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GETTING RELEVANT: What Customers and Prospects Actually Want (and Need) to Hear

THE GREAT FOOTBALL COACH Lou Holtz once said, “Never tell your problems to anyone. Twenty percent don't care and the other 80 percent are glad you have them.”

That's funny yet also uncomfortably true, at least in our everyday lives. But when it comes to business messaging, things are a bit different. It is more likely that 80 percent (or more) of consumers don't care about your challenges. That has little to do with you—and a lot to do with consumers' general mindset.

Approximately half of Americans say they don't have enough time to do the things they want. According to Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of the Gallup Poll, there isn't much new here; that proportion has held pretty steady—within a few percentage points either way—for several decades. That means half of the marketplace is feeling a regular sense of scarcity. When people feel that their time is scarce, they tend to lose patience and turn inward even more than usual.

We have technology to potentially alleviate the time pressure, yet that same technology can also be part of the problem. Many of us are drowning in inputs and information but are still thirsty for a sense of direction. We are stuck in a pattern of always-on, anytime and anywhere. It is a phenomenon that the consultant, author, and former high-tech executive Linda Stone terms “continuous partial attention.” Motivated by a fear of missing something, millions of people are hooked on the brain buzz that comes from feeling connected. Unfortunately, that hook also keeps those people in a relatively constant stressed-out state.

As Ms. Stone puts it on her website, “We are so accessible, we're inaccessible. The latest, greatest powerful technologies have contributed to our feeling increasingly powerless.”

You and I cannot fix that. Nor should we try to “fix” anyone. But we do need to fully appreciate how and why so many of the people in our audience lack the proclivity to connect. It is on us to find the right approach.

THE PAINFUL TRUTH: MOST PEOPLE DON'T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT YOU

Think back to the last time you attended a crowded party or big event. Was there a time when you were chatting with someone else and felt like that person was losing interest and looking for the next person (or drink) with which to engage? You likely weren't the issue. Nevertheless, it is a frustrating feeling.

Politicians are known as the poster children for this type of behavior. At rallies, fundraisers, or meetings they might appear to have the attention span of a ferret—always looking for the next hand to shake. The notable exceptions have used the power of personal attention and have been very successful.

I have lived in Arkansas for nearly two decades. It's a state whose population is less than that of Los Angeles—so it is common here to run into political and business leaders, and often to know them on a first-name basis. Along the way I have had the opportunity to spend a bit of time with both Bill Clinton and Mike Huckabee. If you pay any attention to politics, then you know these two individuals are very accomplished but with very different political views; Mr. Clinton, a Democrat, was the 42nd President of the United States and Mr. Huckabee, a Republican, was a presidential candidate, TV host, and best-selling author. Both served as governor of Arkansas.

What these men share are a couple of qualities that set them apart from nearly every other political leader that I have come across. During face-to-face conversation—which is typically in a group setting or at an event—both can muster an intense focus on the other person and make that person feel, in the moment, that he or she is the most interesting and important person on the planet. Both men have, if not literally “photographic” memories, something pretty close. (One of Governor Huckabee's staff members told me, “He can get interrupted by someone he hasn't seen in months or years, and remember the name of their hunting dog.”)

Remarkable, right? I strongly suspect this capacity for connection is a key reason why two very different men, both born in the tiny hamlet of Hope, Arkansas (population of maybe 10,000), went on to national fame and great political success.

Most of us—myself included—don't have such conversational focus (and aren't running for anything). It's often the case that we are on the other side of the equation. Perhaps it's at an event, or in a meeting, or on a phone call. Someone else is speaking, and . . . our attention wanders. The conversation doesn't feel immediately relevant, and your mind jumps to something or someone else. It's a natural response, given the number of competing inputs and priorities. Our default focus is typically on ourselves. This natural tendency makes it difficult for your business message—no matter how important and valuable it may be—to break through.

Consumers have the upper hand—and they know it. We see evidence of their empowerment across settings and industries. Friends who are interior designers, architects, and builders tell me that many customers get immersed in Houzz, Pinterest, HGTV, and many magazines and home fashion catalogs. The implication is that homeowners are less dependent on their designers for ideas. They get the ideas on their own, then compare potential designers—if they decide they even need one—on price and terms. That means a creative business is being dragged into commoditization, with the result of lower success rates in selling design services and downward pressure on fees.

