To Stand Out, Make it Unexpected

People naturally look for patterns. In fact, we spend our lives developing and testing patterns to live by. Most of the time, patterns help us evaluate information efficiently and accurately. But they also exclude much new information. So if you are communicating something new, first you most push people out of their patterns. Help them jump the groove. Go against conventional wisdom. Challenge assumptions. Open gaps in people’s knowledge. Then fill them with something new. Violate people’s expectations…that will grab their attention.

Example:
Common perception: Department store service people don’t care about customers. Story: Nordstrom employee accepts return on tire chains even though Nordstrom’s does not sell tire chains (connection plot).
Common perception: An experienced, pro team will always beat the rookies. Story: 1980 US Olympic team beats “Red Machine” Soviet team (challenge plot).

Here are some techniques you can use:

• Mystery: Don’t blurt out everything all at once.
  
• Curiosity: Challenge common knowledge and preconceptions, and then prove your point with concrete steps.
  
• Gaps: Show gaps in your listener’s knowledge, then fill in the gaps.
  
• Insight: Rather than plodding from one incremental step to the next, occasionally you can make leaps. Important ideas give a sudden, dramatic glimpse of how the world might unfold. Then, with your audience listening, walk through the concrete steps.

Simple: Choosing Your Core Message Is the Toughest Part

Prioritize relentlessly. Prioritize based on what is relevant and top-of-mind for your audience, down to only the MOST IMPORTANT, MOST RELEVANT message. Anything else just gets in the way. Avoid the technologist’s need to drag people through the details for the shear joy of it. Proverbs are the ideal. They are simple and profound. Simplicity seems to be the most difficult element of storytelling for most people.

• Keep it focused, really, really focused.
  
• Your stories should be constructed simply, with few paths or options. Don’t provide too much choice…because deer freeze in the headlights, remember?
  
• Once you know something, it is hard to pretend that you don’t. But try to write as if you know nothing, and you’ll be more likely to write at a comprehensible level.
  
• Write about things that you can see (concrete), which will force out the abstract language.
  
• Rather than writing about your “subject”, consider using an analogy with clear implications for your topic. Analogies can be very simple, more interesting, and help people reach their own conclusions. This will help you avoid lecturing to your audience, making it easier to relate to them.

Storytelling for Buy-In and "Made to Stick"

Over the past few weeks I read a book on storytelling as a mode of communication. For me, the work by Chip and Dan Heath, Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die: Made to Stick, crystallized an aspect of the work I have been doing in the area of getting buy-in for change. Over the past three years I have been working with organizations and their leaders—CEO’s, sales executives, marketing professionals and executive communications specialists and others—whose success depends upon getting others to come along with them on a trip to the future, to a better place. No matter the situation, the goal is the same: to get people to “buy into” a positive future, a vision they have never seen before, a better place that they have never been.

Prior to reading the book a natural arch of communication evolved from our work in organizational storytelling. We codified the system into what we call ‘steps for getting buy-in.’ And—surprise—our steps contain many of the elements of good storytelling. As a former journalist, present communications professional, copy writer and visual storyteller (www.TellingYourStory.com) perhaps it was inevitable that we would come to something like a storytelling model.

Then as I read Made To Stick and found, conveniently, elements in the Heath’s methodology that mapped to my own. Ideas like “Concrete Steps” and “Stories” that inspire others appear in both. So I bounced my work against what the Heaths. In fact we present the Heath’s model along with our own in the workshop that my company provides on the topic of getting buy-in and storytelling for change in organizations (Seminars & Workshops). Last month (April 2007) we video-recorded one of our workshops, so check back for that in the near future.
In the next few postings I will share with you a high-level summary of the guts of the Heath brother’s approach. It is called the SUCCESs model, a great pneumonic. Now, my posting are my impressions. If you want the Heath’s ideas straight-up, you should read their book. I and clients that have read the book highly recommend it.

By way of preface, let me say that good storytelling starts with listening, real listening. Listening requires humility. You will know that you are humble in your communications when you crave the sound of other people’s voices and shun your own. When you speak it should be to evoke a response, to get other people to speak. When they speak, listen for context. Find the ballpark in which they are playing. Then relate to them with stories on a human scale. If you are effective, your listener will generalize from your story to their situation. In so doing, your listeners will convince themselves. And you will have said precious little.

Now, in the postings that follow, here is my interpretation of the elements of Chip and Dan Heath’s SUCCESs model....

Grab Their Attention Visually

Get more click-through from your e-mail campaigns with visuals, especially illustrations. BentonsEdge helped promote an event for a software consulting company, Brown Smith Wallace Consulting.

