Get to the Gut of CEO Decision-Making
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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. They don’t know what they need to do to take their organization to the next level… so don’t ask them. Tell them. The burden of proof of why they need to do something different rests squarely on your shoulders. Come to your prospects armed with new insight (something they didn’t know about a problem they didn’t even know they had), wrapped in the context of why it’s going to be deeply painful if they don’t move quickly.
Salespeople, Bewitch the Old Brain
Executive personality types can’t be seduced by data dumps. They make decisions with their gut — their overall impression of you, their judgment on whether your company will prove to be a strategic partner to them, and the value of your product. Then, if necessary, they’ll justify that decision with facts. So if you want to message for a decision, you need to get past the gatekeeper of their neocortex (which analyzes your data) and appeal to their Old Brain, which makes the impulse call. Techniques taught in Power Messaging like creating contrast, setting context, and Big Pictures are meant to stimulate their instincts and win their ‘gut’ over.
Attend the Marketing and Sales Messaging Conference
Creating and delivering insightful, compelling messaging that drives for a decision is the entire focus of the 2012 Marketing and Sales Messaging Conference. This event is your opportunity to tap into the experience of companies like Wells Fargo, Lawson Software and Centurylink, as well as get inspired from keynote speakers Billy Beane (of Moneyball) and Ben Zander (Conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra).
The conference is filling up at 4X the pace of last year… so sign up now, and bring your colleagues. And to create some urgency for your Old Brain…here’s how much time you have left to register to get early bird pricing of $399.
Great post, you are spot on with what you say about the importance of the gut for decision making. People really do listen to their ‘intuitions’ from their heart and gut when making decisions. Turns out that ‘listening to the heart’ and ‘listening to the gut’ are NOT metaphors. Neuroscience has recently shown that we have complex and functional neural networks or ‘brains’ in both our heart and gut. We’ve just completed 2 years of behavioral modeling research, informed by the neuroscience evidence, tracking the core competencies and prime functions of the heart and gut brains. And we’ve uncovered simple and powerful techniques for communicating with and aligning the three brains (head, heart and gut). So you are right when you say that CEO’s and Managers need to listen to, speak to and align the multiple brains of both themselves and their customers. And if you are interested you can read more about our work at http://www.mbraining.com or in our book ‘mBraining – Using your multiple brains to do cool stuff’.