When your consumer audience feels more powerful, their focus turns even more inward. An interesting experiment illustrates the point. Imagine you were given a marker and asked to draw an uppercase “E” on your own forehead. (No, it isn't a Sharpie or any sort of permanent marker.) Basically, there are two ways to do so. The first would be to draw the E as if you were looking at what you draw, in which case the E would appear to face backward for anyone looking at you. The other way would be to draw the E in the direction that others could read it. I suppose this is a bit like the sports fans who paint their faces, arms, or chests for the big game!

A research team led by Adam Galinsky used this simple exercise to test whether feeling powerful in the moment affects our perspective. The team gathered a group of participants and first asked everyone to write a short essay; half of them wrote about a high-power experience while the others wrote about a low-power experience. Next they were asked to “as quickly as you can, draw a capital E on your forehead.” Those who were randomly assigned to the high-power condition were nearly three times more likely to draw the E in the self-oriented direction.

As consumers feel more and more power, their natural self-focus will only grow. Of course, the desire to talk about ourselves is no modern phenomenon. It turns out to be a brain thing.

THERE'S CHEMISTRY: WHY IT FEELS SO GOOD TO TALK ABOUT OURSELVES

For most people, their own ideas and stories dominate the conversation. On average, people spend about 60 percent of their conversations talking about themselves. The tendency is even more pronounced—about 80 percent—in social media communications. Presumably, the difference on Twitter or Facebook is that we can't notice other people losing interest.

Are we all a bunch of out-of-touch narcissists? The answer is simple and, thankfully, forgiving. Research tells us that we talk about ourselves because our brains make it feel good.

Princeton University psychologist Diana Tamir led a research study to uncover some causes. The team found that, when research participants were prompted to talk about themselves, several areas of their brains became more activated. Among them were two brain regions in the mesolimbic dopamine system that have been linked to the feelings of pleasure also associated with good food and even sex. We are almost inexorably drawn to the habit of talking about ourselves because it feels so good.

Building the discipline to talk about others as much as ourselves is, for many of us, akin to eating more broccoli and less cake. (You can make your own comparison when it comes to sex.)

If it's only natural for the “I”s to have it in most conversations, how can we still excel in getting other people interested? There can be times when a professional can lead with “I” and do so very effectively, such as:

• “I know.” Sometimes you can (and should) assert a fact or concept. Try saying “I know” rather than the slightly weaker “I believe” or “I think”; you will project more confidence. This doesn't make you a know-it-all but instead underscores your specific expertise. Just make sure you are indeed correct, because these days anyone can fact-check you in seconds with the swipe of a finger.
• “I feel.” This one can certainly be overdone; some people focus on their feelings to a degree that chases others away from the conversation! But an appropriate discussion of what you are sensing (e.g., “I'm feeling more optimistic about this deadline,” or “I sense some extra frustration out of the Western region team”) can help you test assumptions and perhaps learn something new. It can also help you to be better understood. Others might argue your facts or conclusions, but no one can argue your feelings.
• “I recommend.” You saw this one in the previous chapter. A recommendation—based on your experience as well as your understanding of someone else's situation—is stronger than a “suggestion” and far better than tossing out some options without any guidance. As a buyer, I pay attention to recommendations from people who know their stuff and also understand the specifics of my situation.

If you are at least aware of the whole mesolimbic dopamine system thing, then you and your team can harness it appropriately—having your conversational cake and eating it too.

SO LET'S GET ENGAGED (WITH OUR AUDIENCES, THAT IS)

For business and marketing leaders, customer “engagement” is a common mantra. As mantras go, it's a laudable one. Engagement means there is interest from customers or prospects to hear more and then begin some sort of dialogue. In the nonbusiness, matrimonial use of “engagement,” conversations lead to mutual lifetime commitment.

Building engagement—even the less profound, more professional variety—might require a shift in your messaging strategy in at least a couple of ways. First, you and your team will need to be consistently vigilant to keep your focus on the outside. It is all too easy to talk about ourselves. Those brain chemicals in our customers' heads (as well as our own) can collectively act as a sort of rip current, pulling us away from each other. But even when our language is appropriate and interesting to customers, we might need to adjust a second component: timing. Simply put, when is it best to try to engage potential customers (or clients, or members, or donors, or whomever might be willing to fork over some of their money)?

