2011
Warning: this is a brief how-to guide, but will be longer than my usual posts.
Elevator lines
By now we all know about elevator pitches. (If you’re just back from the monastery, that’s your proposition delivered in 30 seconds to the CEO/VC/Prime Minister whom you meet serendipitously in the elevator. It used to be 60 seconds, but lifts have gotten faster, and attention spans shorter.)
People refer to the elevator pitch as the thing that earns you the right to present a more detailed proposal. I’d like you to think about the first 5 seconds of the elevator pitch as the thing that earns the audience’s attention for the next 25 seconds, and ensures that those 25 seconds are productive. I call those first 5 seconds the “elevator line”. To do justice to them, you need to unlearn some things.
You’ll be told by experts that sales is mostly about benefits (WHY you need my product) and a bit about features (HOW it will help you). But to anchor these in their brain, your customer needs the WHAT. Let me explain.
“Gets you there faster” is a Why point. “Uses patented collision detection” is a How point. But I don’t want to hear any of that until I know What the heck you’re selling, be it cars, drugs, or hang-gliders.
Elevator lines work when you have a specific audience in mind. Every time my wife tells a friend that I run a ‘business to business design agency’ she gets a blank stare. When a prospective customer hears that line, though, they are usually very interested. They know what a design agency is, and they know that their B2B sales proposition is more complicated then that of their B2C mates. Features and benefits of our service slot neatly into that introduction.
Elevator lines are useful on websites, right at the top in a nice big font. They earn the right for people to spend precious seconds of their time browsing your content.
Taglines (aka straplines)
Sometimes your elevator line is a descriptive statement of something extraordinary. For example, our client Aquaflow’s elevator line is “Our technology harvests wild algae from wastewater, providing the raw material for carbon neutral fuel while leaving behind purer water.”
Although such a statement might sum up why you get out of bed each morning, it may not get a rise out of customers.
A tagline conveys your elevator line in a way that is more creative and inspiring. Aquaflow’s tagline is “Clean water. Green energy.”
As a final thought, keep in mind that taglines are not for everyone. If your brand has become well known to your target customers, and really stands for something, then a tagline is redundant.
We can all put that on our list of aspirations: one day I won’t need a tagline.
You look good in that
May 16th, 2011
I reckon it’s useful to think of your design agency as if they were your personal tailor.
Your tailor knows that some of your ideas aren’t going to work. She’s seen them tried before, and saw the outcomes. She also has box full of tricks to accentuate your positives and…well you know the rest. Their independent outlook on these things is useful. No matter how good your own dress sense, you only see yourself in the mirror, and never get to see yourself for the first time.
Lesson 1: Trust your designer. Sometimes you’re so familiar with your business that you just can’t see it as your customers and partners will.
On the other hand, you’re the best person to decide if you feel good in your clothes. If you’re going to feel tense, or not yourself, then you won’t make a good impression – no matter how good you look in the tailor’s studio. Furthermore, your tailor’s got a good knowledge of what people are wearing at many events – but you may actually know more than she does about how to dress appropriately for certain functions. Sometimes what is cool and what makes you look like a dick is quite specific to a given community.
Lesson 2: Trust yourself. Sometimes your gut feel trumps your designer’s.
The two lessons can come into conflict. When they do, the most important thing is courage. Don’t go with the designer’s expert opinion just to avoid responsibility. But don’t use your gut feel as a trump card to avoid changes that you know (deep down in places that you don’t like to talk about on Facebook) are needed.
Dummies are useful
April 11th, 2011
Here’s a tip you can apply tomorrow.
Let’s pretend for a moment that the definition of ‘Expert’ is ‘Someone who knows how to use technical terms in the right places in a conversation, to the satisfaction of other experts’.
Notice that, on this definition, so-called experts don’t necessarily have to have a deep understanding of what they’re talking about. In my experience, that turns out to be true in most cases.
Sometimes that makes it hard to sell things to experts. You need them to actually understand what’s going on in their world to see the value of your product. But you can’t patronise these guys. If you act as if they don’t know what’s going on, you’re sunk (especially if it’s true… which it probably is).
One way out of this dilemma is to use a variation of the following: “You guys get this, of course, but it’s going to be hard to convince the dummies and laypeople out there. Here’s the simplified version we use for them.” No one loses face, everyone now has a better understanding, and the ideas can spread more effectively via word of mouth. Including expert-to-expert word of mouth.
