According to McKinsey and Co., companies that reduce their discounting during sales negotiations by 1% increase their operating margins by 11%. The key to gaining this margin improvement is to create value throughout the sales cycle in order to avoid excessive discounting once you move into the procurement phase. Marketing and sales need to work together to create purposeful conversations that help salespeople move decision makers to recognize their unconsidered needs, connect their buying decision to their personal careers, and gain agreement on critical elements of the negotiation throughout the sales cycle.

For more strategies to help your company avoid excessive discounting, read Tim Riesterer’s article on page 18 of the May/June issue of Sales & Marketing Management.…

Every sales cycle includes a healthy amount of tension created by the competing interests of your organization and your prospect. How well do your salespeople embrace and constructively manage that tension in their negotiations to create the best possible outcome, and maximize your profit margins?

Take this 60-second, four-question poll.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/RHXVXJS

The results of this poll will be published in an upcoming Sales and Marketing Messaging Quarterly Report. Individual poll responses will be kept strictly confidential, and data will only be used in aggregate.

We look forward to hearing from you, and greatly appreciate your time and participation.…

It sounds like the start of a bad joke, but it’s actually a real-life example of a successful negotiation strategy, as presented on a recent National Public Radio Planet Money podcast. This enlightening podcast includes instructive examples from three professional negotiators that highlight the power of:

• Asking for more, even when you know the agreement on the table is acceptable
• Understanding the underlying motivations of the other party
• Clarifying your “Plan B” (what you’ll do if you fail to reach agreement)
• “Expanding the pie” to make it easier to craft win-win agreements
• Getting the other party to negotiate against themselves

Listen to the podcast: “An FBI Hostage Negotiator Buys a Car.”…

by Tim Riesterer

A recent spate of research from big industry analysts found that buyers believe they are at least 60 percent done with their buying process before they seek out a salesperson. At the same time, ironically, there is documented evidence that 60 percent of qualified leads end the sales cycle in “no decision,” sticking with their status quo and buying nothing.

So if your prospects are 60 percent set in their decisions before they talk to salespeople, yet 60 percent of the time they choose to do nothing, are they really that close to making a decision?

Before you discard this research as irrelevant, let’s take a closer look at how the outlined issue impacts the content of your marketing messages, how you view your content marketing programs, and the way you decide to enable your salespeople.…

Although it may seem that our Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer, Tim Riesterer, has watched a few too many episodes of AMC’s hit TV show, The Walking Dead, we assure you that he’s still focused squarely on helping companies create more sales opportunities.

In a recent article, Tim discussed tactics for engaging with leads that have languished in the pipeline. He suggests handing “zombies” – leads in your database that haven’t looked at any of your communications recently – to your salespeople to reengage with some provocative phone calls.  As for the  “unloved”  – leads that have been given to sales, but haven’t been converted to the pipeline  –  reach out to the “unloved” with sales conversations packed with visual messages that force them to reconsider their status quo.…

The real cost of the lack of collaboration between marketing and sales, which results in increased sales cycles, took center stage during a panel session at the recent B2B Content2Conversion conference.  Our very own Tim Riesterer participated in a panel session on sales enablement strategies and shared his insights, along with representatives from Oracle and Marseli, on how organizations can bridge this gap.  Tim’s tips included restarting the marketing/sales relationship and working to ensure great sales conversations with customers.

For more details on the panel discussion, read the article on the Demand Gen Report website.…

What do hammocks, tornado sirens and author Malcolm Gladwell have in common? Watch our chief strategy and marketing officer, Tim Riesterer, explain how all three fit into his visual story on differentiating customer messages at the recent SAVO Sales Enablement Summit.  Tim pulls out the whiteboard and markers to explain why your PowerPoint presentation, filled with inspirational photography and slides about your company’s fabulous accomplishments, is putting your prospects to sleep rather than motivating them to see their status quo as unsafe.

If you missed Tim’s presentation at the SAVO Sales Enablement  Summit, you’re in luck, you can watch the video right now.…

RFP

These words should strike fear in the heart of any salesperson. If your reps aren’t helping your prospects see the difference between your solution and your competition’s, and working collaboratively with buyers to navigate an increasingly complex buying process, you’ll get dragged into these bake-off traps every time. Any deals you manage to recover will be won at the expense of your profitability.

These challenges are the focus of a recent, complimentary report from ES Research Group.

Buyers claim they’re 60% done with their buying process before they contact a salesperson, but at the same time, 60% of qualified leads end in “no decision.”  So what is the explanation for this disconnect? It’s something economists refer to as “declared preference” versus “revealed preference,” essentially, when buyers are forced to put their money on the line, their intentions change.

Your salespeople need to help prospects and customers make sense of their options and see a buying vision that moves them away from the status quo.  As marketers, this means developing marketing content with concrete visuals and simple stories and enabling your salespeople to use that content in conversations with prospects and customers.…

We’ve got another positive review of our latest book, Whiteboard Selling: Empowering Sales Through Visuals, from Dave Stein, founder, chairman and chief executive officer, at ES Research Group.  Stein points out that what sets the book apart from others on the same topic is that it provides an established whiteboarding methodology and also offers a strategy for implementing whiteboarding  across a sales organization.

In addition to the review, Stein also shares an anecdote that demonstrates the power of whiteboarding. Stein recalls a meeting with the book’s co-author, Corey Sommers, during which Sommers grabbed Stein’s attention by presenting all of the answers to a typical analyst’s briefing using only one web-based whiteboard. …

Your company is launching a new product. You’ve slaved for months to create an integrated communication strategy, and the big, ta-da moment is here. Now what?

Successful product launches are dependent on if, and how well, your salespeople are able to articulate the new product message in the market.

And this is where most companies are failing. According to a new survey:

- Only 38% of companies consistently offer messaging training following a product launch
- Only 3% of companies use interactive, role-playing and whiteboarding sessions to get reps up to speed
- And only 22% said reps are required to demonstrate messaging proficiency.…

We’re excited that Thierry van Herwijnen, executive sales enablement strategist at Cisco Systems, will speak at our annual Marketing & Sales Alignment Conference in September. Here’s Thierry’s bio:

Thierry van Herwijnen is an accomplished executive sales leader who, for the past eight years, has been at the forefront of global sales enablement.

Thierry grew up in the Netherlands and earned his Bachelor’s degree in Information and Computer Technology from Haagse Hogeschool and quickly began to apply this technical expertise within the international IT sector. Initially, his expertise focused on the development and implementation of large-scale international technical security solutions, before moving in 2005 to Cisco, where he has excelled within a number of senior sales leadership roles.…

Excessive discounting. Margin erosion. Deal “sweeteners.” Whatever it’s called, the problem is the same: “value leakage” in customer conversations that costs your company money.

Stopping this “value leakage” is key to maximizing the size and profitability of customer contracts. Learn more now by watching this video:

“This post originally appeared on the blog of BayGroup International, a Corporate Visions Company.”…

We often talk about the power of images in visual storytelling and content marketing is no exception. It all goes back to waking up the “old brain” – the part of our brain that can’t process language, but responds to visuals. The best way to get through to the “old brain” is to use simple visuals that stimulate the brain’s survival mechanism and push the brain to feel unsafe, making it much more receptive to change. Every time you select a visual for your marketing materials, you need to include the three “Cs”:

• Context – Use pictures to reinforce that the current status quo is unsafe.

…

Yet another terrific speaker added to the agenda for our Marketing & Sales Alignment Conference! Lindsay Allen, Vice President of Marketing for Superior Essex, will be among the best and brightest speaking about “living the story” at the September conference. Lindsay is responsible for product management, strategic planning and marketing communications for Superior Essex, a manufacturer of telecommunications and energy cable and infrastructure. He is responsible for coordinating and developing all strategic messaging for the group. He has been in the communications industry since 1983 holding various engineering and marketing positions with Superior Essex, CommScope, Motorola, General Instrument and Ampex Corporation.…

We all know that “a picture is worth a thousand words” and the caveman’s use of images for communication may have been the earliest example. But when it comes to sales conversations with executive decision makers, too many salespeople are still relying on text-heavy PowerPoint presentations, even when recent research from Aberdeen indicates that 88% of executive decision makers are looking for a sales conversation, rather than a sales presentation.

The perfect medium for these visual conversations is whiteboard stories.  Find your inner caveman and tell your story with stick figures and whimsical icons. But don’t mistake doodling arrows for visual storytelling – you’ll need to develop clear messaging and provide your salespeople with the content and training to deliver whiteboard stories that close deals.…

We’re excited that Barbara Vlacich, vice president of presales operations and sales effectiveness at Kronos Incorporated, will speak at our annual Marketing & Sales Alignment Conference.  Here’s a bit about Barb and her role at Kronos:

As Vice President of Presales Operations and Sales Effectiveness, Barb is responsible for a team of 120 employees that directly support the company’s Sales organization and product sales cycle (discovery, ROI proof points, product demonstrations, technology, business assessment/consulting, proposals, and sales tools). She also has responsibility for territory design and deployment for the Americas. In addition, she manages the internal staff development function for all employees within Sales and Presales.…

You know visual communications and whiteboard selling are more effective means of interacting with, and selling to, prospects…but you’re still PowerPointing.  Plucked from the pages of our brand new, #1 book on Amazon’s hot new releases in sales and selling list – “Whiteboard Selling: Empowering Sales through Visuals ” – the following quiz* will help determine if you’re merely stuck in the 90s or if it’s actually a more serious condition: slide addiction. There’s one quiz for salespeople and one for marketers, as you’re both susceptible to the addiction.

 
If you’re in (or manage) sales:

1. When you see the ad for the thin and light slide projector in SkyMall Magazine on your flight, you:

a.…

We’re so honored that Kate Gutmann, president of worldwide sales for UPS, has joined the growing roster of rock star speakers at our annual Marketing & Sales Alignment Conference. To fill you in on just what makes Kate so great, here’s a bit of background.

Kate began her career with UPS in 1989 as a marketing intern while gaining her Bachelor of Science in Marketing.  Throughout her twenty years with the company, she has held various sales and marketing positions and was promoted to Director of Strategic Sales for the Southeast Region in 1996.

In 1999, Kate relocated to Southern California to direct the sales and marketing efforts spanning from the LA county line to the Mexican border.   …

By Tim Riesterer

I recently tweeted that if buyers say they are 60% done with the buying cycle before they call in a sales rep, then why do 60% of them end up making “no decision?”

I’m referring to the recent spate of research from big industry analysts indicating that salespeople are being relegated to the very last moments of a purchase decision, and that marketing “owns” the majority of the buying cycle.

Yet, Sales Benchmark Index shows that the majority of qualified opportunities in pipelines today are sticking with the status quo. This appears to be a contradiction showing that, in fact, buyers are not as far along in the sales process as they think.…

“Whiteboard Selling” is currently #10 on Amazon’s Hot New Releases list for marketing and sales books!

Congratulations to Corey Sommers, Senior Vice President of Whiteboard Strategy, and David Jenkins, co-authors of our latest book, Whiteboard Selling: Empowering Sales through Visuals, a practical guide on how salespeople and marketers can transform their messages using whiteboarding as a visual storytelling technique.

Sommers and Jenkins share their combined  wisdom gained from designing more than 500 whiteboards and training more than 50,000 salespeople. The book offers  a step-by-step approach to building powerful visual stories  and discussion frameworks, including:

• The visual selling opportunity – the power of the pen, the science behind whiteboard selling and changing your approach to prospect interactions.

…

In case you missed it, we made a splash earlier this week with our acquisition of BayGroup International.  We think that BayGroup’s sales negotiation and sales execution skills training are the perfect complement to our sales and marketing messaging, tools and training. This winning combination creates a powerful and comprehensive approach to improving the customer conversation across the entire buying cycle.

The news was featured on several sites, including:

• Corporate Visions Acquires BayGroup International  -  TrainingIndustry.com
• Acquisition to double Corporate Vision’s size –  North Tahoe Lake Bonanza
• BayGroup, Janrain Announcements Underline Customer Conversation Trend –  Bizreport.com

We look forward to helping prospects and customers achieve success across the customer conversation continuum.…

Getting your sales team to ditch PowerPoint in favor of visual storytelling can translate into big rewards for your company.  Recent research by Aberdeen suggests that companies that have replaced PowerPoint with whiteboarding in sales interactions have increased their lead conversion rate by 50% and have reduced their sales cycles by 15%.

Though it may seem a simple change, marketers need to assist sales with this transition away from PowerPoint presentations to using whiteboarding for sales conversations.  Whiteboarding is much more than a visual representation of your solution. It requires a thoughtful approach that visually contrasts the shortcomings of the status quo with the virtues of your solution.…

We’re thrilled to announce that BayGroup is now a part of Corporate Visions!  The combination of BayGroup’s sales negotiation and sales execution skills training, and Corporate Visions’ sales and marketing messaging, tools and training, creates a powerful and comprehensive approach to improving the customer conversation across the entire buying cycle.  Click here to learn more about the acquisition and how the two companies will work together, or watch this short video…

 …

The Hatfields and the McCoys, the Sharks and the Jets, the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox…we can now add sales and marketing to this list of longstanding rivalries.

Recent research from Lattice Engines, a provider of Big Data platforms for sales and marketing (see infographic, indicates that the age-old feud between sales and marketing persists and lead generation efforts are suffering at many organizations. Lattice reported that although 92% of companies polled in a recent survey increased their revenue goals, less than two-thirds of reps were meeting those higher sales targets.

So why are reps missing their quotas?…

We’ve said it so many times, it’s become a mantra at Corporate Visions. Turning out the lights and giving PowerPoint presentations is a bad idea. We’ve shown statistics, given examples, and written articles illustrating why delivering canned presentations in the dark is an ineffective communication and sales strategy. But this commercial – a great example of the power of visual communications, BTW – says it all. Just imagine what your audience is doing in the dark…watch.…

We’re thrilled to announce that Greg Alexander, CEO of Sales Benchark Index – a leading sales and marketing consultancy focused exclusively on helping B2B companies accelerate their revenue growth — has joined the illustrious team of speakers for our Marketing & Sales Alignment conference, being held in Chicago on September 17-19, 2013.

Here’s his official bio:

Greg Alexander is CEO of Sales Benchmark Index, which uses the “benchmarking method” to get access to and implement best practices from the top sales and marketing organizations. According to Alexander, benchmarking is the most dependable tool for accurately determining the root cause of sales problems, as well as the quickest path for resolution with validated methodologies. …

Your company is launching a new product. You’ve slaved for months to create an integrated communication strategy and the day of the Big Launch is here.  What next? What do you need to do to make sure your product launch doesn’t fall on deaf ears?

Here are four ways to ensure your product launch is a success.

1. Get the sales team on board

The first mistake companies make is to “involve” salespeople by training them on the new product’s features and messaging. That’s because product marketing delivers fully fledged messaging and materials to sales with a “ta da” flourish.…

Tim Riesterer, our chief strategy and marketing officer, will be offering his sales and marketing messaging expertise in tomorrow’s free webinar, “Make Your Number by Defeating the Status Quo,” sponsored by the Sales Benchmark Index.  During this 30-minute webinar, Tim will explain why a company’s greatest obstacle in the sales process isn’t another competitor, but is the status quo – when prospects do nothing.

Tim will discuss the tools you need to defeat the status quo. You’ll learn how to recognize the status quo, find your “value wedge” —what you can do for a prospect that is different than what the competition can do – and create winning sales presentations.…

by Tim Riesterer

When the littlest piggy cries, “Wee, wee, wee” all the way home, that isn’t a good thing. And neither is saying “we, we, we” all over your website, campaigns, and marketing and sales messages.

If you could do only one thing this year that could make an instant difference in your messaging, you’d replace all your “we phrasing” with “you phrasing.”  You phrasing is more effective because it makes sure your prospect or customer is at the center of your story and engaged in the conversation.

Why Use ‘You’ Instead of ‘We’?

Using the word “you” instead of “we” helps transfer ownership to your prospects and customers because it causes their minds to unconsciously “try out” your solutions as you describe what they can do with it.…

We’re excited to announce that Eduardo Conrado, senior vice president of marketing & IT at Motorola Solutions, Inc. will be a speaker at our Marketing & Sales Alignment Conference this September.  Eduardo has more than 20 years of experience at Motorola Solutions, Inc. and has held a variety of marketing leadership roles in the company’s paging, cellular, satellite, cable and wireless networks, government, and enterprise mobility businesses.

Most recently, he served as chief marketing officer and senior vice president of Motorola Solutions, Inc. and was responsible for global marketing, including commercial value propositions, product positioning, and pricing.

We can’t wait to hear Eduardo’s thoughts on how aligning marketing and sales into a laser-focused commercial engine is so critical to a company’s success.…

Babe Ruth is widely accepted to be the greatest baseball player of all time. Yet, it almost never happened.

At the beginning of his career, Babe Ruth stepped up to the plate towing a 54 ounce bat. By comparison, the average weight of a bat used in the MLB today is between 31-35 ounces.

You may be asking yourself, why did he use such a heavy bat? A fierce batter from the beginning, he wanted to hit the most home runs, and to do so, he thought he needed to use the heaviest bat he could lift. Logically, this makes sense as force equals mass times acceleration (F = MA), right?…

More and more, salespeople are using the conversations they have with prospects as the primary way to differentiate themselves from the competition. This means developing great sales messages that speak to the needs of your prospects and delivering those messages at the right time in the buying cycle. The best way to craft effective messaging is by bringing the marketing and sales teams together to harness product-specific knowledge and the insights of those out in the field.

