CHAPTER 6

How to Craft Our Key Messages (The Who, Why, and What Play)

Let’s assume we’ve moved beyond the small talk stage. We know a little about the social life of our conversational partner and they know a little about ours. We’re on first name terms.

As we’ve seen in the last chapter, we’re now ready to go deeper in terms of conversation and content. It’s an opportunity for us to take the spotlight and say something about who we are.

This is another area that is all too easy to leave to chance. Some networkers will attempt to “wing it” and hope they find the right words for the occasion. Others think that the planning of messages leaves things too scripted.

Strategic Business Networking disagrees. It recommends careful analysis of our own value proposition and the detailed crafting of messages. These should support a compelling proposition that states, “We can be a valued contact, consultant, or employee.”

Let’s be clear. In a networking situation, we are very much in the mode of selling ourselves. We need to have a good understanding of what our “product” features, advantages, and benefits are, and how we can best articulate them.

And articulate them well enough to burn in the memory of our conversation partner—because being memorable is a prime objective.

The key highlights of these messages need to be learned. In this way, they are ready at hand and capable of being employed when opportunity strikes.

It would be great if we could come up with a magic formula to help everyone determine their key messages.

Unfortunately, it isn’t that simple. What we have to offer is invariably as unique as the individual. No two people are exactly alike. And, for the best possible reasons, only the individual can get to the heart of what they do and even why they do it.

It takes work to answer these questions, but the good news is that some pointers are to hand to help us figure things out.

Hints and Tips

To dissect our message, let’s consider three areas. These build on the very valuable work of Joshua Waldman, founder of “Career Enlightenment”:

1. Who Are You?

This question is usually the shorthand answer to the usual “and what do you do?” networking question. This really means “Please give me a short, succinct description which I can understand and process easily. Oh, and make it memorable if you can.”

We could say:

“I’m an analyst for an investment bank”

or

“I’m an accountant.”

In both cases, the problem is we would simply be parroting our job titles. And job titles are poor indicators of what we do or the value we bring to an organization.

Simple titles can also have the effect of sparking “schemas” within the listener. Schemas are internal models of how we categorize the world around us. They are a kind of cognitive shorthand to make daily life easier for our brains.

But they carry a risk. The unintended consequence of describing ourselves simply as an accountant is that we are lumped into the “accountant file” within the listener’s internal model—whether we fit it or not.

As such, we stand little chance of differentiating ourselves from how all the other accountant acquaintances have been categorized. And it’s highly unlikely we’ll stand out in any way.

Here are some alternative replies in each case:

“I work with numbers and help link data to the important decisions made by our investment bank fund managers.”

Or:

“I help businesspeople get behind the figures in their financial reports. This makes them better managers.”

In both cases, we are keeping the initial reply tight and succinct. But we are also hinting at the practical effect of what we do and hence the value we bring (better decisions, better managers).

These types of statements always carry more interest than bland job descriptions. They also ratchet up the chance that our conversation partner will pick up on the message and ask a question in follow up. And interest, together with individual meaning (what psychologists call salience), are great at binding the memory.

Another good approach to get to the root of our value proposition is the “So what?” question. This is a variation on a technique taught by global negotiation specialist, Derek Arden.

Here’s how it works.

First, we need to think again of ourselves as a product or service. Then, ask ourselves:

“What’s the product of the product?” (e.g., what’s the real outcome of what I do?)

Or

“What’s the difference that makes the difference?” (e.g., what is it about what I do that has an impact?)

The next stage, once we have an answer to these questions is to ask, “So what?” In effect, we are self-questioning our responses.

We can carry on with the “So what?” question until we feel we have exhausted it and can go no further.

At this point, we are probably very close to the essence of what we do.

As a very useful by-product, we’ll also have a greater understanding of why we do it and what it means to us. We start to recognize how what we do makes us feel.

Thinking is not the same as feeling. Thoughts can be justified, critiqued, examined, or maybe even attacked. Whereas feelings “just are.”