An ode to sacred cows
March 28th, 2011
Should we do it Steve’s way or the high way?
Ok, so you’re going through your sales routine, diligently and truthfully explaining how your offer will save the customer time and make them money.
It’s all going well until you hit this sideshow topic that suddenly becomes the focus of discussion, to the exclusion of everything else. For Maori leaders it might be self determination over their taonga. For the CFO it might be compatibility with their existing financial system. For a software developer things might hinge on whether this can truly be called open-source.
You get bogged down. With each compromise and concession you make, you find yourself wondering what a visionary like Steve Jobs would do. He’d probably slay the sacred cow. He’d tell them to chuck out their old school ideas, and confidently push forward with his agenda – in full confidence that he was making their lives immeasurably better.
[A quick tangent on sacred cows. Usually it is a derisory term. “Haha, look at how their roads get clogged up by those skinny cows. I’d open a hamburger joint and improve traffic flow in one swoop. In the same way you’ve gone and treated a silly notion as sacred, and now it’s clogging up your business.” Should you actually ask a deep thinking Hindu about the topic, however, you might hear a beautiful story about why cows should be treated with reverence in a given context. You might come to think that a story that cool justifies the odd traffic jam.]
Maybe your imaginary Steve is right. But just maybe your customer’s cow deserves to be sacred. Get in their shoes. If you decide that you actually respect the customer’s view, you’ve now got a whole new communication option. Instead of pushing your agenda and then negotiating the sacred obstacles when they arise, you rework your product and proposition in light of the cow.
Then you can lead off with: “Self determination [or compatibility with your systems, or a true open source model] is everything. Everything. That’s at the heart of this proposal.”
My friend Pel calls this ‘taking the high ground’. He takes that high ground with full empathy, genuineness and respect. If you can’t do it that way, you need to find another customer – or take a deep breath and do it Steve’s way.
Meeting the needs of the bored
March 2nd, 2011
That’s not a typo – Boards always get what they need. I’m talking about bored people.
A lot of your customers, or at least a lot of the people who influence your customers, do not enjoy their day at work. Giving them ‘the three reasons our product can help you’ isn’t necessarily going to provide a ray of sunshine.
There are all kinds of ways to make your messages more entertaining. We’ve done mockumentaries, songs, online games…even an old fashioned wordfind puzzle on the back of a postcard. The key, though, is to be sure that you’re talking to bored people. Else you risk trivialising what could be a serious matter.
If you’re not sure if your customers are bored or not, then you don’t know them well enough. Or they’re really polite.
How to get hitched without botox
January 25th, 2011
In the business-to-business world, getting to first base isn’t worth a lot. It’s long term relationships that really matter.
Repeat business from loyal clients underpins a successful business. And these fans are also a key source of referrals (polygamy is all good in business).
A focus on the long term has several implications. One of them is the importance of truthfulness. Getting someone to believe impressive falsehoods might be just fine if you’re after a one-night stand, but the inevitable disillusionment is the kiss of death for a long term relationship.
If you’re the arty kid who can make them laugh, pitching yourself as yet another captain of the First XV who loves animals is just dumb (feel free to psychoanalyse that metaphor). And yet a surprising number of new clients come to us with a belief that branding is the science of covering up their flaws. “At heart our people are unconfident, so we need you to make us look bold.” “Word on the street is we’re a bit slack at times – so make us sound ultra reliable.” This is a doomed enterprise. It only adds ‘bull$hitter’ to your list of brand attributes.
The real task is to design and tell the most compelling true story anyone has ever heard about you.
If there’s nothing special about you and your business, no designer can help you. If you’ve got something unique to offer, but are struggling to communicate it, we most certainly can.
3 crews making a dent
December 3rd, 2010
Significant milestones today from three great organisations have got me feeling really optimistic about the future for New Zealand.
The New Zealand Leadership Institute runs programmes for emerging and established leaders that have a freaky impact on the people lucky enough to find a place on them. I was at the graduation of the third Future Leaders cohort today (supporting LTW’s own Angus Blair) and here were thirty extraordinary people whose defining trait was humility and a desire to be of service.
Joline Francoeur of the Auckland Uni Business School pointed out that in a country the size of New Zealand it doesn’t take that much to reach critical mass. A few more cohorts of these guys and the sky’s the limit.