For more strategies on how to ensure your salespeople have great conversations with prospects, read Tim Riesterer’s latest CMO.com column, The Forgotten Alignment Point: 3 Steps Marketers Need To Take To Enable Sales Success.…

Think back to your last evening with good friends. It likely involved sitting around a table of some sort, probably accompanied by food and drink, and great conversation.  If you examine what made that conversation great, you’ll see that it was part friendly banter, a smidge of gossip, some life updates, and lots of personal stories.  Sharing stories is what you do with good friends – it’s a way that you reveal more personal parts of yourself and the deeper recesses of your mind, establish familiar ground, and demonstrate trust. Stories are how you talk to people you like.

Now think back to your last encounter with someone you don’t like.…

Training is a good thing – it develops the potential of your sales reps and enables them to go into the market with a consistent sales approach that is appropriate and effective for your business. But no matter how well you prepare salespeople for the job at hand, it’s always different when they are in the real situation. The reality is, when you’re “in the moment,” it can be difficult to remember everything  learned in a training course.

So, how can you make sure that your organization’s sales training is effective? The answer is coaching. Helping your sales managers become better coaches will help ensure that your sales team uses and profits from the training you’ve invested in.…

Myths are so pervasive and engrained in our culture that it’s very difficult to put them to rest, even in the face of the truth. Sugar makes you hyper, 80% of your body heat is lost through the top of your head — these are just two common myths that people cite as fact when they experience a spastic child or a drop in temperature. The Discovery Channel has a whole series, “MythBusters,” dedicated to disproving such myths, with enough fodder for more than 231 episodes.

Sales and marketing people are especially guilty of perpetuating myths that dominate their industry. Some of these myths have even evolved into “best practices” that people actually try to master.…

You’re meeting a prospect and your PowerPoint presentation is ready to rock – it’s packed with slides  detailing your product’s many features and benefits, your company’s illustrious history and the obligatory customer logo slide.

You may think you’re prepared for your meeting, but, in reality, you are about to commit one of the deadly sins of messaging – focusing on your company rather than your prospect’s point of view.  Prospects want to hear about themselves – their industry, their pain points, their risks and possible rewards.

For more tips on how to avoid committing this sales messaging deadly sin (and others), read the full article, penned by Tim Riesterer, on MarketingProfs.…

We’re giddy with excitement.  Tom Peters – the most brazen and engaging management guru of our time and the inspiration behind last week’s post – has signed on to be a keynote speaker at our 2013 Marketing & Sales Alignment Conference!  He’s going to tell us how he lives his story, and inspire us to live and tell our own stories.

Tom Peters is the author of the business management bible, In Search of Excellence, as well as more than a dozen additional international bestsellers – the most recent of which is The Little BIG Things: 163 Ways to Pursue Excellence.…

Tim Riesterer will speak about “Whiteboarding on Purpose: The Key to a Successful Sales Conversation” on Monday, March 4 at the Sales Enablement Forum in Scottsdale, Ariz.  Tim will discuss how whiteboards – when created on-purpose for various stages of the buying cycle – can ensure that salespeople deliver a simple, repeatable message to move their customers and prospects to a purchase decision.

Although 87 percent of companies still use traditional presentation tools in their sales conversations, research indicates a correlation between the use of whiteboarding for visual storytelling and improved sales performance.

The Forrester Sales Enablement Forum is being held in Scottsdale, Ariz., March 4-5, 2013.…

Our very own Tim Riesterer is featured in a recent article, “Keeping Up with the Connected: 3 Steps for Marketing to the Millennial Generation” in 1to1 Magazine.   The article provides tips for marketing to a generation that is intimately connected to technology, which makes them difficult to reach. Tim discusses why using images and videos when marketing to Millenials is a way to engage their notoriously short attention spans.

Read the complete article in 1to1 Magazine.…

Remember Magic Eye  pictures – the headache-inducing, 2-D pictures that masked 3-D images, that were all the rage in the ’90s? At first glance, the picture looks like a flat, colorful, trippy pattern. Interesting, but nothing special. But with some practice and  technique – which some never master – a distinct and formerly hidden picture emerges in 3-D and it seems impossible that you didn’t see it at first glance. And once you’ve seen it, you can call it into focus almost immediately.

Your job as a marketer or salesperson is to tease out that 3-D picture in your hyper-commoditized or perceived-parity market and make it emerge from the sea of sameness around you for your prospects to see.…

We’d like to invite you to attend our complimentary executive insights sessions being held in the U.S. and Sydney, Australia over the next few months.  In these sessions, you’ll learn the science behind the art of visual storytelling and how to transform marketing messages into sales conversations that will differentiate you from your competitors in the most critical moments of the buying cycle.

Join other B2B sales and marketing professionals to learn:

• Why nine out of 10 sales conversations fail to meet the needs of executive buyers.
• How to overcome the “no decision” trap by developing and delivering messages that create a sense of urgency and differentiation.

…

We talk a lot about visual storytelling here at Corporate Visions and with good reason.  Whiteboarding, the primary visual storytelling technique, helps salespeople increase their lead to conversion rate by 50% and, on average, shortens the buying cycle by 15%. These are compelling reasons to abandon the typical sales slide deck presentation.

But people still aren’t getting the message.  Our recent survey of 300 salespeople and marketers across the globe indicated that only 13% of sales interactions include whiteboarding or other visual storytelling tools. The vast majority of salespeople and marketers are missing opportunity to move prospects and customers away from the status quo and toward a buying decision.…

Like most companies, many of your marketing messages and much of your content starts with we –

We can help you…
What if we could show you…

But all of this “we phrasing” misses the point because it doesn’t connect your story to your customer’s story.  When your discussions include “you phrasing” – You’ll be able to… –  customers and prospects move from passive listeners to engaged participants as they unconsciously try out your product.

For more tips on “you phrasing” check out Tim Riesterer’s most recent blog for MarketingProfs, Nine Common Phrases Made Great by Using “You” Instead of “We.…

by Tim Riesterer

Ronald McDonald. The Energizer Bunny. Tony the Tiger.

Chances are that you immediately recognized these brand mascots listed above, but also knew – just as quickly – the companies they represent. These are just a few examples of countless consumer brands that have transformed imaginary characters into real “people” that the consumer audience has come to trust.

However, when it comes to business-to-business (B2B) companies, do any brand mascots come to mind? In reality, a B2B company’s brand mascot isn’t a fictitious character in a costume − it’s the living, breathing salesperson with their lips moving already out in the field.…

by Tim Riesterer

The first person with the bright idea to create a demand-generation campaign using a whitepaper as a call to action must have been on to something. For the past 20 years, it seems as though everyone thinks they need to offer a whitepaper, analyst report, or some other text-heavy, written-word document as the call to action.

Unfortunately, you’re setting yourself up for failure by taking this approach. You see, there’s a big crinkly part of the brain called the neocortex, or the “new brain,” and it loves to analyze things−and it loves whitepapers. But this isn’t the part of the brain that makes decisions.…

Register now for Corporate Visions’ annual Marketing and Sales Alignment Conference, “Live the Story”

The Details

What: 600 marketing and sales execs, 30 wicked smart speakers together at the one conference that will transform the way you approach marketing, sales, your career, and your life. Hear from keynote speakers and master storytellers Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, authors of the best-selling books “Freakonomics” and “SuperFreakonomics.”

When: September 17-19, 2013

Where: Fairmont Hotel, Chicago

Who:  VPs and Directors of Sales, Sales Enablement, Products, Marketing, Training, and Learning and Development; Sales Managers; Account Managers; and messaging fanatics.…

By Tim Riesterer

You don’t need to be the creator of a great idea to own it. There are countless examples of people who possess “big ideas” but are unable to translate those ideas into a clear message that is understandable to the everyday person.  Look at the concept of “the tipping point,” or the point at which an idea, or trend, crosses a threshold and spreads like wildfire.

We know that Malcolm Gladwell is the author of the best-selling novel  “The Tipping Point,” so he must have come up with the idea, right?  Wrong.  Gladwell was not the first person to develop the idea.…

In the movie “Groundhog Day,” Bill Murray relives the same day over and over. This must be how your prospects feel when they hear another marketing or sales message – “nothing new here.” If you extend the “Groundhog Day” metaphor even further, you could compare your prospects’ reactions to your pitch to Punxsutawney Phil’s reaction to his shadow. He retreats to his hole just as your prospects retreat to their status quo.

Here are some ideas to make sure your marketing messages aren’t lulling prospects and customers back into hibernation.

1. Don’t use PowerPoint.  This one is becoming redundant, but we still see PowerPoint being used to put prospects to sleep everywhere. 

…

The Corporate Visions team wrapped up another great year filled with milestones and accomplishments.  We continued our record of revenue growth for a fifth consecutive year, with a 31 percent increase over 2011, and signed more than 60 new customers in a variety of industries, including healthcare, technology and telecommunications.

Looking back on 2012, some of the highlights of the year included:

• Acquiring WhiteboardSelling, a sales tools company, enhancing Corporate Visions’ position as a leader in helping companies craft differentiated marketing and sales messages, overcoming the status quo and winning sales.
• Signing more than 60 new customers, including BNP Paribas Australia and New Zealand, CITGO, Deluxe Corporation, Gigamon, Hostopia.com Inc., The Logic Group Ltd., Motorola Solutions, Inc., QlikTech, Reed Exhibitions, SUSE and Trillium Software.

…

“Conversations that Win the Complex Sale”  is ranked #12 on a list of the 25  800-CEO-READ Bestsellers of 2012. Congratulations to co-authors, Erik Peterson, Senior Vice President of Strategic Consulting and Tim Riesterer, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer!  The list was compiled by 800-CEO-READ and is based on the company’s total sales of each business book for 2012, and how long each title remained on the bestseller list. The book outlines how companies need to stop telling their corporate story and start telling their customer’s story to turn conversations into sales.

“The best salespeople sit across the table and make change easy for their customer by creating a succinct story and vision for what to change, how to change it, and how it will impact customer results.…

By Joe Terry, CEO, Corporate Visions

Before you answer, take a look at this quick video clip from the movie 300, which is a prelude to the famous battle between King Leonidas and his 300 soldiers of Sparta, and King Xerxes of Persia at Thermopylae.

That 10 second clip sends chills down your spine, reveals their profession, and is clear, emotional and passionate! That’s because the Spartans Lived Their Story. At that time, the Spartans were the most highly trained fighting force in the world. From the age of seven, they lived and trained to be Spartans, to be soldiers – they Lived Their Story every day.…

By Tim Riesterer

Videos, infographics, and other visual-based “Internet memes” are all the rage.  Since one of the main purposes of social media is to minimize text or prose, these tools have forced us to take another look at how we’re expressing ourselves.  The few written words still used are there primarily to entice you to check out the visual, or provide an interesting or amusing caption for that visual. The visual is now the story, which means that telling your story using visual imagery is one of the best ways of getting your message out.

What does this mean? That if you have not yet translated your written-word marketing and sales messages into visual storytelling assets, you are – at best – at risk of not getting your point across.…

SAVO Group launched the SAVO for CVI application today, designed specifically for Corporate Visions, Inc.’s customers to reinforce and drive consistent sales messaging in the field.

Integrated into SAVO’s sales enablement platform, the application is centered around Corporate Visions’ methodology to give salespeople access to their messages, tools and skills refreshers anytime, anywhere, in a single solution. With an intuitive design, the application can be accessed from any desktop computer or handheld device and is tailored for each customer with company-specific, Corporate Visions-designed messages, tools, message objects and video examples.

Read more!…

By Tim Riesterer

If you’re a fan of the megahit TV show Mad Men, you’ve seen Don Draper, creative director at the Sterling Draper Cooper Pryce advertising agency, deliver some brilliant pitches for iconic American brands.  And you’ve doubtless heard many a real-life marketing, advertising and sales professional wax nostalgic for the good ol’ days and equate the Mad Men ways to modern-day business life. At the risk of doing the same, I can’t help but call to your attention one of my favorite scenes, in which Don vies to win the Kodak slide projector account.

Don pitching Kodak.…

Before you read ahead, take a minute to watch this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTOPkBDMdfw

Not many people can hear the theme songs of Disney movies without smiling from ear to ear or even choking up a bit. That’s what Disney does. Disney creates an experience for visitors that no other amusement park can match. From the moment you walk through the gates, you become wrapped in the Disney world… from the themed villages, to the ambiance, to the costumed characters. You’re living the Disney story, taken instantly back to the happy feelings of your childhood when imagination ruled and good always prevailed.…

By Tim Riesterer

Visual Storytelling is conversation, not a presentation or interrogation

A recent Forrester statistic says that 88% of executive decision makers want to have a conversation, not a presentation.  This creates two big challenges for your company and salespeople:

1. Everyone wants to sell higher…reach executives… get to the C-suite.  But, it’s clear this audience isn’t going to wait for a projector to fire up, let alone sit still in the dark for a presentation.  So, what content tools are you going to give the field to tell your story?

2. In the absence of content to share, salespeople will fall back on asking 20 questions. …

Congratulations to Tim Riesterer, our chief strategy and marketing officer, on being named one of seven “CMOs you should watch in 2013.” The list, which was compiled by Amanda Batista, former Managing Editor of DemandGen Report and eloqua guest blogger, features progressive CMOs who are using social, mobile and traditional marketing tools to drive sales. Tim was recognized as a proponent of marketing through storytelling.

http://blog.eloqua.com/chief-marketing-officer/

 …

As we well know, persuading people isn’t about a charming personality or having some indefinable, mysterious power.  A recent article in the Wall Street Journal, “The Science Behind Persuading People,” talks about the scientific explanations for how people are influenced. As behavior expert Steve Martin, author of Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive, says, “Influence isn’t an art. There’s over 60 years of research and evidence that shows how we can effectively move people. My advice would be to learn the science.”

Some of the norms discussed in the article are fundamental to Corporate Visions’ tools and training.  These include:

• Tapping into a social norm to create consensus,
• Framing a choice as leading to a potential loss rather than a gain—thereby creating a sense of stress, and
• Identifying common ground with the other party.

…

Static PowerPoint presentations are still the norm for salespeople in the B2B environment, according to our recent survey of 300 salespeople and marketers across the globe.  Only 13% of respondents use whiteboarding in customer conversations, which means that the vast majority of salespeople are missing out on the chance to differentiate their messages, conversations and presentations to customers and prospects.

Click for more details on the survey results or watch this video:

…

How has technology changed the world of inside sales?  Read the new Bloomberg Businessweek article, “Willy Loman Turns to Windows as Web Spurs Sales Changes.”  And check out Corporate Visions’ Sarah McMahan profiled on page 2!

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-01-02/willy-loman-turns-to-windows-as-web-spurs-sales-changes#p1…

There is a lot of discussion of VOC (voice-of-the-customer) research as a basis for marketing messages, but is it the panacea that everybody is hoping for? When push comes to shove, customers and prospects don’t always do what they say they’re going to in focus groups.  And the delta between what people ”declare” they’ll do versus what they actually do is significant enough to make VOC-based marketing a risky strategy.

Read more in Tim’s blog post for CMO.com on how declared versus revealed preference threatens the usefulness of VOC research: http://www.cmo.com/articles/2013/1/2/declared_vs_revealed.html…

By Corey Sommers, Corporate Visions

It’s the start of a new year and across the world, large and small sales teams are gathering – or preparing to gather – to kick off a new season of selling with new products and new and improved ways of selling them. Though the expense of gathering people together can be astronomical – in some cases $10,000 or more per attendee – organizations believe the money spent will, in the long run, improve sales effectiveness.

And yet, the mere mention of a sales kickoff meeting or sales training frequently elicits groans from even the most enthusiastic of salespeople.…

By Tim Riesterer

Telling someone something that they didn’t know, about a problem or missed opportunity they didn’t know they had, has the potential to come across one of two ways.  You can either sound like a jerk who is challenging the prospect and calling their baby ugly. Or, you can be seen as someone providing a valuable piece of business intelligence and direction that will make their time spent with you worthwhile.

In the spirit of the holidays, I’d like to share this thought with you.  Great marketing and sales messaging is like giving a gift. Your goal during the holidays is to find someone that perfect present… something they could use, but don’t already have, and don’t expect. …

By Tim Riesterer, Corporate Visions

As the holidays roll in and the New Year looms closer, it’s a good time to reflect, turn a tentative eye toward the future, and give thanks to those around us. And, if you’re reading this, those around you are probably (or hopefully!) salespeople. What better way to show your thanks, and instill your colleagues/higher-ups/direct reports with confidence to sell to the best of their ability in 2013, than a thoughtful gift. For your convenience, we’ve assembled a list of gift ideas for your favorite visual storytelling salesperson.

1. Papershow or other computer-enabled drawing paper – They’ll be able to draw like pros and display their drawings in any setting over webcast, computer or iPad
2.…

“For years marketers have created personas – fictional characters that embody all the traits of their prospects. They have names, beliefs, demographic attributes, and behaviors that help create relevant marketing messages. But do prospects actually respond better to a message because it was based on a persona? Is the persona driving prospects’ responses to the message?”

Check out Tim Riesterer’s most recent cmo.com blog post.

http://www.cmo.com/content/cmo-com/home/articles/2012/12/5/we-need-to-talkyour-persona-is-lying.html…

Your sales force is armed with PowerPoint and a checklist of questions, but executive decision-makers are looking for conversation and some thought-provoking questions. What tools and skills do your salespeople need to help transition them from presentation mode to discussion mode? They need to be able to tell the company story, offer insights into the prospect’s business and converse in a way that’s meaningful. They need to be able to whiteboard.

Check out Tim Riesterer’s lastest blog for MarketingProfs, “Achieve Visual Storytelling (and Sales) Success with Whiteboards.”

http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2012/9693/achieve-visual-storytelling-and-sales-success-with-whiteboards?adref=nl121312…

By Tim Riesterer, Corporate Visions

In September, we hosted our annual Sales and Marketing Messaging Conference in Chicago under the theme of “Breaking the Status Quo.” While there were a lot of excellent presentations that challenged our approaches to sales and marketing messages, there was one presentation that stretched us personally and professionally and has really stuck in my mind.