And tapping into these “feeling” aspects can be very useful.

Social scientists agree that human decisions are invariably made based on “feel” rather than the cold, hard logic that we mistakenly believe has the upper hand.

If we articulate our worth in the form of what our role means to us, it can also have a very strong impact on others. This includes others in the position of making decisions that might involve us.

It’s as if the meaning element is contagious. People wake up to who we really are.

They also remember us better. This is because they can more easily recall not who we are, but how we made them feel when they met us.

Powerful stuff!

(If we need convincing further, there are some great examples in Simon Sinek’s TED talk “How Great Leaders Inspire Action”—over 55 million viewers can’t be wrong!)

2. Why Are You the Best?

It’s a competitive market out there. It’s, therefore, a good idea to have some content in our conversations to demonstrate our unique qualities.

If we need some assistance with this, a bit of visualization can sometimes help.

Think, when were we at our best? It doesn’t have to be a business example. We might call to mind a situation within our personal, community, or family lives.

We could try naming our biggest success. What role did we play? What are we most proud of?

Just getting our thinking in this mode can help in answering the question, “Why are you the best?”

Many of us can find talking about ourselves something of a challenge. Maybe we are quiet in our nature and would rather not toot our own horn.

It’s accepted that different people have different personality characteristics. It’s a sobering thought that research also identifies a key difference between extraverts and introverts when it comes to communication and influencing.

In general, people overestimate the cognitive abilities of extraverts. Extraverts tend to be able to articulate their thoughts well to influence and persuade.

Those of a more introverted nature are not similarly blessed. The result is the reasoning skills and general intelligence of introverts are often underestimated by others.

Of course, we are talking about extremes. No one is completely extraverted or introverted (Carl Jung, who first coined these words, was against classifying people in this way). In fact, it’s estimated that two-thirds of the population are “‘ambiverts”—a mixture of the two.

It comes back to making a choice. If we do find it difficult to talk about ourselves, we need to consider trying on a different role and slowly, carefully practicing and developing that skill.

There’s another aspect. Culturally, it can be difficult to talk about one’s own virtues; society might frown upon it—although some cultures seem to have absolutely no difficulty with it at all!

Recognizing this as an issue and one that we need to develop a strategy for, there’s a chapter later in the book on Building Mentor and Advocate Networks. Here we’ll talk about the dos and don’ts of bragging.

So, the first area was Who are you? and the second Why are you the best? Now, here’s the third area.

3. What Kind of Work (Or Client, If Self-Employed) Are You Looking For?

From a career development viewpoint, we need to give others a sense of our direction of travel. What have we done, where are we now, and where are we headed?

But here’s the problem. We sometimes want to spread the net as widely as possible to maximize our chances of finding a new employer or client. In our attempt to catch all, we can mistakenly position ourselves as a kind of Swiss Army knife. Name it, and we can do it!

But this doesn’t work, and it would certainly be a handicap in terms of memorability and standing out.

We can’t be “all things to all people.” We must think about a specialization.

This means starting with an area where we can showcase our expertise, and which allows us to speak enthusiastically about our experiences.

Best-selling author and the name behind “Poised for Partnership,” Heather Townsend, talks of becoming the “go to” person within a selective niche.

If we can differentiate from the competition and position ourselves in a memorable way, we can really have an impact on those we meet.

International public speaker Susan Luke Evans has a great phrase: “Pick your lane!”

Additional Hints and Tips

Here are some additional tips that professional networkers have found useful in crafting their messages:

Storytelling

We should try to weave what we say into a coherent story. All stories have a start, middle, and end. So, for example, we could start with some brief scene setting. Then we could move on to the “meat” of what we want to say. After this, we could finish with a recap of what we are about.

We can think of this as a kind of verbal “bullet point.” This plays neatly to the “All about the bongs” example of News at Ten.

It also recognizes years of psychological research which demonstrates that, when humans are presented with information, “primacy and recency” applies.

