Every Company is in the ‘Simplicity’ Business

Mar 222013

A client at The United Way Silicon Valley said the following to me after a recent storytelling workshop I gave:

‘You made the topic so simple to get. You took away all the complexity we were struggling with and gave us a much-needed, relevant, inspiring and simple framework.’

Simplicity is human Keepingithuman.com

That is one of the greatest compliments any business can get because of how much work goes into making things look and feel simple. You see, every business is in the ‘simplification’ business. And yes, ironically, that itself might be a simplification, albeit a critical one.

Be a Chief Simplification Officer

Everyone is struggling with complexity today. There is too much work, too much data, and too much noise (social media overload, anyone?!). The most important thing you can do for your clients is simplify their lives. This applies to your interactions, products and messaging.

Keep it Simple Keepingithuman.com

It’s easy for messaging – the essence of how you make your clients’ lives better – to become convoluted, dry, and boring. This is especially true when your services are complex, and that happens a lot in technology, in medicine, and in the legal profession, among other industries. We want to tell the world everything we do and how we do it. That’s all too much.

Complexity isn't human Keepingithuman.com

Thus, the only antidote for complexity is simplicity. If you can’t articulate with clarity, you become a ‘complicator,’ instead of a problem solver. Prospects will ask, “How can I trust that this provider will make my life easier if they can’t communicate clearly?” Clear messaging makes it possible for your audience to imagine what doing business with would be like, and what results they could expect.

Simple is Human… and Memorable

Simple is memorable Keepingithuman.com

Simple messaging makes it easier for your audience to recognize that they need you. Crisp messaging in practice also means a few really important things:

• First, it means no jargon! Jargon is not human. It’s not my responsibility as a prospect to figure out what you do and why I should care. Clarity is *your* burden.

• Stop talking about your services. Your value is not your services. Your value is the end result of working with you; your services are vehicles to get to that end result! Plus, offerings evolve over time. Tell me what results I can expect.

• Focus on one key takeaway. For example, one thing I bring to my clients is that I help them succeed by simplifying and humanizing their messaging so it attracts the right prospects. Sure, there is a lot more to it; yet, simplicity is memorable. In a world rife with noise, that matters! Here’s a great exercise – try to communicate your message in 20 words or less.

• Paint a vision of how life could be after working with you. You are selling what could be – a story, not a set of cold hard “facts” that your competition can also claim. People won’t remember a spew of your services; they will remember stories and how you made them feel. Leave people with a feeling that you “get” their issues and that you can simplify their lives.

If you can’t simply explain what you do and why people should care, customers will fear that you will add that same level of complexity to their lives. They need less, not more.


Your Story…Only Simpler

How is your messaging? Ask yourself the following questions:

• Do I find myself explaining what I do over and over, and people still don’t “get it?”
• Do I get blank, bored stares when I explain my business?
• Can I explain my value in less than 30 seconds with confidence and clarity?
• Can other people articulate my value if *they* were to explain it?
• Am I referred frequently by others?
• Am I falling back frequently on describing my services instead of my value?
• Do I know how I am different from my competition?
• Do I have a clear, compelling, differentiated story showing how I improve customers’ lives?
• Do I avoid jargon?
• Do people ask me for more information when I tell my story or seem to tune out?
• Are my marketing materials consistent, clear, and succinct?
• Am I confident and proud of “my story,” when I tell it?

If you answered “no” to most of these items, you have a messaging challenge.

“Simple” Is Anything But…

Getting a simple story to tell about your business is not easy, and that’s precisely why having one will give you a competitive advantage. To communicate that you will simplify your customers’ lives, you must first communicate your own value – simply. And simplicity can be anything but.

Let us help.

How do you keep things simple and human? Email me at Kathy(at)keepingithuman(dot)com

Marketing Lessons From the Comedy Stage, Part II

Feb 222013

This post is part II of II. To read part I, click here.

What Comedy Teaches us About Marketing KeepingitHuman.com

Truth and authenticity. Truth makes compelling comedy. Great comics talk about what they know – the good, bad, and ugly. Hacks try to sell what’s popular rather than focus on generating authentic material that is based on who they are. Martin axed all “borrowed” material from his routine, and then became a truly authentic act that resonated with people. Bring who you are to your work, and your work will be better for it. Comedienne Ellen DeGeneres is a great example of authenticity. Truth also means having a definitive, unapologetic point of view (on stage we call it a persona). Marketing, too, must be purposeful, human and offer an authentic “voice” to audiences. Using hack material on the stage is akin to jargon and BS corp-speak in marketing. Audiences know when marketers and comedians are full of it!

Get real with your audience KeepingitHuman

This also leads to an important sub-point about telling stories. Last Comic Standing Winner John Heffron is a master at telling stories based on real people and events from his average, “middle class” life. Great marketing also requires honest storytelling and transparency with customers. Audiences worth reaching are smart; respect them and tell them the truth. What could be funnier and more conversational than that? Truth can make us vulnerable as marketers – so we shy away from it. What happens when we are open about our successes and failures with an audience? We become human and relatable. That builds trust with your tribe. Audiences smell “fake.”

Comedy Audience KeepingitHuman

Listening and Clarity. Like any great comic, marketers must listen. Customers will tell you what works and what doesn’t. Great comics take responsibility for what they could do better rather than blame audiences for “not getting it.” Sure some audiences just aren’t a fit and some are drunk (it happens!), but if your regular (ideal) audience isn’t getting it repeatedly, time to do things differently. Clarity is the marketer’s burden, not the audience’s.


Working From Your Gut. Great comics, like great marketers, develop a gut instinct by listening to their internal “voice.” It’s a muscle that you have to exercise to keep it in shape. Chasing opportunities that are easy may come back to bite. If your intuition tells you it won’t honor your brand, don’t do it. Honor your instincts, and they will honor you by not leading you astray. Sometimes the “right” things are not the “easy” things. Marketing is often following your gut, not just your head.