Ben Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, delivered a keynote that could only be described as a mind-bending experience, not a presentation. I’ve never witnessed 400 senior business executives so emotionally engaged in a speech.

(When’s the last time you saw your colleagues singing Beethoven’s Ode to Joy in German – at the top of their lungs with huge hand gestures and giant facial expressions.…

You know that dimming the lights and turning on a PowerPoint is more likely to lull your prospects to sleep than to inspire them to make a buying decision in your favor.

So…why are most companies still abusing slide decks in most of their customer conversations?

Check out this infographic based on new research from Aberdeen Group that shows how using whiteboarding techniques in your sales cycles results in:

• Higher lead conversion
• Higher quota achievement
• Increased revenue growth & shorter sales cycles

And view the Brainshark below to get the full details on Aberdeen’s findings on creating more meaningful sales conversations.…

By Erik Peterson, Corporate Visions

A year ago, I got tennis elbow. It was really painful.

I went to my doctor who prescribed some pain medication and referred me to a specialist. I had a heavy travel schedule, so I decided to just take the medicine and book the specialist visit when my schedule lightened up.

A year went by and I still hadn’t scheduled the visit with the specialist.  My elbow didn’t bother me unless I played tennis, so I’d stopped playing but was otherwise living a normal life. About this time, my oldest son started getting serious about tennis, and I wanted to practice with him and play against him to help us stay connected.…

By Tim Riesterer, Corporate Visions

On average, about 50 percent of sales reps achieve their annual quota. It’s like flipping a coin. Your odds are about the same with sales rep hires. Half the time you get it right, half the time you don’t.

But, you can’t turn over 50 percent of your sales force. In fact, turnover is often the sworn enemy of sales force productivity. Most companies want to avoid recruitment time, rep ramp-up time, hiring costs and a range of other hard and soft expenses associated with large turnover rates. Yet, underperformance must be managed.

Keeping the wrong employee in the wrong position can do more harm than good.…

By Joe Terry, Corporate Visions President and CEO

Ironman Triathlon:  2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, marathon (26.2 mile run) – in that order, with no breaks.

Kona:  The Ironman World Championships, the original, preeminent Ironman (the one you’ve seen on TV since the 1970s).

The Grand Plan

The Ironman Florida, Nov. 2, 2012 – Sixteen weeks of Ironman-specific training, many races, and months of base training before that. The training is complete; I have done the necessary work and am going into the race in the best shape of my life. My goal is to beat my 2011 Florida time of 11:07, second goal is sub 11:00, and then, if things are going my way, I’m hoping for 10:45.…

By Mike Finley, Corporate Visions

“I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, but perhaps there is a key…” – Winston Churchill

The words of Winston Churchill often pop into my head when I think about bad sales and marketing messaging.  In an attempt to be clever, comprehensive, or incorporate the latest buzzwords and acronyms, companies continually turn basic communication into a conundrum.  Fortunately – by following the wisdom of The Riddler, Hitchcock, and James – you can avoid those pitfalls and save your messaging.

Messaging by The Riddler, Don’t “riddle me this riddle me that…”
– The Riddler, “Batman Forever”

Keep your message clear, concise, and simple. …

By Lisa Cummings, Corporate Visions

I recently visited a train museum with my nieces. Amidst the relics, a laminated guide to hobo communications stood out. Hobos – the migratory, homeless vagabond workers of the early 20^th century – used a set of symbols to communicate with each other. The guide caught my eye because so many things in the museum seemed obsolete and inefficient. Yet this sign highlighted a language of visual communication. Without smartphones or PowerPoint – heck, they couldn’t even circulate written messages on paper – hobos developed a way to tell each other the often life-saving information of where to go to get work and how to avoid danger.…

Imagine having untold amounts of valuable time and money to thoroughly question your customers about their pain points, their opinions on your products, their price points and desires for product improvements, and then building a product launch around the information they’ve given you.  Ideal.  Textbook.  A sure thing.  Right?  Not necessarily.

What customers say they’ll do and what customers actually do is a tricky thing.  Research has shown that when there’s little risk involved, people imagine they’ll do all sorts of things that – when push comes to shove — they don’t end up doing.  And that can be devastating to a business relying on customer insights.…

The concept of “sales engagement” is all the rage.  Experts are telling you to be more engaging with your prospects and customers.  To some of you this sounds like a bunch of touchy-feely hogwash.  It may even sound like a reason dating couples break up with each other: “He/she just wasn’t engaging enough for me…”

Before you get swept away in cynicism, stop for a moment. Think of all the PowerPoint-based presentations you’ve sat through during your career. What percentage of these dog and pony shows caused you to check out, or disengage from the presentation?  Can you see how, if the presenter had created more engagement with you during those important moments, your interest might have held? …

We’ve all heard the term “death by PowerPoint,” or worse, experienced it.  It refers to the lack of interactivity and boredom engendered by the typical slide presentation.  The term invokes an arresting image that reminds us that, if you want to engage your audience while standing out from your competitors, slides aren’t the answer.

In this post, we’ll look at five ways salespeople can boost performance using “visual storytelling” instead of slides.  Whether using a whiteboard, a flip chart, the back of an envelope or a tablet PC via desktop sharing software, you can integrate the visual storytelling model into your existing sales methodology and apply the approach as a powerful differentiator in competitive and complex selling environments.…

Breaking the status quo and taking your Marketing and Sales efforts to the next level requires challenging some long-held, favored messaging mantras. Are you being held back by any of these five false assumptions?

1. Personas are the best tool for developing effective messaging
2. Voice of the customer research is essential to any message development effort
3. 20-question discovery is the best way to start a new sales cycle
4. Zen presentation techniques are a must-have
5. You can’t make a difference in a big organization

Watch Tim Riesterer, co-author of the best-selling book Conversations that Win the Complex Sale, tackle each of these outdated ideas at the 2012 Marketing and Sales Messaging Conference… Mythbusters style.…

Six years ago we blogged about how to differentiate yourself with your elevator pitch, in the unlikely scenario that you’re sharing a 22-floor elevator ride with a potential prospect.  And in the last six years, you – like every other marketing and salesperson – have probably spent a lot of time and resources trying to perfect that pitch.

Here’s the problem.  You’ve been toiling away perfecting a feel-good summary that tells YOUR story, not your audience’s.  It’s what makes everyone proud to work for your company.  It’s filled with lofty ideals, big words and corporate platitudes that look great on a banner in the cafeteria, but quickly decompress and fizzle to nothing when you get to the one-on-one customer conversation.…

Congratulations, marketer!  You’ve generated qualified leads by the dozen that you’re handing over to sales for follow up. Your job is done, right?  Not even close.

SiriusDecisions, a leading marketing and sales effectiveness analyst firm, recently published a blog post called, “Sales Accepted Leads: The Most Important (and Most Overlooked) Step in the Demand Creation Process.”In the post, they encourage using a “marketing qualified” to “sales accepted” status change to ensure qualified leads don’t end up lost in oblivion.

Great and necessary step, but your work doesn’t end there.  Perhaps you’ve set up various triggers to remind sales that they’ve got a hot lead and time’s a wastin’, but beyond that, most marketers essentially abandon the revenue generation process – even though it’s the marketing messaging that grabbed the prospect’s attention in the first place.…

We recently polled more than 730 business‐to‐business (B2B) sales and marketing professionals worldwide. The findings highlight the lack of collaboration between the sales and marketing teams of industry-leading companies as they work to differentiate their solutions in today’s marketplace. In fact, a staggering one in three respondents reported that their message creation process is non-­collaborative, politically charged or nonexistent. To delve deeper into the issue of marketing and sales alignment, and determine exactly where the disconnect between teams is occurring, Corporate Visions posed survey questions about messaging, content and tools development within organizations.

Notable findings from the Q3 survey include:

• Message creation process is non-­collaborative – The responses revealed that one-third of respondents’ companies have a collaborative process for creating messages that involves both the sales and marketing teams; one-­third have a process that is non‐collaborative, politically charged or nonexistent; and one-­third have a process that is semi-­collaborative.

…

Picture this:

Close up of ocean waves washing over rocks. Howard Shore’s “Lord of the Rings” score wafting in the background.  Fade to laundry hanging on clothesline, seagull flying over house perched on cliff. Fade to fishing boat, man petting dog nearby. Fade to family photo, voiceover: “You will give the people an idea to strive toward.” Fade to boy running through field, hint of red cape trailing behind. Fade to hitchhiker on a mountain road. Fade to birds-eye view of a farm field. Voiceover: “In time, they will join you in the sun.” Fade to butterfly on chain. Voiceover: “In time, you will help them accomplish wonders.” Fade to boy with red cape.…

By Rebecca Blouin, Davies Murphy Group

I spent last Wednesday and Thursday live blogging from Corporate Visions’ Marketing and Sales Messaging Conference, “Break the Status Quo Barrier” in Chicago. Perched on the ballroom balcony with my fellow blogger, high above the heads of the 400 attendees, we looked much like “The Muppet Show’s” Statler and Waldorf, gazing down with a critical eye and plenty to say (but considerably better groomed hair).  After 17 presentations, two bran muffins eaten hastily at the start of every morning, and dinner with a tarpon, these are the things that have stuck with me.

Never judge a conductor by his cover.…

The Marketing and Sales Messaging Conference, sponsored by Corporate Visions, may be finished, but the content lives on! It took place on Sept. 18-20 at the InterContinental Hotel, Chicago. Highlights included keynotes by Billy Beane and Ben Zander, dinner at the Shedd Aquarium, and sales and marketing insights from clients (Wells Fargo, CenturyLink, Dell, Miranda, Infor, Lawson Software and more) and analysts (Sirius Decisions, BeyondROI).

Click here for session summaries, slide decks, videos (to be posted throughout the next coming week), and photos!…

Bob Ainsbury
Vice President of Healthcare Strategy
Infor

Q. What is your role within your organization?

I am the vice president of strategy for the healthcare business unit at Infor, a three billion dollar company that is organized around 13 industries with healthcare being one of the top ones. In addition to overseeing the organization’s strategy, my team helped prepare the pre-sales consulting group to deliver expert information on the industry and our solutions to healthcare executives.  The expectations placed on this person in the field is that they will be the difference maker in a sales cycle when it comes to articulating the vision and value we can bring to bear on the prospects challenges. …

Amy Shriver
Senior Marketing Manager
CenturyLink

Q.  What is your role in your sales/marketing organization?

I am a senior marketing manager within the enterprise markets group and I am responsible for content strategy and our sales enablement tools.

Q.  What are the biggest sales/marketing challenges your company has faced/is facing?

At the 5,000 foot level, one of the biggest challenges for our sales people was ending up in a price bakeoff.  Though we’re the third largest telecomm company in the country, we have a lot of the same features and products as our competitors.  Our sales people were having a really hard time differentiating themselves. …

We’re excited to announce that Corporate Visions has acquired WhiteboardSelling®, a sales enablement tools company. This move expands Corporate Visions’ business and strengthens its reputation as the leader in helping companies differentiate their marketing and sales conversations.

Joe Terry, Corporate Visions’ CEO, said: “This acquisition is a significant part of our strategy to grow both organically and inorganically. It also expands our global presence with talent, experience and clients. And, it continues to solidify our leadership position in the marketing and sales messaging, tools and skills category.”

Corey Sommers and David Jenkins co-founded WhiteboardSelling in 2007 with a mission to help marketing and salespeople use hand-drawn visual stories instead of documents and slides to sell expensive solutions to educated buyers in competitive markets.…

Tracey Fanelli
Senior Vice President
Wells Fargo

Q.  What is your role in your sales/marketing organization?

I’m Wells Fargo’s senior vice president in charge of the marketing team for our Treasury Management business.  Our reach is broader than most traditional marketing organizations in that, in addition to traditional marketing communications, we are also responsible for sales content and sales asset development, including proposals, RFPs, and presentations.

Q. How is your organization structured?

I was brought into Wells Fargo almost eight years ago to establish a marketing team and we have always been responsible for developing both marketing programs and related sales content and materials.…

Eryn Del Castillo
Vice President, Sales Operations
ADP



Q.  What is your role in your sales/marketing organization?

I am the director of the sales effectiveness team, which is inside the centralized sales operation unit at ADP. In sales effectiveness, we focus on two major areas: sales tools and sales messaging.

Sales tools could include a proposal generator, ROI calculator, or sales presentation. We are currently looking at all the different presentation apps for the iPad.  On the messaging side, we make sure the messaging is incorporated into everything that touches our sales force and everything that they use.  If there’s a phone script, we make sure the messaging is correct; if it’s a client-facing document or some sort of marketing material, we weigh in on that, too.…

Have you seen these ads for the Lung Cancer Alliance?

They’ve been the subject of editorials, articles and debate and – in some cases – public outrage. In a recent UPI.com blog, Stuart Elliot says the advertising campaign “features hipsters, cat lovers, tattooed people and crazy old aunts with a tagline reading that they ‘deserve to die.’ According to the Lung Cancer Alliance, the ads are meant to challenge the perception that people with lung cancer have brought it upon themselves.”

Provocative? Yes. Cryptic and clever? Yes. Effective? We’ll see. Even if the creators are courting controversy to gain our attention, how will this attention translate into changing health policy, elevating awareness, and empowering patients – which is the organization’s stated mission?…

The 2012 Summer Olympic Games ended this week. Throughout the games, marketing and advertising campaigns appeared on billboards, the radio, and—most prominently—on TV.

One stand-out example is this:

Why is it so memorable and effective? Because it uses one of the most successful marketing techniques: storytelling (specifically, the “hero model”).

The fact is humans live in story. Your story is your worldview, and it affects how you make decisions. When a story employs the hero model, it becomes all the more relatable and powerful.

But what exactly is the hero model?

Renowned mythologist Joseph Campbell devoted his life to documenting myths and hero stories from more than 100 countries.…

Many marketers and salespeople believe they are in a selling war against their direct competition. However, a less anticipated and more dangerous enemy exists, called “no decision” — otherwise known as “the status quo.”

The root cause of the problem is that most marketing and sales efforts focus on the wrong messaging and therefore do not stimulate the correct part of a prospect’s brain, which means that the status quo problem, at its core, is actually a sales messaging problem.

To disrupt the status quo, you need to learn how to appeal to the part of the brain where decisions are actually made – the “old brain,” also called the “lizard brain.” You also need to create context and urgency, and use storytelling techniques.…

I recently spoke at the Business Marketing Association (BMA) Conference and noticed a not-so-subtle shift in the show content from years past.  Sales – a sometimes ignored but vital participant in the marketing conversation – has been ratcheted up from its traditional second-fiddle status. Companies can’t run, or even walk, without both the marketing and sales legs moving in sync, and it seems that the organizers of the BMA conference are taking note.

BMA “sells out” … so to speak

BMA significantly beefed up the number of sales-oriented tracks and discussion topics at the 2012 conference. And BMA had a sell-out crowd this year. …

“What’s the least painful approach to getting a great message for our salespeople?”

Make sure you read that quote again before moving on.

That’s what a senior marketing person at a major, multi-billion dollar company asked me yesterday. What I wanted to say was, “I want the same thing when it comes to getting in shape and losing weight.”

But seriously, ask yourself:

• Do you believe that your value proposition is one of your most strategic assets?
• When nearly everything about your products, services and programs is the same as your competitors, how important is the story you tell?
• Does differentiation often come down to your message and how you deliver it?

…

Here’s how the typical B2B cold call goes: “Hi, I’m so-and-so from XYZ Co., the leader in [insert undifferentiated and buzzword-filled boilerplate here]. I’d like to schedule a meeting with you to learn about your organization’s plans and challenges and discuss how our solution can help you optimize/leverage your [whatever].”

How successful are you with this approach?  I’m guessing not very. Theoretically, this approach should work – you’re being consultative, wanting to learn all about the prospect so you can tailor your message to her specific requirements – but it doesn’t.  Why?

Why Your Cold Calls Get the Cold Shoulder

Years ago there was a study done by AT&T that showed that, when you are cold calling, you’ve got 10 seconds to get a prospect’s attention from the time she says, “Hello.”  By kicking off with your generic boilerplate and then requesting time so that you can ask questions to educate yourself about her company and then turn around and sell to her, you’ve given her something she’s heard a thousand times before and good reason to resent you for taking up her time.…

When you start reading a new book, do you pick it up and flip right to the middle? How about when you watch a movie? Do you skip ahead rather than start from the beginning? My guess is, probably not. You would miss out on the set up of the story, who the main characters are and what makes them tick.

So why is it that most sales conversations start from the middle? What’s the “middle” when it comes to sales conversations, you ask?

Start From the very beginning – A very good place to start

Many salespeople immediately default to the “why us” conversation.…

“I’m a visual person.” How many times have you heard people say that? How many times have you said that yourself? The truth is most of us are “visual people.” Of the five senses, the Old Brain—the decision-making part of the brain – responds most strongly to the visual sense.

When you think visuals, you probably tend to think of imagery and infographics and video. But there is another type of visual that can also have a tremendous impact – a three-dimensional object. That’s right, a prop.

In fact, people use props all the time. If you’ve ever been at lunch and explained something to someone by moving glasses of water around to show how it works, you’ve used props.…

Every quarter we survey more than 440 marketing and sales professionals who work in complex, business-to-business selling environments. This round, we focused on messaging for demand generation. Here’s what we found:

• 80% of marketing and sales professionals aren’t completely confident in the effectiveness of their demand generation campaigns.
• The #1 problem is that demand gen content isn’t compelling or provocative enough.
• 60% respondents say that their company’s demand gen content is focused on their company’s products/features, instead of customer’s pain points.