An hour earlier, the New Zealand Institute (no relation) was launching its latest think piece. Having told the Emperor that he had no clothes on with ‘A Goal is Not a Strategy’, they are putting their money where their mouth is with ‘Plugging the Gap’ – a clear, concise and specific recipe for generating more international Kiwi success stories. The innovation ecosystem they are prescribing is perfect for LTW clients and we are big fans.
And to round things off, Andy at the ICEHOUSE is pushing many of the same themes in his inimitable style. Plus he’s doing what he does best: organising coalitions around the key goals.
All three of these organisations and the passionate people who work there are getting us to critical mass faster than the doom-and-gloomers can imagine. It was a great day.
Talk the way they talk
November 3rd, 2010
A while back I observed a focus group that absolutely panned the new service offering my client was proposing.
My client had consulted with customers and conducted research before designing the new offer, so to see it go down in flames was pretty shocking.
Capturing the feedback on video is a really useful discipline in these sorts of cases. When we looked and listened closely, it became clear that how the offer was being phrased was more of an issue than the offer itself. It wasn’t that the language was difficult. The issue was that they were talking to customers the way managers at a company talk to each other, or talk to the government. We changed the vocab to match the audience, and tested the same offer with further groups. The results were now favourable.
Spin doctors are experts at using phrasing to manipulate perceptions. You never want to go near spin – but language often does need a doctor. If you’ve got something special to offer, you want your customers to know the truth about you. So it’s both arrogant and stupid to pitch to them in Latin when they speak Italian.
Spend more time listening to the way your customers speak. The coolest part is discovering the Italian phrases that describe their world so much more richly than our Latin ever did.
The guy in the eye patch
October 1st, 2010
My friend Perry says that in a competitive deal there are two winners: the guy who wins and the guy who pulls out early.
This puts a premium on uniqueness. If you stand out from the crowd, you up your chances of winning (if you have a fit with the customer) or losing fast (if you don’t have a fit).
Logos and your look and feel have a role to play in standing out. Unfortunately most businesses tee up the design process in such a way that you’re likely to blend in rather than stand out. You know the process. Under the guidance of your design or branding guru, your team goes to a vineyard to generate the ‘5 words’ that truly sum up your business (and you come back with 7).
But guess what. There are really only 9 words from which everyone is picking – including your competitors. The nine words are some variation of the following: Responsive, Smart, Friendly, Experienced, Innovative. Precise, New, Reliable, Fast. Well done if your team ever came up with a word that is not a synonym of one of these.
Now if everyone is picking from the same 9 words, and if these words are truly guiding the design process, then businesses in a given category are going to look remarkably similar.
Just talking about look and feel, here are some ways to stand out:
1. Focus on the ONE thing that is truly special about you as compared to your competitors, and convey that.
2. Have character. Let a personality shine through – as long as it is in sync with what makes you special.
3. Check out what colours or types of imagery are not being used in your space.
In the movies as in life: the guy in the eye patch is always smart or dumb, never middle of the road.
Your logo is not a diagram
September 24th, 2010
“Our product takes the chaos out of the client’s life – can you show that in the logo?”
Every 3 minutes, somewhere in the world, a designer is receiving that brief. I’ve had it half a dozen times in my career.
Taken literally, the result is awful. A big mess on the left that turns into something simple and symetrical on the right. Unfortunately, your friends will say it’s great. Don’t forget to test on real people.
If your value proposition is the creation of simplicity, having a whole lot of complexity in your logo will not serve you well.
Your logo is also not the perfect vehicle to convey 5-7 magical things that set your business apart. More on that next week.
Be afraid
September 8th, 2010
In his book ‘Kluge’, Gary Marcus cites an experiment that should scare you.
One group of people saw a video of a car crash and were asked how fast they thought the car was going when it “smashed into” another car. A second group saw the same video and were asked how fast the car was going when it “contacted” the other car.
On average the group that heard the word “smashed” had an estimate of the speed 33% higher than the group who heard “contacted”.
I don’t like the idea that words can change our perception of things to such a degree. But given that’s how our brains work, we need to play the game well. ‘Strategists’ seem more insightful than ‘account managers’. And a ‘studio’ seems more creative than an ‘office’. Just saying.