Preparation and commitment. Comics spend years honing material into jokes that work with the right set-up, punch line, and delivery (timing). It is a craft that requires constant re-work. Marketers, too, must adapt their material as needed. They must know their audience, prepare their materials painstakingly, and adapt to the unexpected. Message and timing are critical. Moreover, preparation enhances confidence, and confidence is how you sell a joke or your business. Commitment is being fully bought in to your offering. If you’re not buying it, your audience isn’t either. Comics are masterful marketers – when they kill it’s because they “sold” it well. Confidence shows.

Marketing and Comedy Lessons Kathy Klotz-Guest
Innovation. Audiences change, as do markets. Comics must constantly create new material. Innovation requires that comics take risks by trying new things. The same is true of marketing. As customer needs and economic climates change, great marketers push the envelope by anticipating changes in current markets, and by innovating new products and new markets. Dare to be different; forget what others are doing.

Passion. Great marketing like great comic material requires passion, and a love of the game no matter how hard it gets. A genuine hunger to be better – not to get rich – drives passionate people. Good thing, too, because a drive for money doesn’t motivate people to grow personally. Striving for excellence, and not money, is how we find our better selves and success. Oh, yes, and most importantly – have fun! Comics love to play and are in touch with their most creative selves. You deserve to have fun, too. If you aren’t, neither are your customers. Fun isn’t just for you – it’s a powerful, contagious customer service tool. And, in the end, customer delight is what marketing is all about.

Next time you’re laughing at your favorite comedies, think of it as fun marketing ‘research!’

Have business lessons learned from your past? Share them! kathy(at)keepingithuman(dot)com

 

Marketing Lessons From the Comedy Stage, Part I

Feb 202013

Comedy and marketing have much in common. Well, comedy is marketing, really. And some marketing is pretty comical, intentionally or not. Comedy is a priceless education. In addition to 20 years in marketing, my many years in sketch, stand-up and improvisation have provided a number of critical business lessons, especially in the “ballsy” department!

What Comedy Teaches us About Marketing KeepingitHuman.com

I can’t put a price on the joy, frustration and lessons I’ve learned including learning from failure (what entrepreneur doesn’t need that?!). After all, brilliant comics are also fantastic marketers, right? Jerry Seinfeld sold us a successful show about the mundane. The key is that all comedy starts with the truth and focuses on “tribe.” Below are just ten of the many business and marketing insights I’ve gained over the years that have been reinforced by the world of improvisation (Remember “Whose Line is It Anyway?”), sketch (short skits such as the type in ‘SNL’) and standup (read: stand-up!)

Marketing

Marketing is Comedy KeepingitHuman.com

Segmentation. Decide who your audience is. You cannot be all things to all people. Choosing the right focus yields the greatest payoffs. The only way to increase profitability is by segmenting your audience. Comedy like marketing is about knowing and concentrating on your “tribe.” Chris Rock is an excellent comic with a penchant for edgy material. A number of years ago, the star hosted the Academy Awards and received mixed reviews. Why? Rock’s brilliance is in the edgier stuff you can’t say on primetime television. His audience isn’t Middle America and when you have to water down your offerings for a wider audience, you dilute your differentiation and your chances of success. Know your audience and know their needs, desires, human challenges inside and out. Start there and go deep.

Strategy. Comics have a game plan for how they develop material and are faced with the hard choices of cutting out OK opportunities to focus on GREAT material. When writing “funny,” we spend hours only to end up with minutes of kick-butt material. Paring down is hard, but it forces us to make strategic choices about who we want to be. The same is true of marketing. Not all opportunities make sense with our limited resources and we have to choose strategies that reinforce our brand. Steve Martin in his book, Born Standing Up, talks about being at a crossroads with his act and making the choice to cut out all “safe” gimmicks in order to take his act to the next level.

Marketing Strategy

Marketing And Comedy KeepingitHuman.com

Persistence. Marketing is a repeat interaction game. I’ve heard people give up after one or two marketing attempts didn’t deliver results. Remember it takes 7-9 impressions on average – that means your prospect has to hear you, see you, or talk to you many times – before you register as a provider on their radar. Martin writes that his “live” comedy career of 18 years was comprised of 14 of hard work and failure, followed by 4 years of fame. The good news is your marketing success won’t likely take that long, but you must keep trying to see what works and what doesn’t.

Marketing Lessons From the Comedy Stage, Kathy Klotz-Guest

Risk-taking. Safe is the new risky – in marketing and in comedy. The truly great acts – just like marketers – know that failure is not a dirty word. It’s imperative to try new things and to learn from what doesn’t work. Fear is normal. The only way to know if something works is to try it. It’s OK if it doesn’t work. You can now re-work it or go to plan B. Great marketing like great comedy requires honing. Ask any great comic how many times they failed before they killed. Chances are they stopped counting after high double digits. But the greats keep getting up because they know failure is about learning what works – and that brings them closer to success.

Marketing and Comedy Lessons Kathy Klotz-Guest

The biggest laughs I’ve gotten when speaking and performing have come when I followed my gut and took a creative risk. Some don’t work to be sure; but the upside far outweighs the “comfort” of playing things safe. In marketing, you must take risks with content, strategy, campaigns – everything – to discover what works. If you are doing the same things over and over, they lose their novelty and ability create a “pattern disrupt” that grabs attention. Years ago, I was performing open mic nights at a well-known South Bay club. A very prominent political comedian from the Bay Area showed up one night and pulled me aside, “You’re very good. But I’ve seen you three times (note: I would have been very nervous had I known!), and your material is the same. You haven’t done anything new. Why the hell not?” He was right. I was playing it safe – and that is the risky: complacency. It’s a trap for the marketer as well. I was looking for the formula that I could replicate. And marketing, like comedy, is mostly art, not science.

End Part I. What are your critical business lessons? Let me know: Kathy(at)KeepingitHuman(dot)com

Kathy Klotz-Guest

Hey Marketers! Humanize Your Company

Feb 072013

Kathy will be giving a webinar for Women in Consulting (WIC) on June 5th.