Download the report

…

It is 8:00 a.m., day two of your annual sales meeting. Product marketing is up first. A tall pedestal sits next to the podium draped in a black cloth. Out walks Joe, the director of product marketing in the hardware division – dressed in his nicely pressed shirt adorned with the company logo and so excited to share his news. He begins his presentation. He welcomes everyone, updates you on the state of the market and – “ta da” – he pulls off the black cloth and introduces you to the newest addition to the product family. He then begins to share the elevator pitch and features/benefit messaging. …

You’ve probably heard one of Henry Ford’s best quotes, “If I had asked the people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” CEO.com recently published an infographic on why great CEOs often rely on their ‘gut’ instead of voice-of-the-customer research and market data to make their most game-changing decisions.

Here’s why this infographic matters to you.

Marketers, Your Customers are Probably Wrong
The New Coke story is a classic example of the danger of weighting what your customers think they need (“Yes, this tastes good”) over their subconscious emotional anchors (But it’s just not Coke).

Your prospects are firmly, emotionally anchored in their status quo.…

More than 60% of marketers say their greatest challenge is generating more leads (Forbes).
The problem is, when prospects see your messaging, they only find 10% relevant to them (CEB & IDC).

Demand generation is about creating sales-ready leads, but your messages sound like everyone else’s.

And, *ahem*, your content is boring.

You need to show your prospects that their status quo is unsafe. Are your campaigns creating urgency, or are you creating ineffective content?

Watch this video to learn more:

…

A couple of quotes from really smart people crossed my desk recently. They highlight a core challenge sales and marketing people need to solve with the messages they create and deliver. Here they are:

“While our access to raw information has grown exponentially, our time to process this information has declined rapidly, which has placed an unprecedented premium on the act of meaning-making.” (George Dyson, Futurist)

“People are information-rich and theory-poor. If you can give them a way of organizing their experience, then their minds are wide open.” (Malcolm Gladwell, Author)

So, the question for you is… Are you a meaning-maker?…

Corporate Visions’ CEO, Joe Terry, recently spoke at Forrester’s Technology Sales Enablement Forum. He held up a brand new iPad 3 and said, “I stood in line, in the rain, for three hours on Friday to get this. It’s got a Retina display. A 5MP iSight camera. And 4G LTE. Who wants it?”

Several people raised their hands.

“No really, who wants it?”

The hands started waving around a bit.

“Come on now. Who wants a free iPad?”

Finally, someone (who had seen Joe do this trick before) stood up, ran up front, and yanked it out of his hands.

“That’s what I’m talking about.…

Does a prospect relate and respond better to your message because you base it on a persona?

If you are like many marketers today, you have created fictional characters with names, demographics, attitudes and behaviors to help frame and target your messages.

The question is: Does your prospect’s persona drive the way they respond to your messages or the reason they buy something?  Just because they share similar personal and professional characteristics, is that what causes someone to re-think their current approach and consider your “new way” to solve their problems?

Our response is an emphatic, “NO.” In fact, focusing your messaging around personas may actually lead your content astray.…

Each quarter, we survey more than 600 marketing and sales professionals who work in complex, business-to-business selling environments. This quarter, we focused on the unique challenges associated with virtual selling environments. Here’s what we found:

1. 58 percent of respondents indicated that they receive insufficient, little or no training for selling over the phone and Web. In fact, the survey found that less than 10 percent of respondents actually feel that they have extensive and relevant training for these types of communications.
2. When asked how well their organizations have armed them with tools to deliver effective messages in a virtual environment, only 13 percent of respondents felt that they were adequately equipped.

…

Imagine your job is to make a movie about statistics.

Sounds fun, huh?

That’s exactly the challenge that the director of Moneyball faced.

Moneyball tells the story of how Billy Beane, GM for the Oakland A’s, used statistical analysis to find players who were undervalued by other teams.

It was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture. It made over $100 million.

How did a movie about statistics achieve such success?

Through outstanding storytelling. Storytelling that used numbers in the right way to tell a story.

The movie opens with a montage of clips from a baseball game between The Oakland A’s and the New York Yankees.…

Three ideas for improving demand gen approach for loosening your prospects’ “status quo”

Brain research proves that humans make decisions to “change” or “do something different” that are more adaptive than rational.  This has major consequences for the way you develop messages and deliver them in your demand generation programs.  Unfortunately, you may be mistakenly messaging for “information” vs. messaging for a “decision.”

Stimulate the Old Brain

People use their neocortex (new brain) to analyze information.  But, they actually make decisions using the limbic system (old brain), which is designed to make the fast, instinctual choices that ensure survival. As it turns out, people (and prospects) tend to move away from pain faster than they move toward gain.…

Have you heard the ancient story of Buridan’s donkey? A donkey is placed precisely midway between two identical piles of hay. As the donkey contemplates his decision, he becomes paralyzed. Unable to make a rational decision to choose one haystack over the other, he dies of starvation.

I’ve been thinking about this story because it illustrates what marketing and sales professionals sometimes do to their prospects and customers when you fail to differentiate your company, products or services. Bombarding your prospects with me-too messages not only confuses your buyer, but can leave them paralyzed. Unsure where to invest their money, time and energy, the safest choice for them is no decision.…

Most of the time, when you steal customers from your competitors, they are one of two types: extremely unhappy with the product or service (which could also mean they’re high-maintenance), or loss leaders that your competitors don’t really want. The customers you really want to steal are the ones that are profitable and low maintenance. Impossible, you say? Your competitors’ loyal clients may be less secure than you think. They may have problems they don’t even realize, or may be missing opportunities they are unaware of, but in either case, their desired outcomes may be at risk if they continue to take a “status quo approach.”   What they don’t know can hurt them!…

Then you’re killing deals.  

Recently one of our consultants, Scott Weinhold, was on a tram while connecting flights between client events, and he couldn’t resist sneaking a photo of an airline pilot’s luggage. What caught his eye was the bag tag promoting the pilot’s union. Here was the union’s attempt to create value for themselves:

In case the image is too fuzzy for you to read (this was a “stealth” snap on a phone while the tram was in motion) the tag says, “WE ARE WORTH IT!”

This union message reminded me of the same theme in thousands of marketing and sales pitches happening this very moment.…

Desktop computers, fax machines and the floppy disk drive – at one point each of these technological advances were fundamental components of our daily lives, but now, most are considered archaic.

The same may be true for your classic 30,000-foot brand messaging. It’s obsolete.

The proliferation of new media channels and mobile devices creates buyer demand for information and insights that are relevant to them and their needs, when and where they need it.  They don’t have the time or the inclination toward the big, bad company-centric branding campaigns of the past. It’s now a 3-foot brand message – the distance between your customer and their digital access screen of choice – that counts.…

There has been a lot of talk (decades, really) about aligning Marketing and Sales. Like peanut butter and chocolate, separately, they get the job done. But put them together and you’ve produced a work of gastronomic genius that you can’t imagine ever splitting up again.

Yet, most organizations are still trying to get the recipe right.

Is your company best-in-class when it comes to getting these two functions working together, and holding them accountable for their performance?

This question is the basis of a new benchmark report published by Aberdeen called Sales and Marketing Alignment: The New Power Couple. Here are three highlights to help you nail the alignment challenge this year.…

Your company brand message tends to be all about you. It tells the story of who you are, what you do, who you’ve helped, and how you’ve helped them. Sales professionals learn the corporate story and then go tell it to prospective customers. You assume that if your prospects knew as much about your company and solutions as you do, they would buy from you, right? Unfortunately, that’s not the case.

There should be a difference between your brand message and your field message. Your field message should be about who? That’s right – your prospect. Not a big deal, you say?…

Your prospects are busier than ever. So imagine their reactions when your salespeople whip out their “20-question” prospecting checklist and proceed to ask your prospect the same thing everyone else asks?  Where’s the differentiation in that?

Executive buyers are saying, “Don’t play 20 questions with me, you should already know what I’m struggling with… And, I expect you to be able to tell me something I don’t already know about a problem I didn’t even know existed.”

The 20-question approach is more than 20 years old. While it was revolutionary at the time, it’s got a big problem. Prospects that are stuck in the status quo won’t be moved to make a change by a set of assessment questions.…

There is the great Glengarry Glen Ross quote: “ABC – Always Be Closing.” In the technology sector, there is: “ABI – Always Be Innovating.” However, with the high costs of research and development, demand dependent on a slowing economy, and limited access to capital, the ability to “always be innovating” is difficult to realize for most technology companies.

As a result, today’s emerging mantra may be: “It’s not always about what you sell, but how you sell and what you say that makes the difference.”

Many tech companies have relied on R&D to differentiate themselves from their competitors by developing new products and improving old ones.…

Ever skydived?

Years ago, Corporate Visions’ CMO, Tim Riesterer, completed his first, and only, static line parachute jump (static line means no tandem expert; you are on your own).

He started in a class that walked you through the basics of the jump on the ground. Knowing your equipment. Mastering a stable position. Navigating the countryside from the air. And, negotiating a safe landing on the target.

Seems simple enough to remember, right?

Wrong. Turns out, when you’re hanging off an airplane strut, staring down at 3,500 feet of nothing but air between you and the ground… you can barely remember your own name.…

You have fat, lazy value propositions. There, I said it. You have fat, lazy, good-for-nothing value propositions that will never amount to anything that drives revenue for your company. In your heart, you know this because MarketingSherpa recently reported that “delivering relevant and engaging messages to your customers and prospects” is your “number one challenge.” (MarketingSherpa 2012 Email Marketing Benchmarks)

But, do you know why your value propositions are fat, lazy, irrelevant and not engaging?

It’s because they are safe and self-satisfied. They make you feel good about what you do. But, they don’t work hard enough and fail to move the needle on three levels when it comes to getting a customer to respond and consider doing something different, and then eventually consider doing it with you.…

Do you know why your salespeople lost that big piece of business?  Do you know why you are taking a beating on price? Do you know why prospects aren’t calling you back? One answer could be that this is an epic failure of your sales process or methodology. Or maybe the problem is that your sales process has no answers for the challenges of commoditization.

According to Sirius Decisions, a leading marketing and sales advisory service, “The salesperson’s inability to communicate value during the customer interactions is perceived as the greatest inhibitor to sales success.”  In other words, if your sales force cannot communicate why your solution is different, better and worth more there’s nothing your sales process can do to fix that.…

Imagine… you’re sitting in a large, hot conference room at the opening session of your company’s annual sales kick-off. The room is filled to the brim with 500 of your sales peers, chatting nervously. The CEO and your executive team are waiting in the front row.

One of your sales leaders takes the stage, carrying a hat. In that hat are the names of all the salespeople sitting around you. He reaches in, pulls out a tiny slip of paper and says, “[Insert your name here], come on up to the stage. Here’s a marker and a flipchart. Now show us our new sales message.”

Sweating yet?…

You love Power Messaging. You practice it. But, you want to know what’s next.

Let’s cut to the chase. We’re offering a free “test drive” of the 1-day training workshop called Power Deal Creation. It’s a new skills training solution that builds off of your Power Messaging foundation, but specifically provides some new stuff to help you with the early stage executive conversation. If you’ve taken Power Messaging, you’re invited. But register soon, because we can only take 20 people per class.

In Power Messaging, you learned how to communicate why your prospects should choose you over your competitors. This new course will teach you how to talk to prospects that are waiting for you to tell them why they should change….or why they should choose any solution at all.…

If we missed you last week –

200 of your peers, executives and thought leaders gathered in Chicago at the 2nd annual Marketing and Sales Alignment Conference to dive deep into how to align their two most expensive organizations to drive commercial impact.

Sure, we’ve all heard that before. But this conference went beyond just talk and high hopes. Companies like ADP, Dow Jones, Kronos, GE Healthcare, Oracle, Centurylink, Attachmate, Philips and Iron Mountain shared real case studies and action plans on how they turned their Marketing and Sales teams into one laser-focused revenue engine.

Since you missed all the fun, we’ve made the session summaries, presentations and videos* available on the website so you can steal these great ideas:
http://conference.corporatevisions.com

Find out:

• How companies like Apple, Southwest Airlines and Harley Davidson “Start with “Why” to inspire and retain evangelical customers (Simon Sinek).

…

Maybe I’m the last guy on the block, but I recently picked up on some of my teenagers’ latest lingo. Apparently, it’s really cool to add the suffix “ish” to the end of any statement, implying… “not so much.”

So, I applied it to the headline for this month’s Messaging Feed. It seems appropriate when describing the relationship between Marketing and Sales and how so-called sales leads are to be handled.

One of the emerging approaches for making sure only quality leads get to the field, and then holding the field accountable for acting on those leads, is the concept of a Service Level Agreement (SLA).…

CSO Insights is like the Gallup Polls of Selling. They do some of the most exhaustive and respected research in sales effectiveness. Their yearly “Sales Performance Optimization” survey of over 2,000 companies is often cited as the industry benchmark by many respected sources.

You have to pay big bucks to get access to their content. But, from time to time, they publish eBooks that feature a taste of their results, along with interviews where they profile industry thought leaders on critical topics and approaches that CSO Insights deems effective in helping salespeople.

CSO Insights’ latest eBook (Sales Management 2.0: Optimizing Sales Performance 2011 – Volume 6) features a section on Sales Messaging and an interview with Corporate Visions.…

Dear Alumni,

What if… you had a two-day conference filled with wall-to-wall Power Messaging best practices, delivered by your peers at world-class companies? What if you could also network with other folks like you that believe in, and continue to invest in, these powerful sales messaging approaches?

Well, we have it, and you won’t want to miss it. First, before I give you the details, I want to thank you for your loyal following. As CEO of Corporate Visions, I receive emails weekly from many of you on the successes you have seen and the changes you are making by leveraging the concepts you learned from Corporate Visions.…

What do these numbers mean?

3-2-1-1-1

It took 3 years, 2 months and 1 week to reach 1 billion tweets. Today, there are 1 billion tweets every single week!

There are also 900,000 blog entries and 300,000 hours of video posted to the internet every day.

What does this mean for you? If you want to enter the world of social media… you better have something compelling to say. Otherwise, you will just be part of the din.

It reminds me of what my good friend and fellow author, Mike Bosworth (of Solution Selling fame) used to say, “Technology’s great, but if your message sucks, the technology just speeds up the sucking.”

You need to find your “social media voice” before you jump in. …

Being the “messaging company,” we’ve had the pleasure of working with some outstanding marketers and salespeople throughout the years. Thanks to all of you who are reading this… we continue to learn from you every day.

Unfortunately, some of the folks who call on our company to pitch their products aren’t quite up to your standard.  After years of sitting through painful discovery sessions and demos you’d need a PhD to understand, we’ve decided to start issuing tickets. Like the fashion police, but for crimes against messaging.

Violation #1: Knowing everything about my digital actions, but nothing about me. The amazing power of marketing automation and sales intelligence technology allows salespeople and marketers to track the “digital buying movements” of prospects around your website, landing pages, and email campaigns.…

Why are some people and organizations more influential than others?  Why do some command greater loyalty from customers?  Even among the successful, why are so few able to repeat their successes?

It’s not about price.  It’s not about promotions.  It’s not even about innovation.  It comes down to whether you and your company can articulate WHY your company does what it does.  It comes down to your message.  Your story.  Why does your company exist?  Why does it do the things it does?  Why do your customers really buy from you and not someone else?

Check out this video from the famous TED Conference, featuring Simon Sinek, author of the book, Start with Why.…

Disclaimer: The CVI Marketing team has hijacked this blog. And by hijacked, we mean we have locked author Tim in a room, tied him to a chair, and are testing his ability to Power Message his new book, co-authored with VP of Consulting Erik Peterson, titled, Conversations that Win the Complex Sale.

Can this sales and marketing guru step up to the challenge? You be the judge!

CVI Marketing Team Member #1: Grab your readers’ attention with something provocative that makes them want more!

Tim Riesterer: *mumble mumble*

CVI Marketing Team Member #2: I guess we should take the duct tape off his mouth so he can talk.…

Contrast between Pain and Gain is Where Value Lives

What’s the opposite of “attention” when it comes to sales messaging?

It’s not “inattention,” though that is the most logical, obvious answer. Inattention is a passive, natural occurrence you have to wrestle with in every messaging situation. And certainly, the failure to move somebody from inattention to attention is a primary killer of sales opportunities.

What’s worse than inattention is active resistance to your message. Denial that the problem you’re trying to solve needs solving.

In a previous post, we talked about how Alcoholics Anonymous uses personal stories to help break through denial.…

New Harvard Business Review article touts being an “expert” as top performing sales person profile

Do you picture your sales calls this way?

“My prospect is expecting me to tell them something they don’t already know, about a problem they may not even know they have.”

When you go into a sales call, do you realize that you get to see more people who look like your prospect than they do? They are so busy fighting fires within their own companies, they don’t have enough time to check out what their peers and competitors are doing.

But, you do. By the very nature of your job, your customers can see you as more of an expert than they are. …

Is Your Messaging Half Empty or Half Full?
It Might Not Matter, if You do it Right.

My daughter came home with an interesting holiday homework assignment – she had to come up with three ideas for a “Negative Thanksgiving.” Here’s the concept:  Be thankful for something that would otherwise be perceived as a negative by pointing out a positive correlation.

For example, she came up with the following:

• I’m thankful for Final Exams, because that means school is almost over…
• I’m thankful for Bad-tasting Medicine, because it helps me feel better…
• I’m thankful for Waking up to Alarm Clocks, because it means I’m still alive…

• I’m thankful for Property Taxes, because it means I own a home (OK, that was mine)

You get the point.…

A Number Play Creates Impact

We’re obviously in the thick of a crazy election season. Seems 80% of the ads on TV are for one candidate or another. For the most part they all start to blend together. Except when they use Power Messaging techniques. In this ad, the “outsider” candidate is trying to establish his credentials at the same time as he is trying to contrast his experience with the “insider” incumbent.