There is plenty of research confirming that buyers today engage sellers later (if at all) in their decision-making processes. Buyers are doing their own research, reading reviews, and basically taking control of the conversation away from the seller. As you will see in Chapter 5, in many cases consumers seem to prefer the self-service route and do everything on their own. Not only does that frustrate us sellers, but often it doesn't work out well for the buyer either.

We can still manage to be engaging, and thus more influential, earlier in customers' decision-making cycles, but it takes some conversational work. The key is to offer our unique expertise or shed light on how relevant peers are approaching this type of decision, or otherwise guide customers to hold their horses long enough to see their decision in some new way.

How might you and your team build a more engaging set of conversations? Here are three lessons I've learned from my work with field sales, service, and business development teams:

• Information is not the same as insight. Some professionals assume they need to “educate” the buyer, then go too far by tossing around a bunch of disparate facts and figures. That does not serve the buyer's interests. We can all get overwhelmed with information. Engagement will both simplify data and make clear the implication of that data for the buyer.
• Engagement includes emotion. Being insightful is different than asking for pain points, then offering to ride to the rescue with your product. Instead, it means knowing enough about prospects to recognize their challenges and opportunities. That approach shows you are interested in the world of the buyer and willing to collaborate in solving problems.
• You can provoke without being presumptuous. Some sellers unfortunately try to demonstrate that they know more than the buyer does. During a recent engagement, a salesperson was demonstrating his approach during a role play. He kept saying things like “I know what you're thinking” and “We know exactly what you're considering.” My guidance was that, even if those assertions happened to be true, the approach itself would likely turn off the prospect. Who wants to be told that they're just like everyone else? It's far better to say something on the order of “A pattern I've seen is . . .” or “Many of your peers say things to me like . . .”—which shows your smarts while still giving prospects enough oxygen to assert their individuality.

WHAT IS IT LIKE TO BE ENGAGED WITH YOU?

That feels like a simple question, doesn't it? Answering that simple question honestly might be more difficult than you think. It has been for me. Yet if we want to be engaging with customers, then don't we also owe it to them to understand what we are getting them into?

This is not a burning issue if your organization has a low-risk, low-price, and low-touch offering; customers aren't engaged in conversation with their favorite brand of dental floss. But if you're offering something that is personally meaningful, of higher value, and/or potentially confusing (meaning that there is actual evaluation and decision making involved), then these are important considerations. I see three major categories of results from those professionals and organizations who engage effectively:

• Their customers feel smarter. They report being more informed and having greater clarity for having engaged with those organizations. They received valuable insights and concepts that provided the right inputs for their decisions.
• Their customers believe they were given sound advice. Often the advice wasn't some dictate about what the result of their decision should be but instead guidelines on what a good decision-making process should look like for them.
• Their customers feel valued. They say the seller was approachable, responsive, and easy to buy from—in other words, a good egg.

Even if things seem to be going smoothly, it might be valuable to have an occasional checkup. I was speaking recently with my business adviser (yep, I have one myself) about some new service offerings. After he had examined my website and promotional plans, we had this conversation:

Adviser: Jim, you're making it difficult for prospects to decide to buy from you. It isn't clear enough how you can help them. They're having to do too much work.

Me: (uncomfortable silence)

Regardless of whether you have an adviser or a mentor, it also makes sense to have this conversation with existing customers or clients. Ask them questions that are easy to interpret and answer in their own words (not a long survey or checklist). Why do they like doing business with you? Are there any problems or opportunities in their business that you might be able to shed some light on? Then, just listen. Not only will you learn more about the language of your best customers, you will also show them how much you value the relationship.

DON'T WE ALL NEED SOMEBODY TO . . . TRUST?

Our audiences want to be offered relevant information, guidance, and encouragement. Yet even that list is a bit incomplete. If we're considering what they both want and need from us, then we must include a bit of the dark side. Everyone is carrying baggage stuffed with their versions of fears, anxieties, and anticipated disappointment. As a business owner and therapist friend of mine once told me, “There is only one fear: the fear that you will hurt me.” Where can consumers find comfort that they won't get hurt?