Humanize Your Products From the Inside-Out

Feb 072013

Stop Messaging and Start Storytelling! Kathy will be giving a workshop on humanizing your products with stories on May 18th at Techmart in Santa Clara for the Silicon Valley Product Management Association.

Change The Game and Make Networking More Human

Jan 202013

Tired of the typical approach to networking? Hey who isn’t?

You go to an event and try to meet people. People are filtering you in or out based on your name tag, and deciding whether you are worth their time (hey, you know the undignified ‘sizing up’ look). Then, we engage in the awkward dance of “what do you do?” and, when people recite a litany of credentials, we feign interest until we see someone else we want to talk to. Or, when a new party joins the small group after we’ve finished our mutual “sniffing,” we make our rapid and grateful get-away! Yep, most approaches to networking aren’t authentic, fun or human. There is a better way.

Turn networking upside down with a few human tips that put people at ease and get better results. You’ll also have a lot more fun!

• Don’t ask “what do you do?” People are burned out on that question and it elicits a robotic response. Mix it up with the unexpected and you’ll get an unrehearsed, human answer. For example, try “What brings you here today?” I also use, “What do you do for fun besides networking events?” That gets a laugh and lightens the ‘serious’ mood. Perfect for having a great conversation.

• Make a human connection, not a contact. Asking ‘what do you do’ is about “sniffing” people out. Everyone knows “that awkward dance.” Instead, learn something about who they are, not what they do. Humor is a great way to break the ice and lighten the mood. For example, write something unexpected on your nametag that prompts conversation. My married name is “Guest,” and I like to preempt the obvious, “Aren’t we all ‘guests?’” So I write Kathy “Be My” Guest! This usually yields a smile and a warm connection. I made a connection first. Now, people are more likely to listen!

• Be a connector. When you serve others, you show character. As you meet people, make it a point to connect them. Perhaps you met someone earlier that would be a great connection for the person you are talking to currently. When you facilitate a personal introduction for others, you create value and leave a great impression people will remember (unlike most 30-second ‘pitches.’ Ugh!).

• Don’t data-dump a list of services. People don’t want more “data,” they want a reason to care! Show them how you can help them or their clients by telling a brief story of how you leave clients better off. Use one recent example of how you helped a favorite client increase revenues, get a new client, or do something that matters. People remember stories, not services. Leave them wanting to get to know you, not bored out of their minds! No one cares about your list of services.

• Always be you. If you’re trapped in an uncomfortable conversation, be gracious, extend a thank you and move on. Contacts based on inauthenticity aren’t true connections, and won’t yield good business.

• Write something personal about each person you meet on the business card they give you. When you follow-up, always personalize your emails and LinkedIn invites. This demonstrates that you are interested in a genuine two-way connection, and it increases your response rates.

Inject a human element into networking and you’ll get better results. How do you make networking more human and more successful? I’d love to know. kathyatkeepingithumandotcom

Creating a Core Marketing Story that Matters– It’s Much Bigger Than Your Company

Dec 282012

Keeping marketing human means your core story is never about you, your technology, or your products and services. As Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, states, you must think bigger than what you do. In the case of Zappos, Hsieh knows the shoes his company sells are incidental. Hsieh maintains that Zappos delivers “happiness.” That’s a tall order; and yet, by any standard, Zappos has one of the best customer service records around. *That’s* credibility.

At a conference I spoke at in September, I met one of the heads of Zappos’ customer service department from Henderson, Nevada. A warm, funny, and customer-service oriented character herself, Vanessa told me all about Zappos’ most famous customer service call – it lasted 8 hours (with a few breaks in between). Now *that* is commitment and something more meaningful than delivering shoes.

So where do you start honing your core story? Start by understanding what your offerings are really about – it’s never about the products themselves. What do your products help people do? What human need is served? That is the most important question your story must answer.

Deconstructing a recent example and re-creating it with a more human slant will illustrate the point. I met a company fairly recently in the biotech space that puts together conferences. All of its messaging focused on conferences. It turns out the conference business wasn’t doing that well because people aren’t necessarily excited about getting marketing messages to come to a conference. Big shock! I pressed the CEO a little further, and discovered that at some of these conferences, a number of start-ups were funded because they met the right investors.

A-ha! The human need isn’t for your conference. What attendees really care about is the chance to get their stories told and attract potential investor funding. The company wasn’t in the conference business; it was in the investor facilitation business. *That* is what attendees care about. This company needs to tell the success stories of start-ups that have been funded at their conferences. Through this lens, its own story of being a funding facilitator is credibly strengthened.

A conference company has lots of competition; a company that facilitates funding so dreams come true has a differentiated message in a crowded market. How much more compelling is it, then, to receive an invite to tell your story to investors who could bring your company to life, versus receiving an invite to yet one more conference?! It’s the difference between pushing products and communicating a higher human purpose that pulls in the right target audience.

When you know your value and how it aligns with the most human needs of your audience, you understand how to tell this story across everything you do. Keep peeling back your messaging until you “hit” on the most urgent human challenge of your audience. It’s not your products and services. Consequently, your marketing messaging shouldn’t focus on them. Instead, tell the urgent story of customer need, and how you serve that need.

So how are you keeping your core story human? Let me know!

Secrets of Executive Communications Jedi Masters

Dec 212012

Executive communications is an area undergoing rapid change. The best communicators have the uncanny ability to connect with their audience on such a visceral level that we hang on every word. They don’t just communicate; they connect. They don’t follow a script – they paint a picture with their words. They are able to adapt, adjust and improvise because they lead with conviction and feeling, sensing the audience’s needs in real-time. That connection – the ability to adjust and “feel” – is where influence and persuasion lie.

One of the best speakers across the business and political spectrum is Bill Clinton. After his speech at the Democratic Convention in the summer of 2012, NPR called him the “Improviser-in-Chief” for his ability to improvise while speaking.

A comparison between his prepared text and the speech he delivered shows that much of what he said at the Convention was added in the moment. An analysis of his speech analysis shows how much was ad-libbed (green text was added; pink was cut text).