He could use a lot of words to explain this difference. Instead he chooses to use four numbers: 100, 57, 0, 1. What do they mean? Click and watch.…

Finding Your Value Wedge

In Power Messaging we teach companies to differentiate by finding their “Value Wedge.”  Here’s how it works:

Identify your uniqueness in the context of a specific prospect need.  Then amplify that need so it becomes the dominating buying criteria, and then clearly contrast your uniqueness with the competitor’s weakness so your prospect sees the unmistakable value of your solution.  Also, make sure it is defensible by proving the claim and demonstrating your clear advantage.

I recently saw this commercial and thought… now there’s a perfect example of a company that knows how to find and promote their Value Wedge. …

The traditional 20-question approach to prospecting is dead.

First, it’s undifferentiated. Everyone can ask the same questions.

Second, it’s frustrating for the prospect. Executives are too busy to play along. Why do they have to answer your questions before you’ve given them a good reason to give you that information?

You have a new messaging challenge in today’s skittish marketplace. It’s no longer about prospecting questionnaires. It’s about effective deal creation.

I didn’t know I had a music problem.

One of the smartest consultants in our company explains it this way:

A few years back, if a salesperson selling iPods asked me an open-ended prospecting question like:  “Do you have a music problem?” I would’ve answered, “Not that I know of…  I mean, I’ve got CDs and this awesome five-disk CD changer…  I’ve also got this CD walkman that gives me that high quality CD sound when I work out… it’s all good.”

Then the iPod salesperson follows up with, “How satisfied are you with the way this works for you?” Again, I would have said, “As far as I know, it works as well as any other CD changer or walkman.” Maybe I’d be looking for a 10-disk changer or something like that, but frankly, at this point, I don’t know I have a music problem. …

Complexity in your message keeps your customers from buying. Whenever there’s complexity, there’s confusion. And, confusion slows down the decision-making process.

A confused buyer cannot buy. So, you need to make it simple for your prospect to make a decision. How? Have you ever noticed that when someone says, “I don’t understand,” someone else gets up and draws a picture?

One of the great tools that you have in your messaging toolkit is a concept called the Big Picture. But, just knowing why pictures are important doesn’t mean they will be executed well. Look at this picture below to see what can happen when a big picture goes wrong.…

Do you recognize this short story?

One day, a man walking through the forest came upon a logger (lumberjack) who was sawing away at a large tree and not getting very far at all. The man approached the logger as he stopped for a moment to rest and observed that the logger would get further if he sharpened his saw. The logger replied that he just didn’t have the time to sharpen the saw because he was busy cutting down the tree, and went back to his work.

This story is from Stephen Covey’s book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, the 7th Habit, Sharpen the Saw. …

My daughter recently appeared in The Wiz, an updated, musical retelling of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. While the story is similar to the original, all of the music is different, and contains a distinct mid-1970s urban, disco feel. It’s a trip.

In one scene, the Wicked Witch of the West, named Evilene, sings a song called, “Don’t Nobody Bring Me No Bad News.” Watch this clip on YouTube to get a flavor (don’t worry, there’s a point to be made here):

Before The Wiz ever hit Broadway, Shakespeare was penning these words for his play Henry IV: “Come hither, sir.…

What’s the toughest sales challenge you can face?  Denial.

Specifically, your prospect denying that they have the problem your product/service/solution was built to fix.  All other challenges pale in comparison to this one.

The world’s best selling situation is the rare time when you solve a problem that a prospect already recognizes and wants solved.  That’s sweet living.  It’s also rare.

The more common situation is that you solve a problem that the customer feels some pain around,  though it’s still going to take some selling to get them to feel the pain vividly enough to want to fix it.

That brings you back to the worst situation – denial.…

*********************
Want to learn more about messaging?  Check out one of Corporate Visions’ live Open Sessions for sales professionals, and executive Insights sessions for marketing and sales leaders.
*********************

I’m not a big fan of the Geico gecko commercials.  Too cheeky and not much substance.

Except when it comes to their power position – “15 minutes can save you 15% or more on your car insurance.”  It’s perfect.  Simple, specific and provoking.

You’ve probably seen this recent commercial where the big boss has some big ideas (don’t they all) for new slogans to promote the company.   As I watched this, I couldn’t help but think of the many tagline and elevator pitch exercises I’ve seen over the years.…

What does Dwight from NBC’s The Office have to teach us about messaging?  In the thirteenth episode of the fifth season (“Stress Relief”), Dwight tries a unique tactic to teach fire safety (don’t try this at home… or the office).

Watch as much of this clip as you can handle:

You clearly don’t want or need to go to extremes, but creating urgency with context is the key to driving home your point.   How many times have you simply tuned out an alarm because you figured it was just another drill?

As I’m writing this, it’s Saturday in my small suburban community and the siren is going off, signaling it is noon. …

Three Rules to Help You Create Preference, Not Parity

According to a survey of 9,000 companies by the Corporate Executive Board’s Marketing Leadership Council, only 14% of the so-called unique benefits companies choose to promote drive enough preference to have a commercial impact. This means that 86% of the things companies claim as unique features and benefits are not perceived as significant enough to get customers to consider doing anything different.

The video below illustrates what can happen when your latest and greatest product offering isn’t a whole lot different from what’s already available and you are not connecting your differentiation with the customer pains you solve better.…

Imagine for a moment that you’re a street musician.  Your meal ticket is selling your performance.  So, you’re playing your heart out, vying for the attention of prospects as they pass by.  You catch someone’s ear, and they wander closer.  They’re reaching into their pocket when suddenly, lo, instead of the sweet sound of a shiny coin landing in your tip jar, you hear an ominous tune picking up on other end of the square.  Is that your competition, stealing your prospect’s attention away just as you were about to win their patronage?  You play louder and harder to try to gain them back. …

Fun theory shows once again that human decision-making isn’t rational.

I always like to think that logic and rational thought rule when my prospects make a decision.  But, time and again I’m proven wrong.  That’s why you always hear us say in Power Messaging – “people decide on emotion and justify with facts.”

When I ran across this video it showed once again how emotional decision-making can be.  You and I know that taking the stairs instead of an escalator will provide more exercise.  And, we are fully aware that exercise is good for us.  (There’s plenty of research and data to prove that.)  So, it would be logical to assume that if we know what’s good for us, we’d always take the stairs instead of the escalator. …

Have you seen this hilarious video of how B-to-B negotiations would play out in “real world” situations?

We’re almost so used to B-to-B purchasing demands that we forget how ridiculous they are.  This video gives us a chance to step back and laugh, but, it doesn’t change the reality of your customers’ buying habits.

What can you do?  Do these battles always have to occur?  According to The Corporate Executive Board’s Integrated Sales Executive Council, only 9% of brand preference and loyalty decisions are based on price.  Meanwhile, 53% of a prospect’s decision to choose you comes from their sales experience.…

It’s amazing what you can achieve when you’ve got a high performer showing you exactly what to do.  Check out this 30-second clip that shows the impact of coaching and modeling — at the moment it’s needed.

Salespeople are no exception.   In a recent survey, Corporate Visions found that 87% of salespeople want more field-level, just-in-time coaching from their managers, especially in differentiating their solution from the competition.[1]

The best learning takes place outside the classroom

While investing in a good training program help reps meet and exceed quota, even the best training fades over time.  In fact, 87% of what’s learned in sales training classrooms is forgotten in just four weeks.…

The Top 5 Sales Readiness Initiatives with the Greatest Impact

Sales Readiness means many things.  Lots of initiatives can fall under that banner.

Wouldn’t it be great to know which five (5) have the greatest impact on Sales performance?

The world’s largest online training community, TrainingIndustry.com, recently released the findings of its major Sales Readiness survey.  In it they identified 14 “sales readiness” initiatives, and then asked the respondents to rate them based on perceived impact.

Here are the top 5:

1. Value Propositions –creating differentiated positioning that helps create competitive separation
2. Product/Service Information – providing accessible, usable solution information not just feature/function
3. Executive Communications – help communicating with executive buyers not just user influencers
4. Customer Needs Assessment – improve ability to conduct insightful discovery conversations
5. Overcoming Common Sales Objections – reframe concerns to take them off the table or turn to advantage

What do all of these top sales readiness initiatives have in common? …

Relationship builders come in last and challengers finish first.

A fresh report on the types of sales approaches that win and the ones that do the worst reveals results that could come as a surprise to you, but as Yoda says,  “You must unlearn what you have learned. Try not! Do, or do not! There is no try!”

According to the Corporate Executive Board’s Integrated Sales Executive Council (iSEC), the sales persona that is most successful in winning business is “The Challenger.”  The one that performs the poorest is “The Relationship Builder.”

You can download a summary of the report, Replicating the New High Performer. …

Getting through to decision makers via email is tougher than ever these days.

According to Business Week magazine, the average business person receives more than 100 emails per day – and, by some estimates, as many as 80% of email messages are spam. This translates into approximately $21.6 billion per year in lost productivity due to time spent identifying, managing, and deleting junk email. As a result, organizations are taking drastic steps to block unsolicited email – and decision makers are all the more selective about which emails they’ll even bother to open, let alone read through to the end.

In this environment, how can you make sure your prospects will read and remember your emails?…

The Empire State Building in New York City stands as one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World.  At the time of its construction, the Empire State Building became the world’s tallest office building at 1,250 feet, and held that record for 41 years!

The Empire State Building was the first building to have over 100 floors, representing the birth of modern skyscraper technology.  Even more impressive, the building’s construction took place in record time – less than 14 months (410 days).  It even came in at half the expected cost.

Watch some staggering old silent footage featuring the courageous workers who risked life and limb to complete the project.…

A congressional hearing on tainted food might be the last place you’d expect to find powerful sales messaging.  But, when a congressman recently wanted to elevate the concern over unsafe food on supermarket shelves, he unleashed an emotionally potent presentation technique.

Check out this brief clip:

Your Brain Wants Concrete

A by-product of the information age is that many of the “solutions” being sold today are no longer physical objects. They have no shape, substance or concrete form that can be seen and touched.

Have you noticed that consumer software is sold in very elaborate packaging? It gives you, the buyer, the illusion that you are getting something substantial for your money.…

Ever heard of the Rosetta Stone? One man spent his entire life unlocking its secrets. We know you don’t have that kind of time, so just watch this video to get up to speed:

It wasn’t until the discovery of this stone in 1799 by Napoleon’s troops that the modern world was able to decipher hieroglyphics. This stone carried the key to finally cracking the hieroglyphic code.

It contained a carved text made up of hieroglyphs along with Egyptian and Greek translations, which enabled scholars who knew Greek and Egyptian to work backwards to finally understand the hieroglyphs.

In some ways, sales people need to be like the Rosetta Stone. …

Whether you’ve traveled abroad or not, you can certainly appreciate the humor in this clip. Watch this funny TV spot:

It’s safe to assume that all of us have experienced the wish for conversation intervention. That’s when you were desperately hoping someone would intervene in a conversation because you didn’t understand what was being said.

Well, how about your customers? What language are you speaking to them? Are you making it easy for them to get your message? Are you making it easy for them to understand? Or, are you expecting them to do the translation?

One of the big challenges of selling (especially in the business-to-business space) is that you rarely sell to just one person.…

It’s that season again, the season for thanks, for family, for spirit and giving. But if you’re like me, you’re still in a food coma from one holiday meal or another, so it’s also the season for looking down at your stomach and saying, “Whoa, where’d you come from?”

Yes, it’s about this time of year a lot of us start making promises that include dropping that five, 15, 25 pounds we’ve been trying to lose since… forever. There are so many options out there for diets… low calorie, low carb, low fat. Atkins. Jenny Craig. Grapefruit. Avocado-only. South Beach. South Deck.…

What would happen if Microsoft did the packaging for the iPod?

Watch this video:

Pretty funny, huh? Probably made by Apple employees or an Apple fan, right?

Except it wasn’t. It was made by Microsoft!

Some folks at Microsoft wanted to show how their normal process creates boring, overloaded, emotionless packaging. And this video was the result. Microsoft never intended this video to get out to the public, but it has now been broadcast all over the Internet.

If someone who watched this video said, “Ha ha! Look how lame Microsoft is,” they missed the key lesson.

None of the decisions shown in that video were made through incompetence or bad intentions.…

What do webcams and Oreos have in common?
Well, not much, except that both are a part of a perfectly executed message. How can you tell a perfectly executed message apart from the others? Watch this video and ask yourself the following questions:

• What is this commercial selling?
• What do I remember?
• How did it make me feel?

Business travel whisks me away from my family frequently. I am away from home two nights a week. How do I keep in touch with my kids? With a webcam, of course. If you have one, then I am willing to bet that you immediately connected with this advertisement.…

What does emotion have in common with moving people into action?

Watch this award-winning public services announcement.
(The opening text reads: An experiment with hidden cameras. Downtown Sao Paulo, February 28, 2008.) Five-year-old Matheus Braga appears in both scenes.

Did the video create a sense of urgency? Did it make you want to do something? Do you think you’ll remember the message?

Why do you think the message in the video works? Two factors make it potent: emotion and contrast.

Emotion:
In the B2B world, it is easy to forget that buyers (like all people) make decisions based on emotion and justify it with facts.…

Has this ever happened to you?  You present to a prospect and you know you did a great job because you covered everything.  But in subsequent meetings you realize that your prospect didn’t really retain what you said.

Are you like your prospects? Test your own retention. Watch this video and then read the rest.

Don’t worry, you’re completely normal.  There’s even evidence* to suggest that you’re more efficient if you didn’t notice the obvious.  When you “keep your eye on the ball” you filter out irrelevant information.  Your brain’s capacity depends not on the amount of storage but on how efficiently that space is used, therefore filtering out distracting information.  …

It’s a common lament at the end of one of our sales workshops: “It’s so easy for you to come up with great message ideas. It just isn’t that easy for me.”

I sympathize.
When I first started doing this work I thought, “I don’t know if I’m creative enough to be great at this.”
What I’ve learned is that you don’t have to be creative. You don’t have to invest huge amounts of time and effort to create great messaging. All you need are some shortcuts that will get you the results you want – fast.

Do you have a 401k plan at work?…

What do these words have in common?

Innovation
Solution
Cost of Ownership

They are all abstract concepts. Science has shown that human beings are more likely to change a behavior or make a decision when the stimulus driving that change is something concrete. Concrete means that you can experience the stimulus through your five senses: sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste; allowing you to use these filters to tell you what is real.

There are two trends in the marketplace that make this topic relevant to sales and marketing professionals. Sales organizations have been migrating from a “product sale” to a “solution sale.” The second trend is the increasing complexity of the solutions that are being sold.…

Since Power Messaging® impacts emotion, it is not surprising to hear stories where personal value is enhanced outside of the business world when people use the Power Messaging techniques in their everyday life.
A few highlights…

“Focusing on traits that were unique to me and important to my fiancé shortened my engagement and helps our marriage.”

“Grabbers and making the value interactive has given my Sunday school class a richer experience.”

“I use these messaging skills to help my girlfriend edit her Yoga magazine.”

“You-Phrasing has improved my relationship with my children in transferring ownership of chores and goals.”

“My Sunday sermons no longer put people to sleep.…

I was exhausted. The flights, from Reno, to Denver, to Munich and eventually to Istanbul had taken their toll. I was dealing with a ten-hour time change, my class had run long and I knew I was going to have to face rush-hour traffic.

As I left the building, I looked out to Buyukdere Cadessi road, where I was headed. It was jammed with traffic. There was no visible movement. It was going to be a very long trip to get to the Istanbul Hilton some twenty kilometers away. After what seemed like hours of searching and waiting, I finally spotted a cab.…

I like spending time with my friends; I enjoy the camaraderie and the conversations we have. I like that we challenge each others’ points-of-view and still find time to laugh and joke with each other at the end of the day.

I’m guessing that you’re that way with your friends too. You have a great time when you’re with them; you banter back and forth with a free flow of intriguing information. It’s usually a very causal, non-threatening environment and you simply enjoy being around them.

If you’ve been in the field of sales for any length of time, you’re sure to have heard the phrase, “people buy from people they like.” My proposition is this, how do you create a similar type of atmosphere with all of those new prospects and customers as you’ve created with all of your friends?…

Robert Cialdini is considered the world’s most famous researcher on human influence. His book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, is required reading for marketing students in colleges and universities. He says that one of the most powerful ways to influence people is through Liking.

You make think that it’s obvious that people buy from people they like, and you’re right.

If that was everything Cialdini had to say on the subject, he wouldn’t be famous today. What was surprising about Cialdini’s theory of Liking was not that people buy from people they like. It was that people buy from people they think like them.…

What if sales were easy? What if you didn’t have to sell products or services and all you had to do was make friends? Would you sell more? Would you have more fun? Would your trust network expand?
This is something you have to ask yourself. As for me, making friends is easy and I don’t have a true friend that I don’t trust.

How did these friends of mine gain my trust? Well, there are many answers to that question… here are my top five.

1. They genuinely care about my well being.
2. They don’t lead me astray.
3. They’re there when I need them.

…

Has someone ever said to you, “Let your conscience be your guide?”
What is your “conscience?” Most people would say, “It’s your inner voice that knows right from wrong even when your logical mind does not.” There is, however, recent research that would indicate you have an “unconscious behavioral guidance system” (Carey, 2007).

Like the navigation system in your car, it’s constantly running in the background to offer decision support. “Turn left in 100 feet,” a calm voice speaks into your ear. What if you don’t want to turn the car? Can you override the navigation system? Of course you can (unless, of course, you are Michael Scott in the NBC TV series, “The Office” who drives his car into a lake by following the instructions from the car’s “nav” system).…

It was the ideal sales call. The customer had identified a need and already knew a change was greatly needed. He called our company; he recognized us as an industry leader. I had set up a discovery session with him to make sure that I understood his needs and could determine why my product was the best fit. This sale would surely come quickly! I was already envisioning my commission.

