Marketing Technology Blog

Surgeons mentally prepare for surgery. Athletes mentally prepare for the big game. You, too, need to get psyched about your next opportunity – your biggest sales call or presentation yet.

Developing great communication skills will set you apart from the rest of the pack. Think about what skills you need:

• Masterful Listening Techniques – Do you really know what your customer needs and why? What is his pain? Can you hear it in what he says and in how he says it?
• Tone-Setting Body Language – Do you know when to mirror your customer’s body language? Does your body language set the tone for better or more frequent communication with your customer?
• Just-Right Intonation and Rate of Speech – Does the way you talk inspire energy and action from your customer? Or do you find your customer drifting off to other topics or bored with your product/service? Does the customer “get it” that your product or service resolves his pain?
• Powerful, Persuasive Voice Control – Do you sound influential? Does your voice put people at ease so they freely open up to you about their pain? Or do you sound tense, nervous, disorganized, whiney, slow, or bored?

You already know the message you want your customer to hear. That’s the easy part. And no matter how often you say your 60-second pitch or go through your sales material, there are people who will not connect with that message; they just won’t “get it”. One of the reasons is because, in general, your message will only resonate when WHAT you say and HOW you say it match.

HOW you say your message makes all the difference

And there is an art to this. Before you head off to that next big call, think about the feeling you want to leave with your customer; the emotion you want to share. For example, consider that you might want to start with a warm, friendly message and follow up with a confident, powerful, or influential message.

Each feeling you want to convey can be portrayed by

• Descriptive word
• Mental picture or image
• Matching body language

Prepare for your call by making sure your style of communication (the HOW) matches your message. To start off with a warm, friendly message:

1. Think of a key word which evokes warm, friendly feelings: “tender”, “calm”, “sunshine”, “cozy”. Repeat that one key word to yourself several times with emphasis until you feel it.
2. Picture the mental image. Visualize hugging a child or your spouse, wrapping up in a blanket by the fireplace, walking along the beach in the bright sun. Make the picture clear and vivid.
3. Change the sound of your voice by changing your body tone and placement. Smile. Talk expressively with energy. Move. Make your movements BIG.

And to continue with power and influence:

1. Think of a key word which evokes a sense of power and influence: “strong”, “firm”, “confident”
2. Picture yourself in that manner. Imagine being the greatest story teller, or the greatest of all coaches, a uniformed commander, THE expert speaking to an audience glued to your every word. Now visualize yourself giving your intended message. Picture yourself calm, in control, in the zone.
3. Body Language: If you want to be powerful and influential, stand up. Perfect posture. Use strong hand gestures. Don’t walk around much. Maintain good eye contact. Don’t look at objects in the room; only people. When speaking on the phone, don’t let your eyes wander. Make eye contact with a picture of a person…speak to her.

Social media platforms are tools. Social media platforms are software. There are other tools and software out there. There will be better tools around the corner.

Twitter doesn’t matter. Facebook doesn’t matter. LinkedIn doesn’t matter. Blogs don’t matter. They all just help us get a little closer to what we really want.

• What we really want is the truth.
• What we really want is to trust.
• What we really want is to understand.
• What we really want is friendship.
• What we really want is help.

This month is a HUGE month for one of my good friends in technology. He’s moving his social media company from Indiana to California. He’s going to be embedded in the heart of The Valley with some of the other sharp minds that have grown their social media applications explosively. (Yes, I’m a little bit jealous).

The application that his team built is simple (so is Twitter!) but it gets to the heart of what people really want. They make it easier. The platform is simply the means to get to the social part. I’m not underestimating the incredible talent and imagination it took to launch such a cool application, there’s no doubt. But the popularity is because of what the application enables. It enables a social engagement we’ve not seen yet.

I educate clients and customers about the technology so that we can fully leverage it and maximize their social impact. So, when clients ask me, “How do I get more [insert followers, fans, subscribers, buzz, retweets], I’m always a little put off. If your company is not a social company, if you don’t care about your clients, if you don’t write fantastic content, if you don’t have a great product, if you don’t have special people, if you’re not remarkable… then the big numbers won’t do you any good.

I keep saying it…. Social media is an amplifier. If you have nothing to amplify, then the biggest amplifier in the world won’t help! Stop searching for bigger and better social media experts to keep building bigger and better amplifiers for you. It’s what they’re amplifying that makes the difference.

It’s the equivalent of someone who can’t sing asking us to fill a stadium. After we fill the stadium, then what? If you can’t sing, we had no business selling a single ticket! Folks like me can get people to show up to the concert… then it’s your job to put on a heck of a show!

So… quit asking me to get you more if you can’t handle the ones you have now. If your 500 followers aren’t doing business with you, then how is getting you 5,000 more going to improve your results? Here’s a tip… it will result in ten times the impact.

Ten times zero is zero.

Some day Twitter won’t be here, Facebook won’t be here, LinkedIn won’t be here… and we’ll be working with newer channels that may continue to make things just a little bit easier. Those new media platforms still won’t be able to fix the core issues challenging your strategy, though. Let’s fix those first.

Good friend, Duncan Alney shared this with me today. Let’s hear it for New Dorks…

Heidi, if you’re still looking for me, you can reach me at 317.456.2564…. if I clear out my voicemail box.

I’ll always remember my high school economics teacher, Mr. Dilk. Aside from his hilarious self-censorship when it was obvious he wanted to curse (“Well … BUGS!”) his repetitive use of cliches actually managed to drive certain bits of wisdom into my hormone-addled brain. Among his favorites:

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

Now, this is before the invention of those awful motivational posters with pictures of whale tails and people climbing mountains you see in every corporate office. The dispensation of sage advice was the territory of your parents, teachers, and PBS. Despite the hackneyed nature of such counsel, this one stuck with me.

Now in my professional life, planning takes up a significant portion of my time, and for good reason. When putting together a content and social media strategy, the single most important task is to establish which platforms and services are most useful for your needs and plan your approach accordingly.

Not only does taking a willy-nilly approach dilute your brand personality, it’s also financially wasteful. Without an accurate accounting of what’s been done where–and the time spent doing it–your online efforts are a complete waste of time and money.

Any digital shop worth their salt will pitch you their planning process. If they don’t, ask them about it. If they hem and haw or outright don’t have one, run away. You will find your online marketing budget shrinking and have nothing much to show for it besides canceled checks.

To that end, if your company is in a position to go it alone in the digital space, I highly recommend you look at CMO’s Guide to the Social Landscape. It’s basically a social media cheat sheet to the benefits and shortcomings of the top platforms and services. The analysis was performed by 97th Floor, and it’s a great one-sheet resource guide.

There are numerous social network services out there; no single one is the right one, just as trying to utilize all of them isn’t effective. There is no one answer, no single social media content approach that works for every client. By engaging in thoughtful, constructive planning, you make the best use of your time and money.