Our custom illustrations, e-mails, and web-based lead-generation programs encouraged CIO’s and IT directors to sign up for BSW’s online software trade fair, the “Virtual Trade Fair.” Visitors can browse vendors online, talk to experts, and learn about new software and the change it brings in their companies. In fact, you can drop by the virtual event for free, TODAY, at http://www.virtualtechfair.com/.

BentonsEdge interviewed CIO’s to uncover their pain points, especially the pain implementing change within their own companies. Download the latest case-study to learn more.


BentonsEdge illustrated the pain of change, and built a visual lead-generation program around it. Download the 'change roadmap'.pdf.

Customers know that all high-end software and services require change to occur. You can tap into that fact to promote your programs. Get the 'change roadmap' and lead-generation case-study. And call me for more information at (314) 772-1185.

Craft Your Value Proposition This Friday!

Come work with me for free this Friday, April 27, 2007, at Washington University. I will be working with managers and innovators like you during the Innovators and Entrepreneurs Workshop from 2:30 to 3:45 at the Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies. For more information, see the Washington University Skandalaris Center web site. I am looking forward to seeing you there!

Please sign up to get the next issue of the BentonsEdge Reporter and receive your free visual story.

Originally published April 26, 2007, as an e-mail sent from the BentonsEdge web site. Written by Dan Davison.

Your best content is never about you

Want to get found on the Web? Want prospects to relate to what you’re saying? If what you do is new, what makes you think prospects are searching for it? Rather, consider what prospects are thinking, and typing, at the time when they are in a frame of mind to care. Otherwise, your site may become just one more lonely corner on the Internet.

Only much later will it be time to differentiate your product from all the others. Remember; connect first. Show-and-tell later, much later, maybe never. There are better ways to connect.
First prospects have to know that you have been listening to them, that you understand their concerns, their needs and wants. That’s why great marketing content is never about you. It’s about them. But that’s hard to write. Right?

Click here to learn more, or call us at (314) 772-1185.

Great content is often missing from lead-generation programs.

In our last newsletter we wrote about techniques for getting people to your site, known as search engine optimization. When you get them there, site visitors need a reason to care, and a reason to click around. For that to happen, your content needs to click with them.

In the art of copy writing for Web, you must dole out content in spoonfuls, leading visitors one click at a time until your goal for their visit has been achieved; for example, when they have volunteered their identity to you and agreed to receive your messages.

Despite the reach of on-line marketing, most sales still originate off-line because very few companies effectively relate to their audience on-line. Most organizations write about themselves, which presents a competitive advantage for those who know better.

Originally published November 14, 2006, as an e-mail sent from the BentonsEdge web site. Written by Dan Davison.

So you have a web site, but is anyone finding it?

One way that business people find goods and services is to search the web. It’s up to you to optimize your site to make it easy for search engines to serve up your site when prospects go searching.

Think you can get people to contact you by just writing about your new technology, great ideas, or by giving away white papers? If what you do is new, what makes you think prospects are searching for it? Rather, consider what prospects are thinking, and typing, when they are in a frame of mind to care about what you offer. You need a strategy. Otherwise, your site will become just one more dark corner on the Internet.


Click here to get more information about search engine optimization as part of a lead-generation program.

Click on the graphic above learn more about search engine optimization. And call us for more information, tel. (314) 772-1185.

Search engine optimization is part of a managed lead-generation program.

Getting noticed on the web takes know-how, and work. The fifty-cent term for it is Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. Your competitors may not be using SEO, which presents you with an opportunity for competitive advantage. This article is first in a series to help your site be found before competitors’, the first step if your web site is going to generate sales leads.

You need execution. Structuring pages and documents correctly, eliminating common mistakes and getting links on related sites is all part of a managed lead-generation program that includes search engine optimization.

Originally published October 17, 2006, as an e-mail sent from the BentonsEdge web site. Written by Dan Davison.

What can you do to get noticed when no one reads anymore?

You try to make your content meaningful, sure. But who among your prospects has the time to read anymore? How many marketing messages do you receive, and how many do you read? Have you considered communicating visually?

Associate your name with value when you communicate on issues. Stand out, when you communicate visually. Build credibility by communicating regularly.

Click on the graphic for a sample illustration.

Click on the graphic above for a sample illustration. And call us for more information, tel. (314) 772-1185.

Visual communication every month, turn-key service

BentonsEdge marketing and is now offering custom, visual content that welcomes click-though, and monthly outsourced management to get the job done. It’s a turn-key email service that includes great content and turn-key management of direct email campaigns:

• We create engaging illustrations rather than wordy, written content that no one reads.
• We create and send a custom e-mail each month to build credibility with your prospects.
• We can manage the landing page on your site and monitor metrics, providing a comprehensive out-sourced service for you.

Originally published September 26, 2006, as an e-mail sent from the BentonsEdge web site. Written by Dan Davison.