I headed up the stairs to the executive offices and introduced myself to his assistant. I was called in immediately. I wanted to look organized and prepared, so I proceeded to pull out my company-supplied six page survey form and begin to ask questions.…

Wine and Cheese.
The Smell of Pizza.
A Sculpture You Can Touch.

What do they all have in common? They are all tools that can assist in delivering a better, more memorable message, which in turn will help you close more deals.

A number of years ago, I had an important presentation I needed to deliver to McKinsey & Company; a major management consulting firm. My presentation started at 5:30 p.m. The customer had already sat through the presentations of four of my competitors, starting at 8:30 a.m. that morning. I knew the people attending this meeting would be tired and anxious to go home; but it was the only time slot available.…

Submitted by: Bill Day, Fleet Sales, TEC of California

I left the Power Messaging® workshop with a new perspective on how and why people buy. This gave me the courage to try these techniques out on a buyer no one had ever thought to go after. He’d been loyal to my biggest competitor for three generations. I was able to get the appointment, including bringing a truck over to the prospects’ business. While waiting for the owner in the drivers’ lounge, one of the lead drivers, a large man by the nickname of Too Tall, saw me. He started ranting and raving about the inferior challenges he saw with my truck, loud enough so the owner could hear.…

It’s almost midnight; I’m sitting in my hotel room in Vienna, Austria anticipating the early morning flight back home to the States. Eager to receive the wonderful greeting of “daddy…daddy…daddy,” from my son and daughter as they see me walking toward them at the airport.

I’m also excited about an email I’ve just finished reading for the third time. Jacquie Chandler, Corporate Visions’ alumni services coordinator, had spoken earlier to Dave, a re-seller of Volvo Trucks in Ontario, Canada who attended a Power Messaging workshop I’d coached over the summer. I remember Dave very clearly. He is a dynamo, with lots of enthusiasm and energy and very excited about his relatively new career in truck sales.…

When my oldest son Timmy was a small child, potty training was quite a battle. We tried everything, but we just couldn’t get him to understand that it was time to be finished with diapers and all the hassle that went with them. I remember taking him to the bathroom about every hour, hoping that through some sort of miracle, he would make the connection. We also tried giving him a reward after every successful trip to the bathroom. He liked the reward so much that he started skipping the bathroom and coming straight to his mother or me to show us that he had successfully completed his task.…

A few years ago, Margie, a next-door neighbor, was over for a barbeque with her husband, Allan. Margie shared that she was having a problem at work. She was a tenured employee, and it had been years since her last performance review and salary adjustment. She felt that, while her manager valued her contributions, she was underpaid. The dilemma was that Margie liked her job and her boss. Motivating her were two kids in college and the financial commitment that goes with that. She started exploring other job opportunities outside her current employer. Several higher paying jobs had come into view.…

Submitted by: Houman I., National Account Rep

Over the course of twelve years of company acquisitions, 27 entities were now reporting to one office. Each business unit processed their payroll and HR at different times, causing problems, overlaps, discrepancies, extra work, and extra costs. They needed to standardize to one system, on one platform. Only a few vendors could handle this challenge because of the company size and scope of the problem. My company was one of those vendors and we faced stiff competition. One of the competitors was already operating at one-third of the prospect’s existing locations.

The company selected a team of 18 buyers from the largest, most important subsidiaries across the country.…

“Hey Dave, I’m debt free!”

“Congratulations. How’d you do it?”

“Beans and rice, Dave – beans and rice!”

If you’ve ever tuned in to the Dave Ramsey talk radio show, you’re probably familiar with this exchange that occurs dozens of times a day. Individuals and families who were ‘buried in debt,’ call in to proclaim their freedom from the proverbial financial noose that used to hang around their necks. They have saved their financial health and well-being, and they give Dave the credit for helping them, not only see the light, but providing them with the successful game plan.

One of the core tenants of Dave’s advice in rebuilding your financial health is to stop using your credit cards.…

The word ‘story’ means many things to many people. The most useful way of thinking about ‘story’ in sales messaging is to compare it to its opposite, which is data. The differences can be subtle. Data is, “the queen and king died.” Story is, “The queen died and the king died of a broken heart.”
Let’s start with an example that lives in the world of sales messaging.

Data – Corporate Visions was founded in 1986. We have 25 employees. Over 10,000 students have taken Power Messaging. Here is our list of clients. We believe that what sets us apart are our values.…

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.…

In Power Messaging®, you learned about bringing your Best Friend’s Self to every messaging opportunity. The concept of self comes from The Evolution of Consciousness by Robert Ornstein, who explains that we are made up of many selves. It’s as if each of us is like a person with multiple personality disorder, except that our personalities are connected and aware of each other. Each self has its own language, voice tonality and gestures for different life situations. The Best Friend Self is who you are with your best buddy. By using the Best Friend Self, you build a sense of service into your message.…

My two oldest boys (ages 5 and 9) love to play video games.  Last year, their constant requests to play the games drove my wife and me up the walls.  We wanted to come up with a way to put a stop to the constant requests to play, and at the same time, help our kids learn how to exercise self-control.

First, we tried a system where they could play video games for a specific number of hours per week.  The challenge was that they needed to keep track of how much time they were using and not go beyond the time they were given for that week. …

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!…

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.…

Act out a “Day in a Life” Mini-Drama that magnifies your client’s life as it is now (without your product) and then how their world could be (with your product).

1. Keep it concise, easy to follow.  Only include the elements that are important to the prospect and unique to you. Engage their emotions. Strong emotions, created early, play to your advantage.
2. Always practice with your colleagues.  Never do a Mini-Drama before your prospect without a rehearsal and feedback.  The first run is almost always too long and needs fine-tuning to work.
3. Never embarrass your prospect. If you are not sure that the entire audience will be comfortable when you dramatize today’s problems, set your mini-drama up as “A Day in the Life of Company ABC.

…

Once upon a time, I sold for a Fortune 200 company.  After success as a territory account representative, I received a promotion to handle major accounts within the retail division.  My newly designated account territory included large national and international hotel and restaurant chains headquartered in a metropolitan city.  For me, the toughest part of the job has always been making initial contact when a new senior executive is introduced to one of my accounts.

I tried all of the standard approaches that I learned in my sales training.   I tried the “I am Steve representing XYZ Company and I would like the opportunity to talk with you about an exciting new product that has just become available” approach. …

The Challenge: Darrell wanted to use Power Messaging to penetrate a new client that was loyal to the competitor. He began by using a truck as a prop. He drove the truck over to the business and invited the owner to test drive it. The positive response from the test drive indicated that the client wanted to move forward. So, he ordered the requested chrome and bug lights. Everything looked good, until the buyer sent over the competitor’s spec sheet that showed a similar truck for $3,000 less. Since Darrell had gone to such lengths to accommodate this buyer, the $3,000 felt inconsequential.…

Recently, I conducted a Power Messaging workshop in Moscow, Russia.  I am aware that Power Messaging techniques are sometimes looked upon as “western ideas.”  It usually takes some time for our techniques to soak in and be accepted.  This normally happens soon after a student is exposed to the Old Brain research and begins to understand what influences the Old Brain and helps it make decisions. By this time in the workshop, students understand that it does not matter what part of the world you are from; we are all wired the same and make decisions through the same process.

On day two of my workshop, I covered the Power of Stories; along with Objection Reframes, concentrating specifically on Stories, Metaphors, and Analogies. …

Submitted by Ryan S., Account Representative, Major Health Services Provider:

We were in the final stage of selling a surgical repair service to a large hospital, and we were the last group to give a 20-minute presentation after seven competitors.  In the previous presentations, everyone had used PowerPoint^®. So, when we walked in, they naturally asked where we wanted to plug-in. When we announced that we were not using PowerPoint, the audience was so relieved that they actually clapped and became quickly intrigued when we handed out the board game.

Prior to the presentation, I bought five Operation games (by Milton Bradley^®) and bent out the forceps to make it more difficult to play.…

It was an absolutely beautiful morning in Hong Kong. I received the standard friendly greeting from the doorman upon exiting my hotel. As I made my way around the circular walkway, I couldn’t help but notice the beautiful trees and colorful flowers so impeccably manicured surrounding the entrance of the underground mall near my hotel. I made my way to Queensway Road East, which would take me to my meeting.

The city was already bustling below with people going every direction in taxis, cars, and motorcycles, or just walking the streets. As I looked out onto Victoria Harbor, I could see the Star Ferry running out to Kowloon.…

Widely regarded as one of the greatest NBA coaches of all time, Pat Riley has served as the head coach of five championship teams. Here’s an example of how he used a Prop—a Power Messaging technique—to lead his team:

At the beginning of one of his team meetings, Pat Riley arrived holding a bucket of water. He didn’t say anything. He made eye contact with his team members and then dunked his head completely into the water, so he couldn’t breathe. As he started to wriggle his body under the stress of holding his breath, his players became uneasy. An uncomfortably long time passed with his head under water.…

It’s kickoff season and all through the office nothing is stirring except for the marketing department. They haven’t slept for weeks. All the planning, coordination and presentations must come together to energize the sales force for another year.

Let’s see what should we talk about? Hmmm….how about last year’s performance milestones? That should make them feel good. How about a pep talk from the president? Maybe the CFO should talk about our financials. We’ve got lots of product folks who will want to talk about what’s coming. Of course, marketing will talk about all the cool things they are doing to make our lives easier.…

Recently, my wife and I went to visit our financial advisor, David Hawkins – a necessary meeting to ensure that I don’t have to work until I’m 80-years-old.  We currently have two children in college and two more to go, so we definitely need to plan well. We want to take care of our children and help them as much as possible to get a good start in life.

In our meeting, David focused on our life insurance and our retirement account. My wife was concerned about some of the changes he wanted to make in reference to where to put our money. …

“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? …

What creates your customers’ buying criteria?

Before we begin, let’s start with a definition of Neuromarketing as defined by Wikipedia: Neuromarketing is a new field of marketing which uses medical technologies such as functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to study the brain’s responses to marketing stimuli. Researchers use the fMRI to measure changes in activity in parts of the brain and to learn why consumers make the decisions they do, and what part of the brain is telling them to do it.

I have a great friend that I have known for the past twenty-three years.  He loves anything with a motor in it. …

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. There is Power in Stories. They can inspire your audience in ways far more powerful than information dumping.

Check out this commencement speech delivered by Steve Jobs on June 12, 2005 at Stanford University.

It was pretty simple, just three stories.

Very powerful.

By Chuck Laughlin, Founder, Corporate Visions Inc.

…

Often in sales methodology training you are told to uncover the client’s needs, and sell to those needs.

This is sound advice – but it can also be a trap of sorts.

People and clients need a lot of things, but they don’t always buy based on their needs. If they have funds to spend, they will look at all their needs and make decisions on them, weighing them against what they want – converting needs to wants. And then, and only then, will they make a buying decision.

Let me give you an example. My daughter, Kristen, was 18 years old.…

Are you solving a problem, or selling a product?

Solving vs. Selling

Which is it?

You know, in reality, selling a product is not all that bad. You can focus really hard on the sale, create a tight sales process/cycle, and follow it ruthlessly. Doing this well will yield results. Doing it great can lead to outstanding results.

So why bother working on solving your prospect’s problems, when selling can be so effective?

One, it can make deals come down faster and with less effort, believe it or not. If the customer feels you are firmly in their camp, helping them solve problems, and that you will not steer them in the wrong direction, then they will trust you and follow your advice.…

When you hear the word, ‘stories’ in the context of messaging, like most people, you probably think of customer stories.  Yet, if you want to connect with your customer, sometimes the best way to do that is through personal stories.

Imagine you are selling a complex software solution that brings a great deal of value to a company, but also requires the company to change its existing processes.  You may find the customer requesting that you change your system to work with their old processes.  Often making these changes causes the customer to loose sight of the key advantages to using your system. …

A college professor walks into class with an empty glass jar.  Without saying anything, he grabs some large stones and places them in the jar until it’s filled to the top.  Then, he lifts up the jar and asks, “Is this jar full?”  The class says, “Yes.”  The professor says, “No, it’s not.”  He reaches under his desk and grabs a handful of gravel.  He pours the gravel into the jar over the large stones.  He holds up the jar and asks, “Is this jar full?”  Once again, the class says, “Yes.” The professor says, “No, it’s not.”  He reaches under his desk and pulls out a bag of sand. …

In 1986, the world was shocked when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded killing all seven astronauts aboard.  After the horror of the Challenger disaster, a presidential commission was formed to investigate the cause of this catastrophe.  The commission faced opposition from NASA management as they tried to protect themselves from blame.  As a result, NASA’s focus was not on finding the cause of the disaster.  Richard Feynman, who was a member of the commission and one of the greatest physicists and teachers who ever lived, theorized that an O-ring failure had caused the Challenger disaster.  However, he also knew that there were members of NASA management who would try to prevent him from investigating this theory and, failing that, would try to confuse the issue by claiming that other factors contributed to the disaster.…

October 2^nd, 1996 was not a particularly important day in my life, and I am guessing it was not particularly important for most of you reading this article.  However, for one person in this world, a man who was in the prime of his life both personally and professionally, it was one of the most significant and pivotal days of his existence.  October 2^nd was the day that Lance Armstrong was diagnosed with an advanced form of testicular cancer.

Today, Lance Armstrong is a household name around the world.  The two symbols that are most commonly associated with Lance share the same color:  the yellow jersey of the Tour de France that identifies the race leader and the yellow, rubber wristband. …

Submitted by Tracey M., Sales Director:

Recently, I had an opportunity to re-engage with a large company, who was a former client from years ago.  I had secured a two-hour meeting with a group of eight decision makers representing key functions across their organization.  In preparing for the meeting, I established two primary goals for the presentation.  First, I needed to help the customer understand that our company had changed dramatically since we had worked together years ago. Today, we offer a portfolio of solutions that meet our clients’ most pressing business issues.  Second, I needed to compel each decision maker to invest in a more focused follow-up meeting to take a deeper dive into each solution area. …

If you know ahead of time the answers to the following four questions, you have a much better chance of getting the results you want. I know this is simple thinking, yet, when you miss the mark, it very often comes out of not quite knowing the answers to these questions.

1. Who are you selling to?
2. What do you want them to think about you?
3. What do you want them to feel?
4. What action do you want them to take?

Getting the results you want starts with four simple questions. Whether you are creating a direct response campaign, making cold calls, or even calling your best customer, ask yourself these four questions before you make the call.…

Do you want to have some extra fun with mini-dramas?  Well, you can and it’s easy! The next time you’re in a sales presentation where the rapport is good, your presentation has been developed from solid discovery of your prospect, and you understand their pains very well – get them involved. They know the pains they feel on a daily basis. Why not get them to help you make those pains come alive?

Let’s say you represent QuickRecovery Corp (a fictional company). You specialize in data storage and data recovery. Your Power Position is “The Safest Solution for Your Most Critical Information.”  You know that you have a unique capability to restore information from a remote location. …

Brain imaging tools are revealing the mechanism through which matching an individual’s body language and tone of voice (known as mirroring) works to build rapport between people.  An article in LiveScience, “Scientists Say Everyone Can Read Minds,” explains,

“Empathy allows us to feel the emotions of others, to identify and understand their feelings and motives and see things from their perspective. How we generate empathy remains a subject of intense debate in cognitive science.

Some scientists now believe they may have finally discovered its root. We’re all essentially mind readers, they say.”

The article goes on to further state,

“In 1996, three neuroscientists were probing the brain of a macaque monkey when they stumbled across a curious cluster of cells in the premotor cortex, an area of the brain responsible for planning movements.…

The human brain craves novelty, so says Gregory Berns, a professor at Emory University.

“The old evolutionary model that the brain exists to help us survive and reproduce is fine but too broad. If you go beyond that, the thing that helps us to survive and reproduce is the capacity to adapt in the world and to learn. The world is so unpredictable; most animals have brains like sponges absorbing so much in their drive to learn. Our brains are just primed for novelty. Nature never said you had to be happy. It said you had to learn to adapt to the world” (emphasis added, read more here).…

Why do some people drink Coke and some people drink Pepsi?  Is it strictly a matter of people making the decision based on taste?

Marketing people understand that having a strong brand is important, yet it’s challenging to show the power of branding. That’s because it is notoriously difficult to measure the impact of branding efforts. For example, if you ask people why they choose one soda over another, they will always say it’s because of the taste. They never say it’s because of the emotion they associate with the brand, and really, that’s what branding is all about – creating an emotional anchor to a product or service.…

Do you offer a solution that is perhaps not as broad and deep as your competitors, but is higher quality?  Use this Number Play at the beginning of your presentation to show that quality is more important than quantity.

11/19/1863
2
270
2
13,500

Here are some numbers.  The first one is obviously a date.  Does anyone know what happened on that date?

11/19/1863 – Gettysburg Address Delivered
It’s the date of the Gettysburg Address, which is one of the most famous speeches in the history of our country.

2 – Two Minutes for Lincoln to Deliver
The 2 represents the two minutes it took for Lincoln to deliver that entire speech.…

Over the years, Corporate Visions® has recorded salespeople going through various parts of the sales process. One thing that you would see on those videotapes is that when you get an objection, you start backing up as you try to handle it. Now, why do you backup? It all has to do with your mindset and preparation.

Many salespeople view selling as a win/lose proposition. When you see selling in that way, any threat to your ability to close a deal, for example, an objection, causes your flight or fight systems to engage. When these systems take over, you do things you wouldn’t do if you were in your normal state of mind, such as backing up.…

“I refuse to let my opponent’s youth and inexperience be a factor in this campaign,” was the response from an aging Ronald Reagan during the second Reagan/Mondale debate. According to many political pundits, this response awarded him a second term in office. The technique is known as a reframe and converts a negative perception into a positive outcome. A technique, when properly executed, that keeps you in the deal.

