Mind the Gap: Making Business Conversations Real, Relevant & Repeatable
by Lois Kelly, partner, Foghound
One of the most obvious but missing ingredients in marketing, sales, and corporate communications is giving people something interesting to talk about. We live in a talk world where the most important business decisions result from conversations.
Understanding, trust, and confidence are developed through conversations. And decisions are made based on understanding, trust and confidence.
But no one in marketing or communications is responsible for developing conversation themes that are relevant to the business, interesting to talk about, and easy for people to remember and then talk about in their own words.
Traditional marketing and communications don't help people talk. Advertising and direct marketing promote. Web sites and public relations inform. Vision, mission and values statements are directional. Messaging documents are too often written to be read, not said. And the ubiquitous elevator descriptions are usually starched, self-absorbed and, well, descriptive.
They don't help you jump-start a conversation that gets people to say, "Gee that's interesting. Tell me more."
If you want people to talk about your business or product, you have to have conversation themes that are based in beliefs, points-of-views, and advice. Themes that uniquely convey your company's strategy and perspective and that surprise listeners, often smacking them in the face.
There are three steps to developing conversational themes:
1. Use ear-to-the-ground research and technology tools
The first step to developing conversation themes is tuning in to what people are talking about and how they're talking to one another. While typical market research might be just the thing for product management or targeting strategies, it doesn't provide enough of the right kinds of insights for meaningful communication. Here's a combination of approaches that have been proven to uncover conversation theme ideas.
- Tap into CEO hunches. CEOs and other C-level executives are attuned to emerging conversations because they're talking to more people in the market than anyone else in the company except, perhaps, for sales. Sit down with the CEO and really listen to what's on his/her mind.
- Do a structured listening tour. Get inside the heads of customers, non-customers, industry experts, industry watchers, and your own best sales reps. Talk with them individually about what's most relevant in their worlds, what's moving them to try new things, what's annoying them-and what they couldn't care less about. Tape record the conversations so that you can go back and listen for tone, language, phrases, and sentiment.
- "See" what's being talked about. New technology tools, like Situational Awareness Radar Mapping from NetroCity, The Touchgraph and Buzztracker free Web browsers, and KnetMap social networking software, visually show conversation patterns in any particular industry and are especially useful research and planning tools. Also, consider using your traditional communications "measurement" services for communications insights vs. just measuring what's happening.
2. Tap into unique beliefs and points of view for conversation themes
The best conversation themes already exist. It's the job of marketing or communications to find them, dust them off, and share them throughout the organization.
A conversation theme is a belief or distinct point-of-view that engages people and helps them understand your company in a multi-dimensional or emotional way. It's meant to provoke thinking and conversation vs. explaining a product or capability. It should be updated regularly-at least once a year-as a company and its market evolves.
People always ask, "Does a conversation theme replace something we already do like value propositions and product messaging?" The answer is no. Conversation themes are important additions to the traditional marketing communications toolkit.
3. Bring it alive: fewer words, more straight talk
People often try to turn conversational theme possibilities into conventional advertising tag lines or headlines. Resist this urge.
Two things set a conversational theme apart: it's something someone might actually say themselves and it provokes further conversation. Our research has found nine common categories of conversational themes: surprise, anxieties, contrarian/counterintuitive, David vs. Goliath, beliefs & aspirations, avalanche about to toll, glitz & glam, and 'how to."
Because it's something a person might actually say herself, don't over-engineer or over-sanitize the phrase or sentence. Let it live in a real person's language. It is not meant to be the headline of your Web site or the tag line on your business cards. It's not meant to explain your company's entire value proposition. It is meant to jump-start and focus conversations around a view that sets the company apart. Some examples include:
- "We're a find company, not a search company." Endeca
- "Our strategy is the right dose of the right drug to the right patient at the right time." Eli Lilly
- "Most marketing fails because of too much testosterone." Copernicus
- "The first house is a dictionary. The second is a poem." Deutsche & Deutsche Architects
- "We're not in the transportation business; we're in the arts and entertainment business." GM
- "Business innovation doesn't need to be expensive or complex. The seeds are everywhere. You just have to use a new lens to see the possibilities." Sapient
In our talk world, traditional advertising and marketing approaches will continue to wane, while communicating takes center stage, with conversations as the star. From working with some of the most interesting companies in the world, I can confidently tell you that the better the conversational communication, the faster people will buy, believe, and invest in your company.
Lois Kelly is a partner in Foghound, a strategic communications consulting firm. Clients have included SAP, Sun Microsystems, Sapient, FedEx, The Business Innovation Factory, Hyperion, eRoom, Copernicus, Orange, and SAS Institute. Her articles have appeared in USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, Brand Week, Advertising Age, and Adweek. For more on how to create conversational themes, go to www.foghound.com, or visit Lois' blog, http://foghound.blogspot.com.