Edelman, the global public relations and communication agency, prepares its annual Edelman Trust Barometer in order to gauge trust in government, the media, and other institutions. Suffice to say that trust has taken a beating in recent years. Businesses across much of the globe have to operate in an environment of increasing skepticism and disconnection.

There are nuggets of good news. Business in general rates higher than do most other sectors. In the 2018 survey, slightly more than half (52 percent) of the general population, and 64 percent of those Edelman calls the “informed public,” place some degree of trust in business. And if it's your business, then things are even a bit better. Worldwide, 72 percent of employees tend to trust their employer. As a business professional, you have the opportunity to establish trust in your communities and especially within your organization, but you cannot rely on some broad high tide of public sentiment to lift you. It will take some work. The buying decisions that seem like easy slam dunks to you might risk opening a bag of anxieties for the human being doing the buying.

For decades, economists assumed that people acted as “rational agents” when making decisions, with a sober evaluation of potential wins and losses. Over time, we have come to understand the ways that real people making real decisions depart from that assumption. We are not objective, dispassionate decision makers—whether for ourselves or our businesses. That doesn't mean we are wrong, but only human.

Recently, a client began moving to a different business model. Because of this initiative, their customers will eventually have to buy their services in a different way. The services are popular and customers have been loyal; repurchase and renewal rates have historically been higher than 90 percent.

The company's leaders believe strongly that their new model is best for everyone. They defined the value proposition, made an aggressive discount offer to early adopters, and proactively called on their customer base. To their surprise and dismay, a sizable proportion of customers had either declined the offer to switch altogether or delayed a decision.

Why would otherwise satisfied customers, who are already in the habit of re-upping, now be deciding not to decide? The answer is in a powerful psychological force called “loss aversion.”

Loss aversion was first unearthed by Daniel Kahneman (with his research cohort, the late Amos Tversky) beginning in the late 1970s. The only psychologist to win a Nobel Prize in economic science, Dr. Kahneman showed in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow that two systems are involved in the way we think. System 1 is fast, emotional, and intuitive; System 2 is slower and more logical. The eye-opener was how influential System 1 thinking is in many decisions. One major pattern is that losses affect us more than do gains (about twice as much).

Back to the company with the new business model. What was going on? Well, as much as people talk about the need for change in the abstract, they generally don't like making changes themselves—especially if it feels like the change is being forced on them. In this case, the change customers were presented with meant a departure from their habits (which were working just fine, judging from the high renewal and repurchase rates). Customers were paying more attention to the downside, defaulting to indecision and unwilling to pull the trigger.

A couple of years prior, the seller had set an internal goal to be seen by its customers as a “trusted adviser.” This experience was a wake-up call for them. They decided to slow down and change their customer conversations. They are offering more time for customers to consider the best path. Rather than lead with an assumed value proposition and pushing for a decision, they create an environment with the potential to uncover assumptions, objections, and anxieties.

THE THREE STEPS TO BEING A TRUSTED PROFESSIONAL

My wife and I have three sons, so it's a treat when we get to have a date night. On those occasions when we go out to dinner, I have noticed two different patterns in how my wife typically speaks with our server compared to the way I generally do. For my part, I tend to gloss over the specials but might ask what is popular (which reveals my own leaning toward social proof), or how a certain dish is prepared (as if I would really know the difference). My wife, on the other hand, will often ask our server (whom we will likely have known for mere seconds), “What do you like?”

At first, my wife's approach made little sense. Everyone has different tastes, leanings, and sensitivities when it comes to food—so how would the favorites of a stranger be useful to making one's own choices? Because Alison is an unusually kind and warm person, I figured her questions were a way to be social rather than a diagnostic device to make a better choice of entrée.

But when I gave this more thought, I realized that her brief exchanges are rooted in some messaging truths. You might have already caught on to her use of the word you—perhaps the most powerful word in persuasion, as we saw in Chapter 2. That puts the server in position of authority, yes, but it also makes the conversation more personal. The server wants to offer good advice that will reflect on him or her and surely doesn't want to deal with a guest who followed a recommendation and then wasn't happy.

Here's the way a recent exchange went:

Wonderful Wife: “What do you like?”

New Friend Server: “I like most everything on the menu, but I probably get the shrimp pasta most often for myself. Now, it's a little spicy but I like spicy food.”