While Clinton was known for winging many of his best speeches, his improvisational skills derive from the fact that he is prepared, confident, and able to speak in a direct, human way. It is because he knows his larger story, his purpose and is deeply connected to his mission – not to pre-packaged sound bites – that he is able to improvise so successfully. Without passion and purpose, no amount of preparation matters.

Clinton’s speech illustrates what “ Jedi”expert communicators are able to do that separates them from the pack.

1. Follow your gut – Clinton leads with feelings, not facts. He senses his audience – how they are feeling, the energy flow, and he is able to adjust. As a “feeler,” he follows his instincts.

2. Ditch the ‘script’ – Clinton doesn’t just wing it. Clinton prepares judiciously and knows his material; he also knows when to ditch the script. Knowing when to deviate from the plan is the difference between talking at and connecting with your audience. Speak from your heart, not your slides.

3. Paint a vision of purpose – While technical communicators focus on facts; experts such as Clinton aim for the heart, not the head, by communicating a purpose, a larger “mission” of what could be that connects his audience together. He creates a collective “we” that builds a coalition of commitment to something big: in this case, a vision of a better America.

4. Create a simple narrative – Experts speak in simple, human tones. While others use statistics and jargon, Clinton speaks to the audience in a direct, no-nonsense way. He takes complex topics and breaks them into simple, digestible explanations and stories that “stick.”

A Jedi master knows that preparation is imperative. He or she also knows that the ability to ditch the script and speak simply and passionately to a larger collective purpose is the difference between communicating and connecting.

The best communicators connect because they “keep it human.” Do you?

Great Marketers Communicate ‘Upside Down.’ Give the Human Headline First

Dec 012012

If you took a journalism class in school, you know how important the inverted pyramid is. Give people the top headline first – then the details. Start with the big a-ha headline – always – to grab attention.

Yet, too many companies – especially in technology – get caught up in the weeds. They start at the bottom of the pyramid, in the details, rather than starting with the most important element – the big human need headline! Too much marketing focuses on the ‘how’ (process, methodology, technology) when it should focus on the human need first. That’s the big headline your customer cares about.

I was recently investigating a company on behalf of a client. I was asked to see what the company could do to drive new customer acquisition. In my first meeting with this technology company, the account manager started by telling me all about the profiling technology and how it works. What?! We were so far in the weeds, and we hadn’t established a fit based on need. So why would I care about how the technology works? I didn’t!

I stopped the conversation and said, “Let’s not talk about HOW the technology works. Tell me how you will grow my client’s business. How will my client be better off because of working with you?” The account manager was trained to speak about technology, not about the human need.

Ditch the technology discussion! Start with the human need. The account executive should have started with something along the lines of, “I hear, Kathy, that your client’s number one focus for growth is new customer acquisition. We can help your customer grow its ideal customer base, increase loyalty, and we can typically reduce the cost of acquisition per customer. That means profitable growth while marketing expenses decline.” Better right?

Another way to demonstrate that you can meet my human need is to tell me a story that shows me how you have helped other customers. “Kathy, company A came to us with a similar situation and they were about your size. They had plenty of the wrong customers. After working with them, the company not only increased the top line, they grew repeat sales by targeting the ideal customer. We could do that for them by analyzing their current best customers and finding more prospects just like those. We increased conversions by 15% and reduce customer acquisition costs by 30% in two months.” You can hear and feel the difference.

Another big human need here is reducing personal risk. Personal risk is as important – if not more! – as business risk when it comes to purchasing. This underlying human need for reducing risk often keeps people from challenging the status quo. This vetting was on behalf of a client, so I need to know a solution can make me look good. This company knew that; yet it never took the opportunity to actively address it. I had to ask repeatedly to extract an answer. Here’s what they should have said: “Kathy, I see this is for a client of yours, so you feel some risk. While we encourage an investment of $X, we can accelerate the program and, if after 2 weeks, we’re not getting results for your client, they don’t pay.” That’s a huge headline that addresses another big, personal human need.

And always get rid of the jargon. Instead of saying, “our breakthrough algorithms use pixels to match the threshold profile…” which is how this conversation started. All I heard was, ‘’blah, blah, blah!” Stop! Tell me in simple terms, such as, “Kathy, we learn the behavior of your best customers as they shop on your site. We then find potential customers on similar sites by targeting new customers who share similar characteristics to your best existing ones.”Simple is best – especially when the details can be complex.

The details of “how” you work are never the lead story, especially for a technology company. Technology is only as good as the lives it improves. So tell me why I should care. Or tell me a story of how it helped a similar-sized client meet a goal.

Save your ‘how’ for last. If I don’t care about the why and what – I sure won’t care about the how!

6 Ways Poor Communication Kills Customer Value and Your Business

Nov 182012

The way you communicate with your audience either creates or destroys value. And communicating doesn’t mean that you’re successfully connecting with people. When marketing communication is brief, focused, and simple, it can add value by challenging your prospects’ status quo, expanding their options, and helping them to see things in new ways. At its worst, however, poor communication can kill your business. Below are 6 common ways you might be undermining your success without even realizing it.

Poor Communication

The ‘Base Toucher’

How many times have you used this verbiage with a prospect or a client? You call and leave a voicemail, or perhaps an email, saying the following: “Hi. I just wanted to touch base and see how things are.” Would you call someone back after receiving this message? How many messages exactly like this do people get every day? It not only lacks actionable urgency for your prospect or client; it destroys value by adding more noise to their inbox and voicemail. And exactly how is a customer supposed to respond? The Base Toucher – ironically – won’t be getting to home base with any client soon (in a strictly business sense, of course)! Instead, ask your client, “how can I simplify things for you?” That’s a better way to move things forward. The only good ‘touching base’ reference is in baseball!

The Data Overwhelmer

If 5 ideas for a customer is good, then 20 ideas must be better! It sounds good until you put yourself in your customer’s place. What your audience needs is simplicity. When we throw more data at them without context and a way to act on that data in any meaningful way, your audience is left to its own devices to figure out how the heck to do business with you and where to start. Instead, offer several easy ways to engage with you. Your customer may have 10 problems. Your goal is to figure out how to solve the first one before you take on the world.