The origin of the term “reframe” used in sales situations is attributed to the world of art. When a painting is displayed in the oak frame it has minimal appeal; however, when a cherry-wood frame is placed around the picture it immediately comes to life – perceptions are changed and deals are made.…

Submitted by Tyler Cobbett, Senior Business Consultant:

I was working a deal with a major semiconductor manufacturer. At stake was just under a $1M for a global partnership. The prospect was a flight away. This meant that every meeting had to have as much impact as possible. The biggest risk was having someone not “get it” and us running out of time.

In the middle of one very important meeting with the buying committee tasked with evaluating our software I asked “So, what do you think?”
For a minute, the key guy on the committee looked perplexed. He then started to make several statements like “I just don’t see…” and “It looks like…”

I recognized at that point that he was a SERIOUS visual learner I hadn’t been connecting with.…

One of the reasons props work so well in presentations is they come with their own story and emotions. A cell phone makes calls. A fireman’s hat has emotional stories embedded in the symbol.

In theater it is easy to see the value of a prop. They are integral to the story being told on the stage.

In sales, where you have to create powerful, emotional messages quickly and efficiently…well, by gosh, props work wonders here too! We are the professional communicators. Why not use a technique that makes our presentations more powerful and exciting? We see it all the time in political arenas.…

Miyamoto Musashi says in “The Book of Five Rings,” “There is timing and rhythm in everything.” He goes on to explain that there is timing in strategy, dancing, music, shooting bows, and riding horses.

Is there timing and rhythm in sales? Absolutely!

In Speech
When you are in a sales call, think of this as well. The call itself has a sense of rhythm and timing. How you speak has a sense of rhythm. Pay attention to it, “dance with the prospect,” match your tonality and rhythm to how they speak. Doing so, you create rapport and make it easier for the prospect to want to work with you.…

What do the following people have in common?
- Martin Luther King
- John F. Kennedy Jr.
- The Best Salesperson in Your Company

Give up? Strong Ki! Ki is personal energy and passion built from your belief in the value of your solution or product, your conviction that your value will improve your prospects’ world, and your commitment to seeing that value realized in results.

Customer Story: How Stella got her Ki Groove Back
Everyone has nicks in their selling blade. If not, you haven’t taken it out of the case. Do you focus on those nicks, or do you just keep on swinging?…

In the beginning, choice was not a problem.

This is the first sentence in one of our favorite books of all time, “Differentiate or Die,” by Jack Trout. Either you’ve got a product or service that you can say is different, or you don’t have much at all. Read it!

Book Description
“Any damn fool can put on a deal, but it takes genius, faith, and perseverance to create a brand.”-David Ogilvy

In today’s ultra-competitive world, the average supermarket has 40,000 brand items on its shelves. Car shoppers can wander through the showrooms of over twenty automobile makers. For marketers, differentiating products today is more challenging than at any time in history yet it remains at the heart of successful marketing.…

Sales can be like golf. You start with great discovery – a great drive. You end up three feet from your prospect – on the putting green.

At this point which do you think is more important: great sales methodology, or a great message?

This is where your ability to present your message (a value proposition tailored to your prospect), either sinks the putt, or rolls off the green.

A colleague recently commented, “Messaging isn’t the most important thing in sales – it’s the only thing.” He is only mildly overstating the issue.

Without delivering a great message in the last three feet, you can kiss the sale goodbye! …

I was recently conducting a number of Power Messaging events in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for one of the world’s largest oil services company. The following word play was used, and I thought it was great, because you can easily adapt it across industries to illustrate a number of different issues such as:

• Importance of technology in your industry
• Highlight your organization as a technology leader
• Demonstrate the value of working with a company who is committed to research and development

Feel free to use it as a Grabber at your next sales call!

Apple
Amazon
BMW
Your Company

What do these companies have in common?…

When is a short story worth $11 billion dollars? On July 6, 2005 in London five cities competed to be the chosen site of the 2012 Olympics. All five competing cities (New York, Madrid, Moscow, London, and Paris) were given forty-five minutes to gain the approval, and ultimately the nod, from the international selection committee to host the event.

The presentations were somewhat predictable given the prevalence of high technology. Nevertheless, they were also spectacular as top directors orchestrated multi-media presentations that showcased their city in the most favorable light. Each presentation displayed a vibrant population participating in a number of activities that harnessed the energy of a world audience.…

Submitted by Jim Hashman, Director, Sales L and D, Comcast Cable:

Door-to-door selling has always had its special set of challenges, especially because people feel so bombarded with choices all day long. You finally arrive home from a long day at work or with the kids, and the doorbell rings. Who wants to be faced with yet another decision?

I decided it was time to make this decision a fun, entertaining, and easy one for our clients. So I signed up our field teams to go through a special blend of Power Messaging that focused on a 20-minute sales cycle. The management team responsible for the sales group also attended.…

I was speaking to a high-end commercial photographer this weekend about the images he produces for clients. He spoke of one client that wanted multiple, unique, location images they could use in their advertising. The job involved location scouts, several people on the shoot, handling lighting, etc. The total bid for the contract was $250,000. The interesting thing? It’s not an unusual request.

Now here’s the rub. These images, though one-of-a-kind, artistically balanced, and creative, quite probably would have little real revenue generating value to the client. To me this client, and so many like them, have lost their way.

Most images on advertisements, web sites, and brochures are pretty pedestrian.…

One of my favorite boyhood memories is lying in bed at night with my father and two brothers and listening to his adventures as a door-to-door salesman. On summer evenings we would go outside in the backyard, lay down a blanket, snuggle up in his outstretched arms, locate the big-dipper and other constellations, (which I now realize he made up names for) and story time would commence. We were spell bound over a dog on the loose or a fire truck that raced to the corner of Seventh and Main.

As adults we still listen to a speaker or salesperson as they break into a personal story in part because the origin of the story often summons fond memories.…

When I took my children to see “The Titanic” my daughter, Beth, had tears streaming down her face over what happened to these lovers. My son, Adam, continued to go over and over the scene of when the ship went down and how they were hanging on to the railing. My daughter, Kelsey, wanted to get the sound track. Each one responded from their preferred learning channel driving different emotional reactions.

Neural Linguistic Programming (NLP) is the science of peoples’ preferred learning channels: visual, auditory or kinesthetic. Visual people tend to process information best in graphic, visual form. Auditory people respond best from what they hear.…

One of every three telephones lines flows through Siemens’ switches. However, being the leader often makes you a target of competitors.  To remain the leader, and forge ahead, Siemens’ needed a unified story that clearly defined their market differentiation and could be positioned by their sales teams as the only viable solution for their prospects.

We started Siemens with a 4-day Power Positioning workshop to uncover their unique company story and fortify it with defensible proof that was actually valuable to their prospect.  They learned how to build contrast and position their products, so they clearly stood apart from the competition.…

Submitted by Brad Reddell, Sales Rep, IMS:

What do Directors of Surgery, Surgeons, and Columbus have in common?

A different way of looking at the world can change the face of history.

This was a client we had done “spotty” business with previously, nothing consistent. My goal with this account was to alter the perception of our company from that of a reactive “call if there is a problem” company to a Surgical Management Partner. Changing the way they do business while getting them comfortable and confident with this change. A big task!

Prior to the meeting, to set expectations, I FedEx’ed each person a miniature galleon ship in a bottle.…

Here’s a story you could use to grab your customers attention, and illustrate that you can always learn something new.

There was once an ambitious man who accomplished all of his goals very early in life. As a result he became depressed. He had given up all hope of ever learning something new. One bitter winter evening he was sitting in his den before a roaring fire. Just then he was startled by a knock at the door. There, shivering violently in his doorway was a small ragged boy. He had come to beg for coals, for his family had no means to start a fire.…

Have you ever had a customer mistakenly think that one of your competitors had a feature that only you had?  What about vice versa?  Have you ever learned this information AFTER the buying decision was made?  If so, you are not alone.  Salespeople across all industries complain of the same problem, particularly when selling complex products with lengthy sales cycles.

Memory plays a critical role in buying decisions. In a Forbes magazine article, In Search of the Buy Button, Richard Silberstein, a neuroscientist with the Brain Sciences Institute at the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia explains, “People who are more likely to purchase a product show significantly higher memory encoding than those who are less likely.” So, how can you help cause that “memory encoding” to happen?…

At Corporate Visions, we often define a Big Picture as a simple, graphical (visual) illustration of how your product or service impacts the life of your prospect. The best Big Pictures can be drawn on a napkin and show contrast.

When you look at this definition and compare it to what impresses your Old Brain – the decision maker – you will see a direct relationship, and as a result, understand why it is very important to use a Big Picture in every customer conversation.

Remember that the Old Brain is impressed by six specific areas:  Emotion, First and Last, Contrast, Visual, Simple, Personal and Concrete.…

Steven Sprenger, President of Strategic Knowledge Sciences, credits Power Messaging as a catalyst for creating value propositions that helped him secure strategic partnerships and get CEO traction in large Fortune 100 accounts.

Steven explains, “Over the course of my 25 year career in the IT and enterprise software industry, I have seen countless inefficiencies in the way companies go-to-market and track, measure, and improve their most critical business process to survive. Many companies operate similar to 19th century medicine, lacking diagnostic instruments and crude ineffective treatment modalities. I founded SKS in September, 2003 to provide a Six-Sigma approach to re-engineering and improving sales and marketing business processes to help clients move the sales needle.…

When you pick your Power Positions you choose them because they have three main qualifications: they are unique to you, important to your prospect, and defensible. They become the battlefields you want to fight your competitor on, so that you can win the deal.

“Important to your prospect” is often the qualification that gets short-sheeted when companies pick their Power Positions.

When is something important to the prospect?  When it is “valuable” to them –when it is literally dripping with financial value, business value, and personal value.  We know that personal value is the hardest to quantify, yet it has the most dramatic effect on sales.…

Submitted by Ken G., Corporate Visions Alum:

I was selling Patch Management capabilities and my prospect was looking at several companies.  We wouldn’t have the specific capabilities that they were looking for a few months out, which put me at a disadvantage.

Then I discovered our competitor was emailing trial software and supporting the client only over the phone with a 24-hour lag time. This was a source of frustration for them. I saw an opportunity to be in service with three distinct advantages:

1. Local presence
2. Longevity in the industry
3. Ability to deliver better service

So I set up a meeting and asked the client to tell us what they liked about the tool.…

Everyone in Advertising knows that people buy on emotion. It’s true. Once the emotional decision is made the justification comes quickly. Unfortunately, as a salesperson, I was taught to keep emotion out of my sales presentations. “Just create a strong business case and they will buy!” I’ve learned, and so have you, that prospects need to be engaged at an emotional level. When they are, their ability to make a decision becomes easier.

One of the most powerful messaging techniques to accomplish this is the “mini-drama.” Acting out a day-in-the-life of your prospect is an effective way to create emotion. However, my experience working with sales professionals indicates this technique is rarely used.…

A number  of years ago I was sitting in an interview for a big-time, national  accounts position with a very well-respected high tech company. The VP  of Sales pulled out my resume, perused it for a moment, and then, as he  began reclining in his large leather chair, proceeded to ask his first  question: “So, what’s your current Elevator Pitch?” “My what?” I replied. “You  know, you’re Elevator Pitch. You and I, we’re stuck in an elevator  headed to the 22nd floor, I turn to you and introduce myself and ask –  ‘So, what do you do?’”

The  next few moments were a blur and quite frankly, I have no idea how I  responded or exactly what I said.…

I was watching a fascinating PBS Frontline special recently called “The Persuaders.” It took an inside look into the world of advertising and marketing.  Do you realize research shows that 80% of all the decisions you make in a lifetime are emotionally based? Did you know that only 20% of your decisions are based in fact or logic?

You may have heard it phrased as “people buy on emotion and justify with fact.”  I read an article recently that stated it slightly differently: “people shop logically and buy emotionally” (paraphrased).

Have you ever had those sales deals you’ve been working on, the ones that were going to be “slam dunks,” drag on so long that 6, 12, or 18 months later you’re still trying to close the deal? …

“Who you are shouts so loudly in my ears, I can’t hear what you are saying.”
– Ralph Emerson

As a salesperson, you often spend an enormous amount of time and energy picking the words you use to sell your products and services – but is that where your focus should be?

Studies show that your audience receives just 7% of your message through the words you use – 38% is received through your voice. The remaining 55% is received through your body language.  Surprised by those numbers?  Most people are at first, until they take the time to think about them.…

Submitted by Mike, Corporate Visions Alum:

Data Dump
In my first presentation I showed each and every feature and function of my product, leaving nothing to the imagination. Later that month I found myself in a Power Messaging® workshop and realized that I might have lost that deal and now knew why. I presented a “data dump” to my client who has no idea what my product can do for him or, how my product is unique. On my next break at the workshop I called and scheduled another meeting for that evening.

At prospect’s office — second call
Mike: The President of the company and his key staff greeted me.…

Several years ago I was working on a deal with Sylvester, the Vice President of Information Technology at Mount Sinai Hospital. Sylvester needed a software product that would insure the error-free operation of its mainframe systems, and our product fit his needs perfectly. The deal was essentially “closed.” The problem was that the IT budget was in competition with approvals for life saving hospital equipment purchases. To the hospital board, computers and software are infrastructure support, not well understood, and not critical to patient care.

Founded in 1852, Mount Sinai is one of the country’s oldest and largest teaching hospitals. Mount Sinai’s 1,171-bed hospital has a medical staff of nearly 1,800.…

A large computer accessory company was looking to streamline their processes and move away from an in-house platform to outsourcing. Their goal was to free IT and staff from monthly manual reporting while adding workflow for the lacking division of duties. The company was looking for ways to eliminate as many manual tasks as possible without sacrificing ease of use. They wanted one easy-to-use system with proven functionality that streamlined as many Payroll, Time and Attendance, Recruiting, and HR functions as possible. My company sells such a one-stop service. They looked at us and several of our competitors. While many of these competitors offered similar benefits, no single competitor had the breath and depth we had.…

Gordon Foster faced such a challenge launching his Voice-over IP (VoIP) network assessment company, ALANYSIS. His service helps companies determine the feasibility of implementing a VolP on their network. If a company knows their network can easily handle the VoIP install, the results will be a benefit – not a disaster.

Sounds simple enough, right? However, companies looking to implement VoIP networks are not well-informed of the risks, costs, and liabilities of the implementation process. Therefore, Gordon needed to inform, educate, and sell two audiences: the phone system resellers, and their customers. He needed to bring the unique benefits of his service to life, hitting the pain points of the customer and the value-add for the resellers that insured their implementation was successful and sustainable.…

Two popular Word Plays many alumni use are the “What if you” question and the “Imagine” statement. These are two very powerful Grabbers that engage your prospect and ask them to place themselves inside the message you are delivering.

“Imagine” is like Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” statement. Essentially, he asks the audience to “Imagine a world where…” He puts an alternate reality into place. Although he uses “I” (violating “you” phrasing), in this context it works well because I, the listener, is invited to join his dream. He is able to transfer ownership to the audience easily because they want to go; they want to live this dream.…

Do you ever get the objection that the prospect/customer had a bad service experience with your company in the past?  For some salespeople, it’s an occasional objection.  For others, it’s a daily challenge. What do you do if your business delivered bad service to a broad swath of customers in the recent past?

First, let’s assume that your company has made investments in fixing your service group (if your company won’t address an obvious deficiency, you may want to look for an employer who will). You could then try to provide your customers/prospects with data around how your company has improved service (i.e.…

What could you say if your prospect feels you are too small a company compared to the competition and is worried you could be acquired?

Great things come in small packages too. Large companies focus on great solutions when they consider acquiring smaller companies. By focusing on our great technology, you will have what others want before they realize it.

“Bigger is Better”, is a very popular American  belief, but I look at the clothes your wearing, and the fact that you look nice, and you’re comfortable therefore it meets your needs – it’s a good fit. Our customers view this solution in a similar manner, “It’s not a matter of size, it’s a matter of fit –and responding appropriately to your current needs.” …

My prospect had a challenge that our software could uniquely solve better than anyone else. But they started comparing us to a competitor who told him they could set up their database in just five hours. I responded that ours could be set up quickly as well, however the extra time it took over five hours would more than pay for itself in the long run, given the scope of his needs and objectives.

Then I offered the following analogy:

I’ve been renovating my house which involves painting a lot of wood trim. Have you ever painted wood? If you don’t take the time to prime the wood, it will begin to peel over time.…

Augustine Medicals’ “warming blanket” had superior healing and patient post-op recovery qualities. However, its initial cost was more expensive than the competitors, so they were losing sales, market share and field passion.

By uncovering and focusing the key differentiating values their product offered hospitals and patients, they were able to minimize the initial cost issue. Cost-effective and life-saving benefits like the ability to maintain balanced body heat which reduced post-surgical recovery time, trauma and liability, actually saves hospitals hundreds of thousands of dollars. Augustine Medical was able to reframe this objection into a critical advantage for hospitals by illustrating the cost of not using this product…it actually became too expensive NOT to own!…

Kevin Molloy sells educational software to colleges and universities. He used the techniques he learned from Power Messaging®, to sell $35 million in software… before the application was delivered to market. Here’s how he won the business.

Imagine watching three weeks worth of presentations. Do you think prospects want to see every panel on our application? Well, that’s what our competitors do. What the prospects really want to know is how our application is going to help them. To do that, I made my presentation a story and experience for them.

In Power Messaging I learned to help prospects make a decision, and identify aspects of our application that make us unique, the best, and the only one that can provide a solution to their problems.…

What is it that you tell others about who you are and what you believe in? What is it that people remember and easily tell others about you? Is it your story? Does it change as other people become a part of your life? Are you writing tomorrow’s copy today?

Your brain is a highly associative organ. Stories create associations that resonate with the way your brain organizes information constantly. Your logical mind makes leaps of understanding because of its ability to associate. Stories are associations, mental metaphors perfectly suited for how our mind works. Following a story line, it’s easy to take lessons and apply them to everyday life.…

While traveling throughout the world sharing Power Messaging® I realized how small the world really is. I just finished a workshop for our affiliates in England that included 20+ different companies throughout Europe.

