You can create magic by choosing the right ones
The overwhelming trend these days among what’s written about presentations and communications in general is toward visuals and stories to evoke emotions and leave lasting impressions.
That’s a good thing in a lot of ways, especially if it will kill the “wall of words” approach that sadly is still too prevalent in slide presentations today.
But words still count for a lot. In fact, one word can evoke such strong emotions that it overpowers all the context around it. The most glaring example of this in the recent news was Dolphins’ lineman Richie Incognito’s use of the “N-word” in his text message to his teammate Jonathan Martin. Regardless of what comes out of the investigation that is ongoing, the use of that one word has irrevocably changed his life.
Of course most of our daily business and personal communication is not so emotionally charged, but we would do well to continue to pay close attention to the effect that our word choice has on our listeners. Why?
- Words can be as memorable as visuals. Did Obama have a slide showing behind him when he said, “Yes we can?”
- The right combination of words can compress complex thoughts into one memorable phrase:
- “…the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”,
- “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit”
- Although it’s true that a lot of emotional meaning comes from nonverbal sources such as tone of voice and body language, that assumes face to face communication, which is clearly declining as a proportion of the time that we spend communicating and influencing others. Text, twitter and sound-bites make word choice even more important, because words are all we have.
So What?
Choose your words carefully. Keep in mind that words often carry emotional meaning far beyond their dictionary definitions, which is why armies of political consultants make a living changing gambling to gaming, or inheritance tax to death tax.
Know your audience. Don’t tell a room full of Lanier salespeople during a training class to “Xerox” their sales call plans, as one of my instructors once did.
Use short, simple words. They pack more punch.
Don’t overdo it. Words are so powerful that we use euphemisms to avoid political incorrectness, and sometimes lose clarity. My pet peeve is the horror at using the word “problem” or “weakness” when coaching others. There may be times when someone needs to hear very clearly that they need to solve a problem, not “address an issue.”
Rehearse. When you have to choose your words carefully, don’t count on winging it and being able to confidently say the right thing. I made this mistake once when I was delivering my wrap-up after a two day class to a sales force. I told them they were “pretty good”; two words that negated two days’ worth of enthusiasm—and I couldn’t say a thing to undo the damage.
Remember Beanie Babies? They were a fad that took off in the late 90s when my kids were young enough to participate. They were little stuffed animals that only cost about $5 apiece, so when I first found out about them, I thought it was a good idea. They were nice wholesome toys that didn’t cost much, so I was all for them.
But the low price actually was the problem, because my wife would think nothing of picking up a couple here and there when she was at the mall. Then McDonalds started giving them away in Happy Meals. Pretty soon it became competitive, because other kids had more and different ones than mine did. They started figuring out strategies. The idea was that different cities would have different varieties, so, since I traveled a lot, I had to be on the lookout for new ones everywhere I went. Once we took a family trip to Alaska and almost missed our connection in Seattle because Lisa and the kids had fanned out to case all the airport stores.
The worst part was when I took stock one day, and figured out that they had spent over $800!
Little things add up to a lot over enough time. It was bad enough with Beanie Babies, but even worse with other bad habits. I suspect that if I added up all the time I’ve wasted in my life giving in to this distraction or that every once in a while, it would add up to years.
But let’s focus on the positive side of the Beanie Baby effect. The rest of the world knows it as kaizen, and it is a powerful, powerful tool for productivity and self-improvement. People tell me all the time they would like to write more, or work out more, or learn more, but they just can’t find the time. Maybe their mistake is in trying to do it in large chunks (although there are definite benefits to spending larger chunks of time with thinking work, but that’s a different article). If you can’t dedicate large blocks of time to a worthwhile goal, set aside just five minutes. Maybe five minutes at the start of your day, or five minutes right at the end, or squeeze in five minutes reading an informative article, or just writing between appointments and tasks. After a while, just like Beanie Babies, you find that the more you pick up a few here and there the more motivation you have to get even more, so five minutes turn into ten, ten into fifteen, and so on.
Precisely because the individual inputs are so small, it may not seem like much is happening, until one day you suddenly realize how much you have done. Like drops of water wearing away the hardest rock, little bits of effort and attention here and there can accomplish a lot. And the best part is that the benefits tend to accelerate, because hard things get easier or turn into habits.
By the way, does anyone want to buy some Beanie Babies?
The troublemaker became a peacemeaker
One of the great—and good—figures of our time passed away yesterday, a man who accomplished so much for his people, his country, and his world.
I will let others far better prepared than I to write about all his accomplishments; I’m just going to focus here on the lesson he leaves for anyone who wants to exert influence on behalf of a cause larger than themselves.