Welcome to Jargonistan

When you throw buzzwords at people, you are throwing communication grenades at them. Again, people have enough complexity in their lives. What they need is an easy way to make sense of what you are sending them. Jargon isn’t meaningful – it’s a way to hide from having real, human conversations and a way of weaseling out of addressing the real issues. Jargon is not conversation catalyst in any way; rather, it shuts conversations off before they start because it puts the burden of deciphering on your prospect. It erodes trust. “If you’re not clear in talking about your business, then how the hell are you going to understand mine?” your audience will say. Clarity is your burden; so saddle up and stop the jargon-monoxide poisoning. It’s lazy and it kills your credibility.

No Jargon


We Do That, Too

This is the “we can help you with everything” offer. It goes like this: “We’re a strategic firm that does 20 things, and, of course, we’re experts in all of them! Surely, we understand the specifics of your situation!” Wow, 20 things! That’s impressive, right? Nope. It’s the exact opposite. If I have a problem with product launches and that is only one of 20 things your firm does, I can’t see how you specialize in solving my particular issue. Get focused. You may do a number of things under your umbrella. You need to lead with one – the one your prospect cares about.

The Wind-up

This is the “I’ll get to your question” when I’m done with my stuff approach. “Just wait for it, I’m winding up, and the punch line will be worth it.” And, yet, it never is. When you ignore client interruptions, concerns, or fail to read body language, you put your agenda on your prospect. This is tantamount to saying, “I don’t care what you have to say; I’ll hear you when I’m done talking about me.” Forcing your prospect to hear your stuff isn’t why a client or prospect agreed to a meeting with you. Start asking questions. Talk half as much, and always be prepared to throw your plan out the window. When you see you are losing your audience, stop and say, “I see you have questions or concerns. Let’s talk about them.”


The Complicator

“Let’s get started by talking about our methodology.” Much like “The Data Overwhelmer,” the complicator erects self-imposed barriers to business because complication derails decision-making. Talking about your how – your process and methodology – is irrelevant. Often you are fighting the status quo, and the status quo looks good compared to your complicating process. If working through a proposal or engagement gets complicated, you are seen as a ‘complicator’ not a complication ‘solver.’ “Doing business with you won’t solve our problems,” your customers and prospects will say. Instead, it will create new ones having to manage the process with you. How you communicate with an audience tells people what working with you will be like. By communicating simply, you allow people to see you a solution, and not another complication in their already complicated lives. Your methodology doesn’t matter; only talk about results. The ‘how’ is your process and your problem.

Communicate Simply

Simple Communication
Too often businesses think their value comes from the work they do – their solution, their products, their channels. Yet, what we say and how we say it can create value for our audience, too. Conversely, it can also destroy it. The first way any audience experiences you is through your communication. So make every touch count by making it simple, human, and easy for your audience to see why you are the answer, and not just one more complicating factor in their already complex lives.

Kathy Klotz-Guest

The Accounting Industry Gets Human. Seriously!

Apr 122012

I had the pleasure of chatting recently with Bill Sheridan (Communications Manager and Editor) and Tom Hood, CPA (Executive Director) of The Maryland Association of Certified Public Accountants, known as MACPA, a top thought leadership blog in the accounting industry. MACPA’s blog, CPA Success, has heavily evangelized not only social media adoption by accountants; it has advocated a re-envisioning of profession based on a human-centered approach with social media being merely one small part of that. Who would have thought that accountants had “human” advocates?! They do, and we just had to talk to them.

 

Kathy Klotz-Guest, CEO of Keeping it Human (KKG): Using social media and being “social” are different things. Accountants aren’t usually known for having a “human” face to the world. You’re a big advocate of the accounting industry becoming “more human.”  What does it mean for accountants to become more human? How does it change the role of accountants in helping clients create value as opposed to simply tracking it on the back-end?

Bill Sheridan (BS): To me, that means putting people at the center of everything we do. It means building relationships. It means collaboration instead of delegation, asking questions, and making business decisions based on the answers people give us. Social media is a great tool for doing these things, but it goes much deeper than that. As service providers, CPAs are remarkably good at these things. Relationships with clients are at the heart of everything they do. But being human today means making sure that people are burned into our businesses’ DNA, and that often starts with our own staff and internal business processes. The keys are transparency, loyalty, trustworthiness, collaboration, and empowerment.

 

KKG: What are the people-related and financial benefits of being more human?

BS: We’re now living in an era in which people are at the center of everything we do. Tom Hood likes to say we’ve moved away from an era of command-and-control to one of communicate-and-collaborate. Doing that means building communities and relationships, and that takes people, it takes trust, it takes a commitment to serving others, not just making money. It’s a people-first mentality.

Seth Godin talks about circles of gift giving. There are three of them:

The first is a circle of true gifts – stuff we willingly share with others, most often friends, family and co-workers. Someone asks for advice for a good hotel in the area. You give that knowledge away. You invite a friend over and give her a meal. You don’t charge her for it.

The second is a circle of commerce – people in this circle are willing to pay you for what you produce – your consulting services, your financial advice, the book you wrote, the widget you made.

Now, the Internet has given us a third circle, and it’s kind of a combination of the first two. It consists of people who might one day pay you for what you do – but to get to that point they first need to know you and trust you and be comfortable interacting with you. These are our social networks, the folks we follow online. In Seth’s words, “Generosity generates income.”

Social media is that third circle. We’re not supposed to sell anything there. That’s where we give away stuff, share what we know, and add value to people’s lives. It’s where we build trust, credibility, and relationships. If we do that, we’ll move some folks over to the second circle and realize some financial benefits to all of this social stuff. But it has to start with building trust and being human.

 

KKG: What’s driving the sense of urgency here in an industry not often known for rapid change?

BS: Let’s go back to the numbers: 800 million people on Facebook, a new account on LinkedIn every second, and 175,000 tweets per minute. Who are all of these people? They’re our clients, our customers, our members and employees. They’re everyone we do business with each day. We had better be willing to meet these people wherever they are. If we don’t, they’ll give their money to those who do, and we will have marginalized ourselves.