‘Jaws’ on a spaceship
August 19th, 2010
According to Hollywood legend, that was the four-word pitch used to sell the concept for the original ‘Alien’ movie.
The game plan here is to sell something new using concepts that people are already familiar with.
This is an important tactic for Kiwi firms who are trying to market a bleeding edge product. How many global customers want to take a risk on the New Zealand firm doing things in a way that nobody else is? Nobody ever got fired for hiring IBM and all that.
You can still be completely unique without using any unique words.
“We are the only point of sale software that operates on a software-as-a-service model, but also works offline” is wordy but intelligible. “POS – reinvented” is punchy but scary.
Vanished into thin air
July 22nd, 2010
Shakespeare came up with that. You wouldn’t think so: it sounds so mundane and cliche. But when he first composed those words they were fresh, edgy, genius. Imagine it being said on stage for the very first time in 1600.
The moral is that an idea that once upon a time was a stroke of genius may not have cut-through today. The first person to say, “Hey, we don’t sell services, we sell solutions” was a genius. Describing your offering as a “solution” today does not set you apart. Yesterday I saw a dented tradesman’s van with the tagline “Solutions for Every Industry”.
Somewhere in the world, someone is coming up with the idea to call their services “solutions”. They’ve never heard the term used before. They too are a genius. But it’s still not going to have cut-through.
That’s why research, especially competitor research, is so important. Without it, you or your creative team could be re-inventing (at great expense) an idea that was once shiny, but is now dull from overuse.
Show, don’t tell
July 8th, 2010
A whole generation is graduating from our universities with a new mindset: they can be themselves and still be successful.
That’s the impression I got, anyway, running workshops at Survive & Thrive today. I don’t mean to say that the rest of us don’t have that mindset, but typically the importance of being ourselves is something we’ve learned. It involved us breaking some colonial programming.
The talks I gave were about the importance of aligning your business conduct with every claim you make. Indeed, backing up your claims with action should be the most natural thing in the world – because the claims are true.
So if your claim to fame is that you’re passionate about a topic you’ll naturally blog about it, or hold meet-ups about it, or carry out novel research into the area. If you claim to be a “true partner” you’ll naturally put your fees at risk in case of failure, or take equity in some of your clients’ businesses, or think about their issues in the shower. If you’re all about service you will die before you require people who click on the “contact” tab on your website to fill out a form before you’ll talk to them.
Most advisors will say that if your behaviour is not aligned with your marketing claims you need to adjust your behaviour. I think you’ll have more success if you adjust the claims.
My biggest screw-ups (part 2 in an occasional series)
June 7th, 2010
A while ago Shaun asked me to generate some copy for the cover of a technology product brochure.
He’d mocked up the visuals, using just the word “Easy” as placeholder text. My job was to come up with an actual title, plus some supporting benefits. But I was so taken with that one, powerful word, that I felt we should go with his original mockup. “Easy” really summed up the product’s point of difference. And to convey the service that went with the product, we used an image of a smiling young lady.
It really stood out against the competing Big Boys’ Toys tech product brochures, and the client team loved it.
The visually-minded among you will have noticed the problem: You can’t label a smiling young lady “Easy”. Doh.
I’ve spoken before about the importance of testing on real people, and in this case the screw-up was detected by Shaun’s wife. It was not, however, detected by us or by the client team members. The design solution was good in theory, and so marketing people gave it a pass.
We work in increasingly cerebral environments, where “good in theory” tends to get equated with “good”. But they’re not the same thing, and we all need to get out more.
Do you act like an owner?
May 13th, 2010
Sometimes a design turns a client off. When this happens the design can end up getting rejected, even if it will turn the client’s customers on.
If the client who is turned off is paying for the design out of his or her own pocket, you might expect a 100% rejection rate. At LTW our experience is very different.
In fact, one of the reasons we enjoy working with business owners is precisely that they’re paying us with their own money. Owners have the strongest possible incentive to decide if what we’re suggesting will pay off. That makes for an open mind and very productive debates.
If you’re commissioning design work, ask yourself: “What would I do if it was my money?”
Who wants to be “they”?
April 13th, 2010
On the bus today I heard: “They are going to cure cancer in ten years” but also “We were the first to split the atom.” Why?
