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Are You Buzzword Bingo Worthy?

Have you ever heard of Buzzword Bingo? It’s a game, somewhat prevalent in corporate America, which was conceived to poke fun at the overuse of buzzwords in place of meaningful concepts or information. It’s not a difficult game to replicate in your workplace – simply create bingo cards and fill the boxes with the corporate jargon you hear every day. When you hear the word, block it out – when you block out an entire row, you’ve got a bingo.

Are you Buzzword Bingo worthy? Consider the following questions:

• Is your product or service real-time, scalable, and user-centric? 
• Do you have the bandwidth to take on more and still reach milestones?
• Is your company uniquely qualified to offer a particular service?
• Do you provide world-class solutions to mission-critical challenges that result in a win-win-win situation?

If you tend to use the highlighted words in your sales and marketing materials and language, you’re pretty Buzzword Bingo worthy - and that's not good! In essence, you tend to use jargon in place of relevant words. And that means you're not creating a clear message for your prospects and customers about how you can help them solve their challenges or meet their objectives. Rather, you’re throwing overused buzzwords against the wall to see what sticks…and, by the way, so are most of your competitors. 

So if buzzwords are the confusing norm in the market, think how easy it can be to differentiate your company simply by clarifying your message. And you can clarify your message in three steps:

1. Choose your words carefully and define them.  People define words and phrases differently…make sure you and your prospects are on the same page by defining the buzzword rather than actually using it. For instance, what does real-time mean?  Is it instantaneous, within an hour, perhaps within half a day or even an entire day…or longer? Who’s to know unless you define it?
2. Rather than using a buzzword, tell what you help your clients do. For instance, what can your clients do because of the instantaneous information you provide them that they couldn’t do before they had it? Can they plan ahead, react faster, save time, or save money?  Say that! Take that next step and tell what getting that instantaneous information means to them and their business.
3. Tell a story that proves your claim. Nothing sells like a story. What story brings your claim to life? Tell that story – but no buzzwords please! 

Are you Buzzword Bingo worthy?  Please, please, please pass on that “honor!” Clarify your message, tell it in simple, descriptive language, and toss a story, rather than a bunch of buzzwords, to your prospects. Let your competitors win the bingo, you focus on winning the sale!

jkl

 

Can Business Be Emotional?

Last Friday's poll asked you to rate the percentage of emotional and rational aspects of corporate decision-making. Our rational brains may think the correct percentages are 70% rational and 30% emotional. But guess what? Behavioral economics suggests that, in reality, business decision-making is exactly the opposite: 70% emotional, 30% rational.

Behavioral economics studies the effect of emotions on business. And some of the things that have been uncovered with behavioral economics are pretty amazing. For example, people tend to feel more pain from losing something than pleasure from gaining an equal amount (remember losing the "big game" in high school or college?). Along the same line, people tend to make decisions more quickly to escape pain than to realize gain. Yet one more example: people tend to demand a higher price to part with something they currently own than they were, or would be, willing to pay for it to begin with. Do any of these sound rational...decisions based on processing a bunch of information? Or do they sound emotional...decisions based on something that is felt or experienced?

Our emotions play a huge role in making not only our personal decisions, but business decisions as well. And if you know this, as a sales, account development, or marketing professional, your messaging changes significantly. Less important is cramming a bunch of numbers and information down your prospect or client's throat, so that they can make a rational decision. Much more important is finding out the things that keep them up at night – their pains – and providing solutions to those pains, so they can make a decision that gets them out of their pain...an emotional decision.

When you prepare for your next prospect or client appointment, or prepare your next marketing campaign, take some time to think about the audience you'll have. What are the pain points they'd love to solve? Then craft a conversation that describes for them how you can help them escape that pain. You'll be leading them to a much quicker decision – and a decision for you.

jkl

Target for The Greatest Effect

I ran across an article today that piqued my interest. It was about the effectiveness of driving behavior based on marketing campaigns. I had to see if some new insight into customer behavior was going to be revealed!

Interestingly enough, after reading an exhaustive analysis of four studies, the bottom line was something we likely all know already, but often forget:

"Target your audience, give them a specific message or request, and you'll see positive results."  

The research showed that a targeted message to a targeted audience drove the most positive results. Now that may sound like Sales/Marketing 101, but I think it's worth a reminder to all of us as many companies try to cram multiple messages in one marketing campaign and send that campaign to as many prospects or customers as possible. 

• Companies often feel that since they're already paying for one direct mail piece or one email campaign, they should get as much information into that communication as possible. The problem with this approach is that it dilutes your primary message. We've all heard of information overload! But communicating the one message that you need to get across to drive action...will drive action.

• Companies also question why they should pay for multiple creative executions when they can just use one to cover all their prospects and clients. The problem with this approach is much the same as above...it dilutes your effort as one message probably won't fit all your customers as well as targeted messages will.

Many of you are probably in your planning for Q4 or even next year by now, so hopefully this reminder will prove to be a timely one. As you're thinking about your sales and marketing campaigns, take time to segment your market, look at metrics around those segments, and determine what action you want each segment to take. Then design your marketing/sales campaigns around those specific actions, applying a targeted message, or ask, to a targeted audience. The odds are you'll get what you ask for.

jkl