 

KKG: Your blog briefly touched on the Chartered Global Management Accountant (CGMA) designation recently.  And Steve King of Small Business Labs noted that if accountants are being more human, than “being human” is a real (small) business trend! How will this elevate the status of the accounting industry and help the profession to emphasize more of the human factor in business?

BS: The world is smaller than it has ever been, and that means that almost all business today is global. That alone puts CPAs / CGMAs on a global stage. Talk about elevating the status of the profession!

Here’s the thing: CGMAs are focused not so much on the numbers, but on what the numbers mean. They’re focused on examining the numbers and helping people make informed decisions. An AICPA / CIMA report titled ”Rebooting Business: Valuing the Human Dimension” says “relationships with customers, employees, partners and communities … will be key to getting things moving again and sustaining success over the long run.” CGMAs are positioned to build those types of relationships by giving meaning to the numbers.

 

KKG: One of the ways CPA Success stands out is that it emphasizes storytelling in an industry not known for it. Of course, storytelling is such a key part of being human and a critical part of connecting with an audience. Can you share an example or two of great storytelling by MACPA?

BS: These are all very personal to me, and I guess that’s the point: Storytelling starts with what you know and have experienced on a day-to-day basis. Keep your eyes open for those little moments that might tell a bigger story that many people can relate to. With that in mind, here are a few of my favorite recent storytelling moments from CPA Success:

The secret to success? Try the periwinkles
http://www.cpasuccess.com/2012/02/the-secret-to-success-try-the-periwinkles.html

I learned all I need to know in 4th grade basketball
http://www.cpasuccess.com/2012/01/i-learned-all-i-need-to-know-in-4th-grade-basketball.html

Focus on what you know. Keep your eyes open for stories that you can use. Our lives are filled with unique and meaningful experiences. We just need the discipline to recognize, record and share those experiences with others.

 

KKG: I know accountants like to measure success.  Some returns are financial and others are intangibles. If the accounting industry were to adopt a more human-centered approach, what would success look like?

BS: In its simplest form, success would look a simple conversation between CPA and client. There would be no financial techno-speak. There would simply be a CPA asking questions: What do you want to accomplish? What are your goals? What is important to you? What does success look like to you? Success is not about what we can sell you.. It’s about what our clients need.

 

KKG: Is there anything else you think is important that people understand about the accounting profession and how its approach to marketing is changing?

Tom Hood (TH): The accounting profession is changing form a historically-oriented profession to a much more future-focused profession. We recently facilitated in-person grassroots “future forums” with CPAs  all across the US as part of a national CPA Horizons 2025 Project sponsored by the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA).  As part of the final report we identified the skills needed in the future by CPAs. These are:  1) Strategic thinking—being flexible and future-minded, thinking critically and creatively. 2) Synthesizing—the ability to gather information from many sources and relate it to a big picture. 3) Networking and Collaboration— understanding the value of human networks and how to collaborate across them. 4) Leadership and communications—the ability to make meaning and mobilize people to action and make your thinking visible to others, and 5) Technological savvy—proficiency in the application of technology.”

These skills point to a much more collaborative and connected profession that is more techno-centric AND more people-centric.

 

KKG: Thank You, Tom and Bill, for a great interview and for putting humanity back into what has always been viewed as a numbers-oriented industry.  Visit the MACPA blog.

Storytelling and "Stellar Presentations": A "Non-Naked" Conversation with Shel Israel

Apr 042012

I had the pleasure of chatting with my colleague and co-conspiring mischief maker, Shel Israel, about his latest book, Stellar Presentations. Shel and I first met as Founding Fellows of the new media research think tank, Society for New Communications Research, sncr.org.

A masterful storyteller, Shel Israel is a writer, consultant and keynote speaker. He is CEO of SI Associates and is located in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has written four books, including Naked Conversations, Twitterville, The Conversational Corporation, and Stellar Presentations. Israel is also a contributing columnist at Forbes.com and has contributed previously to OpenForum, BusinessWeek and FastCompany. He has been a keynote speaker on five continents and in 14 countries. His blog is GlobalNeighbourhoods.net. Stop by and say hi!

 

Kathy Klotz-Guest (KKG): Humans are wired to think in stories, as you and I know so well given what we do for a living. Yet, many business people fail to use presentations as a chance to tell great stories. Why don’t more people focus on thinking about their presentation as a “story” vs. as a bunch of bullets?

Shel Israel (SI): I wish I could answer your question but I don’t know why. I believe presentations would be more memorable if presenters understood the powerful advantage to storytelling.  I’ve seen bullet-based slide decks where each slide was presented for three minutes, but it felt to us in the audience like 3000 years.

Conversely, there are stories that were first told 3000 years ago, passed down from one generation to another, have been embedded in history, culture, religion and family. Some have endured for well over 3000 years.

 

KKG: You are known as a social media writer. Why write a book on presentations?

SI: I have been coaching startup executives on presenting to press, investors and at conferences for over 25 years, but it never dawned on me to write a book on the subject until I was invited to India to speak at their largest entrepreneurial conference, NASSCOM. They wanted me to speak on how to give a good presentation.

It was the first time, in 100 engagements that I was invited to speak on a topic not related to social media and I was going to decline, until I realized how much I knew, not just from my presentation coaching, but because I had also covered countless presentations at conference and in recent years had become pretty accomplished at it as a speaker myself.

So I decided to do what I always do. I put together a bunch of stories I knew about other presentations that worked or failed and built it out into my own presentation. Last November, I found myself standing in front of a few hundred people in a country I had never visited, in a culture where I was an outsider and I was more nervous than I had been in a long time.

“What if I really suck,” I wondered. Then I realized that the people who were in the room probably had that same fear, when they had to speak on behalf of their startups. So I began my talk buy saying, “I have been asked to give a presentation about how to give a great presentation–but what if I suck?”

There was an awkward moment, then laughter, the applause, and I knew I was on my way. It turned out to be the most enthusiastic reception I had ever received. I was the top-rated speaker at the conference and it felt very good.