Aristotle told us that the three indispensable tools of persuasion are logos, pathos and ethos—roughly logic, emotion and character. I think those of us who write about these things tend to spend a disproportionate share of ink on the first two—maybe because they are easier to write about, especially in these times when it’s almost politically incorrect to focus on character. That’s a curious omission, considering that Aristotle said that ethos was the most important of the three.
Nelson Mandela spoke with great clarity of logic and force of emotion, but his greatest strength as a persuasive communicator was unquestionably his character.
Aristotle breaks down ethos into three components, common sense, virtue and good will. I submit that Mandela’s towering influence was a result of his clear demonstration of each component.
Common sense: Mandela stood for a clear and simple truth; ten percent of the population could not keep the other 90 percent under its thumb forever, especially in an age of instant and ubiquitous communication. But he also demonstrated common sense in another way, in the sense that he fought for and represented the common aspirations of his people. Unlike many leaders of revolutionary movements, he did not let rigid doctrines or petty squabbles get in the way of the ultimate goal. It’s a lesson our politicians in Washington should learn today—common sense does not reside in the extremes.
Virtue: It’s hard to think of a greater demonstration of virtue than the willingness to spend life in prison for one’s views, and keep in mind that the expected outcome of Mandela’s trial in 1964 was the death penalty, which he was willing to suffer for his movement. In prison he was sometimes treated by the authorities with kid gloves, but he would refuse any special privileges unless his comrades all got the same treatment. He showed he could keep his virtue during the tough times, but perhaps even more surprisingly, he kept it during the good times. He didn’t let power go to his head, surprising the world with his decision not to run for reelection in 1999.
Goodwill: Mandela seemed to delight in Mark Twain’s advice: “Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.” This was never more evident than in his refusal to harbor (or at least show) any bitterness toward the people who had taken away such a large part of his life. And it wasn’t just the whites; he had to show goodwill to the different factions within the black leadership. Ironically, his given name, Rolihlahla, meant “troublemaker”, but Mandela demonstrated that it was possible to make trouble while maintaining fundamental respect and goodwill toward opponents.
In years to come, when people think of Nelson Mandela, they may not remember any specific things he said, or how he made them feel, but they will surely never forget who he was—because who he was spoke louder than what he said—and that is the perfect embodiment of what Aristotle meant when he said character is the most important factor in influencing others.
In the golden age of the industrial era, the key resource was the means of production, best symbolized by Ford, which emerged and thrived because of its mastery of mass production techniques that allowed it to capitalize on vast economies of scale. Companies gained competitive advantage by making and selling more and better stuff. In other words, they dominated the upstream activities.
Today, as explained by Niraj Dawar in his book, Tilt: Shifting Your Strategy from Products to Customers
To succeed in the new tilted landscape, CEOs and marketers (and may I add, salespeople) need to be asking themselves new questions.
- Why do customers buy from us?
- Why do potential customers not buy from us?
- What else does the customer need?
- How else can we slash the customer’s costs and risks?
- Are we criterion takers, or criterion makers?
- My own addition: how else can we help them grow revenues or serve their customers better?
How does a company compete for downstream competitive advantage? Although the book considers both B2B and B2C companies, I’ll focus here on the former. In Part 2 of the book, Dawar explains how a company can use its “perch”, or higher and wider perspective of the market, to bring innovations and fresh insights to customers. Because they deal with large number and wide range of different customers, they can see the whole forest, and use their knowledge to relay and connect ideas, provide benchmarking information, and make predictions that add value.
The second section of the book dives deep into the scarce resource that we should all be competing for: the customer’s attention and cognitive effort. Dawar poses an interesting thought experiment. If Coca-Cola somehow lost all its physical assets, would they be able to raise funds to restart their business? The answer is clearly yes. But if somehow the entire world got partial amnesia and forgot about the Coca-Cola brand, would anyone invest billions of dollars in the business? Clearly not. The point is that a brand, or a customer’s perception of your company, is a critical asset because it lowers the customer’s costs and risks of making a decision to buy. They don’t have to expend much attention or think very deeply about their decision. That’s why downstream competitive advantage can be not just sustainable but accumulative. Through network effects, habit, and confirmation bias, the rich brands tend to get richer by gaining more and more mind share.
One interesting insight the book provides is that what is important is not being first to market, but first to mind. Anyone remember the Erwise browser or Chux disposable diapers? The incumbents have managed to define and dominate the customers’ purchase criteria, and the only ways for a challenger to overturn this dominance is to either provide an offering that is clearly superior in the important criteria, or change the criteria of purchase. You can either be a criterion taker, or a criterion maker.
There’s so much more I could write about this excellent book, but I’ll let you take it from here. Let me just say that if you aim to be an intrapreneurial sales professional, you need to read this book soon, and you need to sit down and seriously reflect on the six questions above.
P.S. If you don’t have time to read the whole book, read Dawar’s summary article in this month’s Harvard Business Review. If you don’t have time to read that, you have my sympathy.