Being a New Zealander doesn’t necessarily bring you into the fold of “we”. You hear “We went nuclear free in the ‘80s” but also “They want to ban smoking on beaches.”
“We” is about buy-in, about a feeling of connectedness.
How close are you and your customers from referring to each other as “we” instead of “they”?
The key to owning your presentation
March 30th, 2010
This is a guest post from my colleague Angus Blair, and introduces a simple but killer tip for PowerPoint and Keynote.
You want your audience to remember you and your message, not your slides. Gorgeous visuals can therefore be your biggest enemy in a presentation.
When I find my audience distracted by my visuals instead of listening to me, I walk over and hit the ‘B’ key. Check out what happens.
It has the dramatic effect of shifting all attention in the room to you. It gives you a chance to demonstrate how well you know your message. And it tells people that you personally want to share the idea with them, because it matters that much to you.
Lest we forget
March 17th, 2010
We learned some useful things during the recession.
Yesterday I hung out with a room full of buzzing entrepreneurs who saw more opportunities than they had time to grab (I’m not quite sure what Auckland would do without The ICEHOUSE).
As much as it looks like 2010 will be a great year, it was clear that many of the opportunities spring from what we learned during the dark days of 2009.
We learned that marketing benefits – new or deeper relationships and sales – should be measurable.
We learned to seek lower cost channels that were just as effective as the old high cost ways of getting attention (one of my favourite stories was Turners Auctions tripling profits while cutting marketing spend in half to focus on a smart online strategy).
We learned to paint a clear picture of how our products and services would improve our customers’ lives and businesses.
Let’s not forget.
My biggest screw-ups (part 1 in an occasional series)
February 23rd, 2010
Four years ago we were asked to design sales material for a new software service.
We produced a “before and after” diagram aimed at strategic decision makers. It beautifully illustrated the behavioural changes required, and the various efficiency gains that these would make possible. The client liked it, as did a small test audience of CEOs and CFOs.
When the material was used in practice, however, it emerged that operational staff were also key decision makers, along with the strategic managers they reported to. The strategic managers were conceptual thinkers. But the operational staff were concrete thinkers, and they found our diagram shallow and unconvincing.
One of the most important principles of business-to-business design is to identify all of the different decision makers, and tailor material to them. Four years ago, we failed to live up to that principle.
Don’t forget to test on (real) people
February 8th, 2010
When designing something with a clear call to action (brochure, ad, website landing page) it’s easy to be captured by textbook or expert opinion. But there’s no replacement for user testing.
The toughest part is not finding the people. The toughest part is getting them to be real. When marketing advice is just a blog away, most people you “test” your design with will put on a marketing hat and try to say what an expert would say. That’s of little use to you.
You need them to act like your customers would act. Don’t ask, “What do you think of this?” Set the scene properly. “You’re a really busy engineer. What would you do if one of your staff put this on your desk?” Or “What would you click on next?”
Jakob Nielsen says that testing with five people will reveal 85% of the usability problems in your design. He means five real people.
The, ahem, 3 secrets to successful business-to-business communication :-)
January 21st, 2010
Self knowledge; customer insight; design thinking.
- Self knowledge. This is about truth. What does your business truly do better than anyone else? (BTW: that means now, not what you will be the best at, or hope to be the best at.) Narrow the scope until you find it. Ideally it will be something you are also passionate about.
- Customer insight. Who are the people and organisations most in need of the thing you’re best at? What do they currently believe about their needs? What do they currently believe about your ability to meet their needs? (Hint: it won’t be the same as what you believe).
- Design thinking. On a blank piece of paper, paint the world’s most compelling and truthful picture outlining why those customers (with those beliefs) need what you have to offer.
If you’re 100% committed to these three steps, I will always be happy to talk to you with the meter off. Not before 10am though.
How can you change the game?
January 12th, 2010
Here’s a simple recipe for doing something really transformative for your business or career in 2010.
Make a list of the things you’ve been wishing you had the time or money to do. Pick something off the list.
Now (this is the important bit) tell all of your LinkedIn, email, Twitter or flesh and blood friends that you’re going to do it in the next 6 months. Now you’ve got peer pressure to make it happen. As a bonus, people will want to know whether you’ve achieved your goal, and you’ll generate a truckload of free and useful word of mouth marketing.
My game changer is this: I’m going to hire someone smarter than me to drive my business forward.
What’s yours?