On the flight home, I realized that over many years, I had acquired a good deal of wisdom on a topic that mattered to a great many people and the topic fit extremely well into my storytelling style of writing. Two weeks later, I put everything aside and wrote the book almost straight through. It’s a very short book but I’m very proud of it.

 

KKG: What are the three worst mistakes speakers make?

SI: Here you go…

They try to say too much in too short a period of time. Speakers should make as few points as they possibly can, but they should make those points extremely well.

They try to make the Powerpoint the presentation. It is not. It is the background and when moved to stage center, it can make for an excruciatingly boring presentation. I use Powerpoint to illustrate a talk in the same way I use photos on a blog.

They assume formal identities. The nicest, most approachable people filled with passion and enthusiasm, stand on a dais and suddenly sound like that professor who cured your insomnia during his lectures in sophomore year. They say big words when little ones will do. They use data-dense slides that make a train schedule look fascinating by comparison.

Speakers should remember that a presentation should not answer all questions. They should make diverse people in the room–editors and analysts, investors, customers, competitors and future hires all want to know more about you, your company, your product and your dream.

 

KKG:  What was your most embarrassing moment as a speaker?

SI: Yikes. That goes back a long, long time to when I was an upperclassman at Northeastern University. I was selected to be host of Freshman night, in which upper-class students produced satiric skits of campus life.

I was not supposed to be all that funny. I was just supposed to introduce the acts. As I walked out, a very attractive woman in the front row started smiling from ear-to-ear. I thought she liked me and it bolstered my confidence. Then she was whispering to the guy next to her, and he started smiling and he turned to the next person and in seconds, the whole front two rows were chatting and chuckling.

Finally, I stopped talking. I looked at the young woman who started it going and asked her what was so funny. She hesitated for a long moment and I insisted again that she share the joke.

“Your fly is open,” she said. That was over 40 years ago. I still haven’t topped it and I really hope I don’t.

 

KKG: What are the key elements to telling a great story in the context of a presentation?

SI: Keep it focused and reasonably short. Have fun telling it. Make certain people understand why you told the story. If possible insert some humor. Presenters often vastly undervalue humor for making memorable points.

 

KKG: Amen! You are preaching to the humor choir! What’s the best story given in a presentation you have heard lately?

SI: When I was in Israel, I heard a presentation by an advocate of greater tolerance between Israelis and Arabs. I don’t remember the name of the storyteller, but I will never forget how he opened: “A Jew and a Muslim walk into a bar and kill each other. Then everyone else joins in. They kill each other. The bar has no one to serve, so it goes out of business. The owner kills himself. My moral is: All this killing is bad for everyone and really ought to stop.

Compare that with a bullet point presentation. I defy you to think of three bullet items on a page that would make the point more powerfully than that.

 

KKG:  What is the most important piece of advice you would give to making your presentations more memorable?

SI: Make the fewest points you can possibly make to get the audience to walk away wanting to know more.

 

KKG: Thanks, Shel, you’re a masterful conversationalist. And, no, Israel was NOT named after you! <laughs!>

 

Follow Shel: @ShelIsrael

Follow Kathy @KathyKlotzGuest

Humanizing Sales - A Q & A with Sales Expert, Jill Konrath

Jan 202012

Kathy Klotz-Guest (KKG): Thank you, Jill, for sharing your thoughts and experience with our readers today. Let’s jump right in!

So many people equate “selling” with the visual of a used car-salesman because there are so many examples of salespeople that are aggressive and “un-human.” Yet, selling is necessary to success and, when done right, great salespeople add value for clients rather than destroy it.

Q: What makes a great salesperson?

Jill Konrath (JK): A great salesperson doesn’t feel like a salesperson — or at least our typical perception of one. They don’t pitch, manipulate, give spiels or act one bit smarmy. Instead, they’re 100% focused on their client’s business objectives. They bring them ideas, insights and information to help them reach their goals. They poke their prospects out of their comfort zone with status quo and help them see better ways of doing things. They’re always thinking about what they can do to create business value.

And, because they’re operating as business improvement specialists — they get sales. They don’t sell. They get sales as an outcome of what they do.

KKG: Q: What is the single biggest mistake small businesses make when selling to bigger companies?

JK:They don’t educate themselves on the corporate environment before contacting potential clients. As a result, they make a few attempts to connect with decision makers but when they don’t get a response they give up.

The truth is, because they don’t dig in and learn about the corporate environment, they don’t align their messages with key business priorities. They don’t show any expertise (which is essential from the perspective of a crazy-busy prospect) and ultimately they sound like every other self-serving salesperson.

You don’t get into big companies today unless you’ve done your homework, speak the language of the buyer, know what’s urgent right now, and can communicate it effectively in emails, voicemail, resources on your website and much more.

KKG: Q: What are the most important tips for anyone looking to humanize his or her sales approach?

JK: Great question. While we all want to develop deep and rich relationships with our prospects, we need to realize they have no desire to do the same with us. That is soooo painful for most people to hear. The best way to humanize our sales is to focus on helping. We need to really understand the business impact of your products or services and help our prospects understand the difference we can make. When we do that, we are valued for who we are and our expertise. The result? They want an relationship with us because they know we care.

KKG: You seem to genuinely have fun doing what you do; clearly, it’s your passion. I think people would be relieved to know that they can be authentic and get great results.

Q: Can you tell us more about that?

JK: No one wants to deal with a sales clone — which is what I call those misinformed sellers who think there job is to pitch and close. They want to deal with a human being who not only brings great value but is fun to work with.

Personally, I’ve always had fun at this job too. I view it as a challenge. I’m constantly asking questions such as ‘How can I help them understand the business value I bring?” or “What do I need to do to ensure they tell everyone in their company they need my product?”

When you view life as a challenge, you rise up to it! It’s not a problem that needs resolution. It’s an opportunity to create something new.

KKG: Q: Do you have a recent example of sales success due to authenticity that you can share?