There is a concern when you don’t have the “home court” advantage that these techniques, especially Grabbers, may not work as well in other cultures, especially when you consider what buyers are used to seeing. I hear things like “that’s too American” and “that will not work for our culture, we are way too conservative for that”.

Our co-founder Karen Sage once said that the Old Brain is basic to all humans.…

With seven minutes to grab your prospects attention, Word and Number Plays are simple techniques to establish credibility, highlight key benefits and link your Power Positions to your prospects needs, pains and desires – fast!

“What if you…” Questions
Asking relevant “What if you…” or “Imagine….” questions get people thinking about how their life would improve with your solution. When you link each ‘what if you..’ question to one of your Power Positions then no other competitor can even ask these questions- because they can’t provide the answers/solutions you can.

Word in Common Questions
“Words in Common” questions use a variety of words with a common denominator as an analogy for a Power Position.…

An alumnus used a paper shredder to shred real one dollar bills in front of his prospect. He shredded seven bills before he began speaking. The presence of pain in the audience was very visible as if they were ready to jump on him if he took one more bill out of his wallet.

His point was to demonstrate how money was being destroyed every day his prospect continued without his solution. He carried the shredded money to the audience and placed little piles in front of several people. At the end of his presentation, he took out a much larger $100 bill and held it over the shredder.…

What happens when a prop backfires?

“Lightening Gel” is a product that hardens into a solid immediately when liquid is added. It adheres to water poured into a cup, so when the cup is turned upside down, nothing comes out.

At Corporate Visions we use Lightening Gel to demonstrate the lack of information retained by your prospects when you spend all your time talking about features and benefits that don’t mean anything to them.

On the first day of a Power Messaging workshop, I was looking for water to perform our ‘water trick’ Grabber with my Lightning Gel. I looked around the room but there wasn’t any water.…

Example One:
Place a $50 bill under a plate and prep someone from the audience to stand up and in a foreign language (that no one else in the group would understand) say, “There is a $50 bill under this plate, for anyone who wants it.” The audience is dumbfounded. Then repeat it in an angry voice. Still the audience is dumbfounded. Finally, have the person translate. The point? How frustrating is it to miss an opportunity because you can’t understand the information? Or you could use this to make the point, “It isn’t what you know that can kill you…it’s what you don’t!”

Example Two:
A CVi alumni named Steinbeck printed dollars with his photo on them.…

Think of the last company that bought your product or service. What was happening to them before they bought? What changed after they bought? How did their life improve? What will happen to this prospect if they buy from your competition vs. you?  (Note: Never slam a competitor.  Simply help your prospect see the difference.)

Business, Financial and Personal value are the basic ingredients to a purchasing decision.

Build business, financial, and personal value by considering the following:

• How will this buying decision impact your customer’s revenue streams?
• How does this affect your customer’s business (competitive edge, ranking, etc.)?
• What will it mean to the people (the users of your product or service) in that company?

…

Kurt Shaver sells electronic catalog software. While his sales cycle is typically three months, here’s a story of how he won a $100,000 deal in just one week’s time applying Power Messaging.

“I was up against a competitor whose product was ten times less expensive than mine. What a challenge! How could I convince my prospect that he should pay so much more for my product?”

After learning Power Messaging techniques, I knew going into my sales presentation that I wasn’t going to win if I simply showed all of my product’s technical features. If I did, my prospect wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between me and my competitor, and then I would simply get hammered on the price issue.…

When I was taking math and physics classes in college, we spent a lot of time viewing relationships along x-y-z axis. This gave you a constant view of “life” along various frames of references.

When I got into sales, what was interesting to me was how well this translated over to how I would present to my prospects. If you figured out how they viewed life, what their frames of references were, then you could figure out how to sell your solution to them.

Were they very excited about the possibility of getting things done, or were they afraid of risks?…

If you knew you were winning the deal, how confident and comfortable would you be in your presentation?

Would you feel, look, and seem more relaxed? Would your natural sense of humor come out? Winners can afford to be funny; losers are always dead serious. The prospect unconsciously links your relaxed humor with a winner.

Ever seen a great comedian? How do you feel when someone makes you laugh? What is it about people thoroughly enjoying themselves that makes you feel so comfortable?

Here are five ways the power of humor can help persuade people.

1. Builds Rapport.
When people laugh together, the seriousness of separation disappears, and a bond of trust is created.…

Telling good customer stories shows your prospects that you are more interested in solving problems than selling them your product or solution. Masterful storytelling is one of the fine arts of great selling. Keep these tips in mind when you share customer stories.

DO’s

• Keep it Personal. Use the names of people in the story or their company name (if possible.) The more personal you make the story, the more power it will have to connect and affect your prospects.
• Use Contrast. There are two types:
1. Before and After – before they bought your product and after they started using it.…

Quotes relevant to your conversation are great Grabber ice-breakers. Think about using one of these at your next sales call.

“To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer.”
- Paul Ehrlich

“Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach him how to fish and you get rid of him all weekend.”
- Zenna Schaffer

“Why don’t they make the whole plane out of that black box stuff.”
- Steven Wright

“Whenever I’m caught between two evils, I take the one I’ve never tried.”
- Mae West

“The pen is mightier than the sword, and considerably easier to write with.”
- Marty Feldman

“If at first you don’t succeed, try again.…

A colleague made $3.6 M in personal income in 2000 and $1.8 M in 2001 selling software. I asked him, “How do you do it, what’s your secret to selling?” He replied, “I don’t sell them anything, I just tell stories and they sell themselves.”

What story are you telling to your customers and prospects? If you went into a buyer’s office and said, “Boy, I took a look at your department and what a mess! I doubt you will be in business next year if you keep doing what you’re doing.” How do you think they would respond? They would probably show you the door.…

A good Customer Story always answers the following questions, also known as “the 5 D’s.”

• Describe the company
• What was their Dilemma (their pain)?
• What did they Desire?
• What did you Deliver (the gain)?
• How were you Different?

When sharing a story, don’t introduce it (“Let me tell you a story…”). Just jump right in and tell it.

…

Every person leading people to decide between one alternative over another is a salesperson. That includes Jesus, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, every president, attorney, motivational speaker, as well as your kindergarten teacher, mother, and father. Anyone intent on influencing your life choices is actually trying to sell you on something.

Great leaders are “salespeople.” They have to be to inspire a following. Imagine a person who stood up and said to a crowd, “Follow me,” and walked off. Who would follow? Not many.

However, if that person gave a rousing speech that rallies the group to take action – people will follow.…

Picture your last sales presentation or demonstration. How much of the material presented actually needed to be there? How long did it take to present? And what was your reason for presenting that way?

“It’s a technical presentation and they NEED to see it all” or “..they WANT to see it all.”
“It’s what Marketing gave us to present.” Our favorite:  “Stop me when you see something you like!”

In the age of information, it is easy to overwhelm your prospect with content not even relevant to the sale and actually make their decision more difficult.

Help yourself succeed by avoiding the most common Deadly Sins of Sales Presentations:

Deadly Sin #1 – Too Much Information
Dimming the lights and letting Power Point, (loaded with content your prospect is inclined to read), lead the way — takes the attention off you.…

Yes – anytime you can quickly engage your prospect’s mind – you have grabbed their attention. Then the challenge is to keep it!

“What if you….” questions are particularly effective over the phone. They help your prospect imagine how your solution would improve their lives. Start the call with “What if you never had to _________again? If you can get them to immediately start thinking about what you are proposing and then participate with a response — they will be compelled to continue.

Stories with Contrast create impact, by highlighting your difference so your buyer understands your value – even over the phone.…

Sir Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1929. However, no one recognized the value of his discovery until 1940. In the meantime, thousands of people died of bacterial infection.

Two Oxford scientists, Sir Howard Florey and Dr. Ernst Chain, happened upon Fleming’s report in 1940 (that received yawns from the British scientific community in 1929), and took up where Fleming left off. They compiled evidence and the implications for medicine into a compelling presentation that spoke to the immediate benefits for people suffering from infectious disease.

Florey and Chain were given grants from the Medical Research Council and the Rockefeller Foundation. By June of 1944, soldiers were being treated by penicillin.…

While preparing for my upcoming sales meeting, I felt more intimidated about coming up with a Grabber for my alumni team than if I was presenting to a new prospect.

I wanted to stress the power of service and how keeping the watermark high was the most critical factor in gaining and retaining our clients (we service surgical equipment).

A CVi Client Services coaching session helped bring ideas to the surface.

One I particularly liked was what life would be like without services we depend on. Since the session was held early Saturday morning, I asked our cleaning crew not to clean one of the meeting rooms.…

What makes up a great story?  In field sales it is having the prospect in the center of the story. You make your prospect the center of your story by doing a great job of dramatizing what is unique to you and important to your prospect.

Dramatizing what is unique to you and important to your prospect is the heart of the story.

Let’s break this apart and look at the pieces.

What is Unique to You?
To know the answer to this means that you know your competition as well as yourself.  This is actually a very old concept Sun Tzu made famous in his book The Art of War. …

Graphic analogies are simple tools to help your prospect recognize the pain of their situation and make it easy for them to choose the solution you’ve presented.

Ever notice how it is easier to see someone else’s problem? This is where an analogy or metaphor can be valuable.

One of Joanna’s customers was looking to add a service and possibly another vendor onto an in-house management system. The challenge was their current system and management around it was a mess. They were wasting valuable company resources. Knowing these costs and the client’s sensitivity around it, Joanna and her team built a very client-focused Agenda and presentation.…

I used a Coin Sorter to highlight the pain of this prospect’s existing system contrasted with the gain they would realize implementing our new software.

I first had the customer help me roll coins the old way and then said, “There has to be a better way to do this.” I then brought out the coin sorting machine and explained the advantages of machine in front of me.

I compared the limitations of their existing environment to trying to sort coins by hand. Then I explained how our new solution was like using an efficient high tech machine. I could see by their interest, this was helpful in illustrating my point.…

Do you know (without looking) the letters below the number 7 on the telephone? No? The reason this information may not be ‘top of mind’ is because it isn’t critical to your survival. Without emotional attachment, it does not get committed to memory.

Robert Ornstein’s work, “The Evolution of Consciousness,” Daniel Coleman’s work on Emotional Intelligence and Professor James McGaugh from University of California at Irvine and The Memory Institute all document the relationship of emotions and memory.

McGaugh states, “Emotional excitement triggers the memory-enhancing cycle all over again, making the traumatic memory even stronger, like a spinning tire deepening the muck hole it’s stuck in with each jab of the accelerator.”

How does this relate to your message?…

Chris helps clients protect their computers from harmful virus and unauthorized IP removal. To best demonstrate the power of his unique software he uses his iPod to launch a virus into a computer. The audience doesn’t realize his computer is protected with his product. People gasp as they see the invasion begin and then suddenly it stops as the software takes over and destroys the virus. He then starts to remove proprietary information. Once again his software is there to block the virus.

The prospect was easily able to understand what this service would mean to them. Using a Mini Drama to highlight the value of proactive protection against viruses or theft of proprietary information, vs.…

Long gone are the days of simple salesman/client relationships. Today’s client is represented by a management team and/or buying committee, while the salesperson has their own management and sales team. Alliances, partners, and competitors extend the sales cycle and add to its complexity.

An inappropriate purchase can literally bankrupt a company. An extended period of implementation can cause a company to lose their competitive edge, or make them late to market. Either may be fatal to an organization.

Given this complexity, the prospect seeks simplicity from the sales team. However, what happens instead is they make the prospect’s life look even more complex by giving out too much information that doesn’t even relate to the needs of the prospect.…

It was a warm spring day in 2000, on lovely Kiawah Island, South Carolina, when I arrived to conduct a sales training class for Augustine Medical, an innovative producer of unique medical solutions. We had four classes going at the same time and I was assigned to the group that sold their Warm-Up© Therapy System. Each group would have their presentations judged on the final day, (by real doctors and nurses) to determine their “field-readiness.” One of their Power Positions was “the healing power of warmth.”

Each presentation was highlighted by remarkable stories of bedridden patients with bedsores that would not heal, until they experienced this “healing power of warmth,” which accelerated the healing process dramatically.…

The goal of sales is to have your prospect make a decision to buy from you. While sales software helps bring you and your buyer to a decision event, at the event it is what you say and how you say it that will win or lose the deal. Researchers examining this “last three feet” of the sales cycle have discovered that influencing buyers’ critical choices are emotionally based experiences.

Think back to a defining moment, or significant event, that happened in your life (graduation, first day on a new job, marriage, first child, death of a loved one, or divorce).…

There once was a traveler who, weary from the day’s journey, sought lodging for the night. He knew of an Inn where he could rest safe until morning. It was located in the Village of Truth where all the inhabitants were always truthful. He knew of another village on the road ahead, called the Village of Lies. The inhabitants of this village could only tell lies. The village was known for its danger to travelers, for it was filled with thieves. As the traveler trudged along he came to a fork in the road. One path lead to a night’s peaceful rest in Truth.…

“Translating a strategic vision into something the field can execute on is a secret to winning. They cannot execute simply from the strategic vision. The staff needs something more concrete. Messaging is the link that guides operations on how to implement strategic vision into a revenue generating reality. It takes all three to be successful: a great strategic vision, operational excellence, and great messages.”
Nick Earle CEO StreamServe

Products don’t sell themselves.
Companies grow when someone sells something, creating revenue streams. Sales occur when the right story and message compels your buyer to purchase. These messages are as fundamental to your company as oxygen is to life.…

Visual imagery is one of the most powerful tools for creating identity, memory, and emotional connection.

When buyers are inundated with graphics of products (that look so much like everyone else’s products) you make their buying decision much harder.  People don’t care what it is… until they understand what it means. A graphic that shows how their life will improve – will get their attention.

So, how can you test that your Big Picture works?

1. Is it a picture of your product…or how you can change their world?
2. Is it so easy they could draw it on a napkin and tell others about you?

…

Implied needs are general statements by prospects about their problems, their difficulties, and their dissatisfaction…frequently called “pains, needs, and desires.”

Explicit needs are specific prospect statements about their wants and desires. Successful selling in larger accounts depends on how you develop implied needs and convert them with effective questioning/messaging into explicit needs.

The impact your solution has on your customer’s needs determines perceived value. Value is based on many factors, but includes increased revenue (financial), increased market (business) and individual gain (personal). Sales effectiveness is to get buyers to acknowledge the value your solution provides in each of these areas, and connect that value to something they need now to receive the goals, benefits and objectives they are looking for.…

It’s easy to forget PowerPoint is simply another presentation medium, just part of telling your story. And like any good presentation medium, it should be balanced with variety and pace. If you are working with PowerPoint, make it come alive, by weaving in compelling stories and examples of how your solution directly impacts your prospect.

When creating your PowerPoint, remember:

• Center the content on your prospects’ world – not yours.
• Help your prospect see how your solution will solve their problem.
• Create contrast and differentiation between you and your competitors.
• Use the 5 by 5 rule: No more than 5 bullets, 5 words per bullet.

…

In a typical sales process (especially when selling highly-complex or technological solutions), the salesperson addresses the prospect’s needs, pains and desires, explaining how his solution will solve their problem. He then introduces a sales engineer or sales technician who gives the prospect a quick demo of how the product works.

Finding balance
What the technician says and how he says it can either strengthen or undermine the relationship with the prospect. Technicians, who focus only on the features and functions, make it difficult for prospects to connect their needs to the product.

Technicians who focus on the prospect’s needs first, supported by a quick experience of how these features / functions can improve lives — move the buying decision faster.…

Ann Taylor, the women’s clothing retailer, was looking to experience some revenue uplift from its online channel while decreasing administration costs through an e-commerce system upgrade. Greg Miller and his EasyAsk team, (a year-and-a-half into the sales cycle), were being undermined by a cheaper competitor. From the buyer’s perspective, both companies had similar dynamic search and navigation systems – except one was cheaper. In reality, EasyAsk had a differentiating merchandising and analytics benefit that easily warranted the extra expense.

Greg used a number play to explain how EasyAsk understood Ann Taylor’s business challenges. Greg asked, “What do 10, 5, and 1 have in common?” Ten (10) e-mails currently needed, plus five (5) people to make one (1) change.…

3-D Props are so effective that if you saw one in a presentation ten years ago the chances are high you can recall how it was used. Since they will be remembered… make sure they are:

1. Important to the prospect’s problem
2. Unique to you

Props work best when they sit inside a great story and help contrast your customers’ pain vs. the gain they will have with your solution. Before you use a prop in front of a client remember to practice, practice, practice! Ask for feedback from your colleagues.

Here are some examples from Corporate Visions alumni:

Use association to “anchor” objects to your message. …

If you are selling to someone adverse to risk, do you stress the unlimited options they get with your offering? Probably not. You would stress how your incredible team will take care of them, help them select the right options, set them up, and safely install them.  Tell this same story to a person who loves risk, and adventure (their own life story) and you can kiss the deal good-bye.  This “adventure” buyer will respond better to, “try it this way, no one else has, show others the way and be the pioneer or hero”.

Salespeople doing 300% of quota rep, year after year, are Story Masters.…

Neuro-scientist, Michael Gazzaniga, in his book, The Mind’s Past, identifies a “Story Maker” brain function located in the left lobe. Its purpose is to constantly convert “reality” into a “perceived reality”.

When Porsche tells you a story about their car, is it about the car, or helping you imagine how much fun you will have driving it? High-end products always sell to your Story Maker. They give you “ingredients” that enroll you in their story. Harley does this with motorcycles. It is not about the motorcycle, it is about the Harley riders, the club, and the good times.

In sharing stories, our first inclination is to fill in every hole, every detail.…