This means that we are biased toward remembering the first thing we experience in a sequence and the last thing. We tend to remember very little in-between.

As such, we should be sure that our priority information is contained within those slots—first and last.

Alliteration, Rhyme, and the Rule of Three

It’s a good idea to try some alliteration when telling our story. This is when a series of words in a row or close together have the same first letter sound. For example, “Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled Peppers.”

This doesn’t mean that we quote tongue twisters in our conversation!

Let’s think of Heather Townsend’s “Poised for Partnership” example. The phrase rolls off the tongue. Similarly, business intelligence specialist, Julia Hobsbawm, talks of “Names Not Numbers”—a great example of alliterative copywriting.

There’s something about these word collections that binds the memory. This may be an evolutionary relic from our communal storytelling past.

Rhyme is also a great tool for making messages stick.

Advertisers know this very well. If we ask ourselves the question “Beans means …,” hopefully, most of us would recall the slogan and (importantly) the name of the advertiser as Heinz.

Again, it’s not a question of forcing a limerick into our message. But an accountant might describe themselves as a “numbers ninja,” a lawyer as a “legal eagle” or we might refer to the social dread of business gatherings as a “networking nightmare.”

We spoke of schemas as a form of cognitive efficiency. The Rule of Three is similar. It recognizes our limited short-term capacity to hold information and therefore chunks it up into three segments.

Politicians know the rule very well and employ it regularly. Consider the U.S. Declaration of Independence:

“Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

So, if we want to be understood and our message needs to be made less complex, expressing the message in the form of “A and B, then C” will help.

Alliteration, rhyme, and the Rule of Three are all very useful communication tools. (See what we did there!)

Analogy

If we are having trouble explaining ourselves, it can sometimes help to provide an example from a completely different sphere and then make the comparison.

It’s amazing how often this can turn on a lightbulb in people’s minds. When this happens, it’s always very clear from the reaction we get, and the penny suddenly drops.

One example from the commercial world is the story of business turnaround specialists. Experts in their field, they take on the management of problem companies and literally “turn them around” to profitability.

But the very detailed and specific nature of their work makes it difficult for them to explain clearly exactly what they do. Apart from this, client confidentiality means it is impossible to quote specific examples by way of illustration.

In Association Football (Soccer), the rules allow for players to be substituted during the game. The strategy behind player substitutions in sport would merit a whole new book!

Certain footballers have become known for their skill in coming onto the field of play late in the game and making a significant difference to the outcome of the game. They may provide a valuable “assist” or even score a goal themselves. They are impact players or “Super Subs.”

Turnaround specialists can usefully describe their role as a kind of “Super Sub.” This way, they get their message across quickly and clearly to a general audience familiar with the normal use of the football term.

Upping Our Elvis

We’ll have gathered by now, that conversation can be very nuanced. That’s to say that delicate changes in environment and context can make the same phrase or question a winner, or a complete “get me out of here” moment.

Anthropologists know about this stuff and give it several monikers. They would say that language is a cultural tool, and, like most general-purpose tools, it can be used in different ways. A hammer can both drive in nails and pull them out (if it’s a claw head hammer).

Now, when we get down into the nitty gritty of an industry or occupation, we know there are certain words that are generally understood in the profession, but are not known in the same way by the general public.

An example? For most people, Campari is a drink often enjoyed with soda. But for a banker in the profession of lending money, “CAMPARI” is a mnemonic to help remember the key questions to be posed to any borrower before they part with the cash!

So, “campari” means something to one group of people and something else to another.

Development of a kind of secret language is useful. If we know what it is and, more importantly, how and when to use it, we can draw our conversational partner closer to us. And, as we have seen before and shall discuss again later, pull is always stronger than push (see “The Importance Play/the Importance of Play”).

It’s useful therefore to think about terms, names, phrases, and so on that are somewhat unique to our industry, trade, or profession. Because using these in the right context can be very useful. You become known for “speaking the right language.”

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