Wonderful Wife: “I'm not into spicy food as much. Could I get it less spicy?”

New Friend Server: “I'm sure we could, but I'll check with the chef.”

The server answered the question but also—to hedge her bet—added that she has a preference for spicy foods that others might not share. Then she became the means for Alison getting something she would enjoy but that is a little different than the standard preparation. Everybody wins.

Millions of business professionals have a consultative element in what they offer. Consultants and coaches certainly do, but investment advisers, attorneys, designers, architects, stylists, clothiers, restaurateurs, and many, many others do as well. Their expertise and guidance are an important—perhaps the most important—component of their offerings. If that describes your work, even in part, then how can you build trustworthiness?

Based on my experience plus some great research into consumer psychology, I find that prospective clients have to answer two questions for themselves before granting you their trust: “Do you know what you're doing?” and “Will you work in my best interest?” The first question is about your expertise, whereas the second gets to the fuzzier issue of empathy.

When confident the answers are yes, those prospective clients' belief system elevates to something like “They are experts, and good people. I believe that they will carefully consider my needs and keep up with needs as they change. They won't treat me like part of a herd and won't give me the same advice they'd give anybody else. They are not going to pass my work off to a junior person or outsource it to someone who doesn't understand what I need. They wouldn't sell me a product that wasn't appropriate for me, just because it's profitable for them.” That is certainly what we want clients and prospects to believe. To get there, professional service providers must work in sequence through three levels of competency—and avoid two traps in the sequence.

The first and most basic level involves building credibility. This is the realm of credentials, certification, and experience—attributes that show up on résumés and are searchable online when potential clients do their homework on you. Credentials are a relatively easy thing to communicate through marketing. Yet these days your credentials are considered “table stakes,” or minimum requirements, by many prospects. The first Trustworthiness Trap I have seen is the belief that credibility alone is enough to earn trust and grow the business.

The second level involves developing relationships. Many professionals say theirs is a “relationship business,” and they aren't necessarily wrong. On the other hand, I also hear from professionals who are frustrated with their prospect lists. One recently said about a longtime friend who pledged her business to a competing firm, “She likes us but is not going to invest with us.” You can have healthy personal relationships that never develop into business or referrals. The second Trustworthiness Trap is the belief that having relationships, even seemingly strong ones, will necessarily drive growth. In order to leap over that trap, you need to activate those relationships—for yourself and across the business.

The third and highest level involves mastery of conversations. At this level, everyone close to your business (e.g., employees, current clients, those who can provide referrals) knows how to talk about the business. Everyone is equipped with brief, conversational language and stories to share, whether the opportunity is at a business conference, networking event, regular client meeting, or a social conversation in the stands at a game. It is only through conversations that you can demonstrate that necessary quality of empathy, thus activating your relationships and putting your expertise to its best use. This highest level is the space where you can ease customers' anxieties and demonstrate that you will be working in their best interests.

These three levels represent a progression for business growth, with each new level building on the previous one. Ultimately you and your colleagues can become credible, competent experts plus relationship builders plus skilled leaders of the client conversation.

YOUR MESSAGE HELPS THE PROCESS

A true message manager does not simply don the clothing of false empathy in order to get customers to like us. Rather, we understand the reality that our customers (and future ones) are getting trampled by information and could use our help. Despite—or possibly because of—modern technology, decisions are taking longer, involving more people, and are less satisfying. That problem isn't going away.

Research into B2B (business-to-business) buyers is finding, for example, that at the same time the process of researching and buying complex solutions has never been easier, the people doing the buying are feeling overwhelmed and stressed. They also second-guess themselves a lot after the purchase. A research team led by Nicolas Toman of the Corporate Executive Board studied more than 600 such buyers; they found that buyers are asking themselves, “Would another choice have been better?” more than 40 percent of the time. It's tough to go through one's professional life carrying a bunch of regret baggage.

You can help. First, you need to get your message (signal) above the noise. But even more profoundly, there is power in your message to lower others' anxiety, help them decide how to decide, and offer them a trustworthy source in a world where such sources feel increasingly rare. That can only come through a conversation that works for both sides.

The next chapter is about the best conversational strategies and tactics for different situations, including stories, pictures, questions, and even numbers. But no multiplication tables.