JK: Recently I had a VP of Sales contact me about speaking at their an upcoming sales meeting. When I asked him about the primary challenges his salespeople were facing, he gave me a laundry list. They couldn’t get in the door, develop needs, and successfully negotiate.

After he said the last one, I stopped him in his tracks and said, “If negotiation is critical to you, you need to know I suck at it.” He laughed, then asked me why. I told him that usually negotiation problems were a symptom of a deeper problem – inability to sell value. He agreed. And shortly after that, we signed a contract for me to help him with what I was good at.

KKG: Q: How can someone change his or her mindset so that selling is not only less painful, but is actually more fun than they thought?

JK: Nothing is fun if it keeps leading to failure. So the key is twofold:

1. Learn the skills of selling. Too many people believe they’re either born to sell — or not. Well guess what?! I don’t have a sales bone in my body. I learned what it took, step-by-step, in order to get business. When you try new things and start getting results, it inspires you to keep going. But when you abdicate responsibility and say, “I can’t sell” — then you can’t.

2. Reframe every problem as a challenge. Problems zap you, but challenges inspire. Always ask yourself questions such as, “How can I do it? What other ways can I come up with? How would someone who understood sales handle this?”

KKG: Thank you, Jill. For more great selling tips, visit Jill’s site, JillKonrath.com.

Cut the Clutter! Successful Marketing Messaging Requires The Hard Work of Simplicity

Dec 292011

Happy New Year!

The New Year is a great time to get rid of clutter and start fresh! We do this with resolutions, with our financial portfolios, with our old clothes to name a few things. It’s also a great time to revisit your company’s messaging and see how it’s holding up.

It’s easy for messaging – the essence of how you make your clients’ lives better – to become convoluted, dry, and boring. This is especially true when your services are complex, and that happens a lot in technology, in medicine, and in the legal profession. We want to tell the world everything we do and how we do it. The reality is everyone is already on info overload. Thus, the only antidote for complexity that works is simplicity. And getting to messaging simplicity is hard work, though entirely worth it! It’s also important to remember that your messaging is not about your services. You are not about your services. Your business value is so much more than that!

That’s worth repeating. Your value is NOT your services. Don’t even mention them. Your value is the end result of working with you; your services are just vehicles to get to that end result! And your offerings will evolve over time.
Simple messaging makes it easier for your audience to recognize that they need you. Crisp messaging means a few really important things.

First, it means no jargon! Jargon is not human. If you throw buzzwords at me, I can decode it. That’s not the point. It’s not my responsibility as a prospect to figure out what you do and why I should care. Clarity is *your* burden.

What do you have to lose by not being clear? Well, lots of business, actually. If you can’t articulate with clarity, then how can I trust you to bring clarity and simplicity to my life after working with you? You can’t even bring clarity to your messaging. Clear messaging makes it possible for your audience to imagine what doing business with would be like and what results they could expect. Great businesses are in the market to simplify, not complicate, clients’ lives! Simplicity is a gift to your prospects and a credibility point. It’s not about “dumbing down” your message. Rather, simplicity is an important, elegant way to signal that you help reduce complexity for your prospects.

Second, simplicity means reducing everything you do to a key takeaway. It doesn’t mean that you don’t have other benefits. You need to focus on communicating one clear message to your audience. One of the biggest mistakes to be made is trying to communicate too much at once. Focus on communicating one central theme. For example, one thing I bring to my clients is that I help them succeed by simplifying and humanizing their messaging so it attracts the right prospects. Sure, there is a lot more to what I do; yet, simplicity works because it is memorable. Here’s a great exercise – try to communicate your message in 20 words or less. It’s not easy – and that’s precisely why getting to a crisp, clear, human message will give you a competitive advantage! If it were easy, your competition wouldn’t be stumbling. It takes a lot of work to get to a clear, compelling “story,” and the benefits are worth it.

Third, great messaging sells a vision of how life could be after working with you rather than selling facts, or services. In other words you are selling what could be – a story, not a set of cold hard “facts” that your competition can also claim. In other words, great messaging aims at your prospect’s guts and heart, not at their “rational” head, that, after all, isn’t as rational as we think. People remember how you make them feel, not a regurgitation of facts. People won’t remember a spew of your services; they will remember stories and how you made them feel. Concentrate on leaving them with a feeling that you “get” their issues and can simplify their lives.

Messaging is Evolutionary, Not Revolutionary

Great messaging will evolve. Simplicity takes hard work! How do you know if you have a messaging issue to begin with? Ask yourself the following questions:

• Is what I do clear to prospects and to current customers?
• Am I consistent in the way I explain what I do across groups?
• Do I get blank stares when I explain what I do?
• Can I explain my value in less than 30 seconds with confidence and clarity?
• Can other people articulate my value if *they* were to explain it?
• Are you referred frequently by others?
• Is my website and home page clear on my value (no flowery language; just human terms)?
• Do I avoid jargon as much as possible?
• Do people ask me for more information or seem genuinely interested when I tell my story?
• Are my marketing materials consistent, clear, and succinct?
• Do I tell a compelling, differentiated story (versus using generic terms such as, “customer service,” “trust,” etc.)?
• Do you hand out your business cards with gusto (or do you apologize for them)?
• Are you confident of “your story,” (or do you cringe because you know it’s not what it could be)?

If you answered “no” to most of these items, I don’t need to tell you that you have a messaging challenge. You can feel when prospects “don’t get it.” Your message isn’t doing you justice.

There is a hidden story in your business; let us help you find it, polish it, and be proud to tell the world!

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Keeping It Human, 408-578-8040, is a Marketing Communications company providing marketing strategy, marketing research, marketing writing, storytelling, meeting facilitation, and marketing skills seminars and workshops services. We provide fresh and innovative approaches to marketing , including humor. Our clients are located all over the San Francisco Bay Area including San Jose, San Francisco, Palo Alto, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Cupertino, Redwood City, Milpitas, Redwood Shores, Foster City, CA and other Bay Area / Silicon Valley cities. Keeping it Human also has clients out of state in places such as Colorado, New York, and Massachusetts. 		Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha