If you don’t know where you’re going, it’s perfectly find to meander. You just might stumble upon your destination.
If you don’t know where you’re going, it’s perfectly find to meander. You just might stumble upon your destination.
Anyone who has been witness to a political argument will recognize the mental contortions and logical leaps the participants will put themselves through to justify their initial position. Each starts with their end in mind and the debate is merely flogging a dead horse, more entertaining than useful for the witnessing crowd. Minds are rarely changed.
What is the perception your customer has of your business, your solutions, your position in the marketplace?* What end will they justify throughout your presentation?
If it’s positive, then your job is simply to reinforce. If you don’t stray too far on your walk through the woods, the customer will see the path for themselves, even through incomplete messages and proof-points. They’ll fill in the gaps to justify their perception.
If it’s negative, then heaven help you. You have to change perception and overcome every spike of doubt that enters your audience’s mind. No amazing features or functions will overcome that bias. They’ll fill in the gaps to justify their perception.
So you have to set the perception first. You have to tell a better story than they’ve told themselves, a better story than the competition has told them. Your audience has to be onboard with your premise before you begin to show the clicks, screens and apps which will solve their problem.
How? Here are some positioning approaches:
Good luck; you have minds to change.
Perhaps the most intimate relationship we develop is with our smart phones.
They are there at all times, in our pockets, in our hands, hooked into our cars, available at a tap and swipe, providing us with communications, information, and entertainment. We check in constantly throughout the day, whenever we find the opportunity; what used to be a smoking break is now a smart phone break. We honor them by personalizing them, adding protective covers, improving the headsets we work with; we’re slaves to the batteries and perform our recharging rituals with fanatical fervor.
And yet, after long years of devotion to the devices and their branded, fashion-statement, loyalty-laden, get-their-hooks-in-you ecosystems, we can walk away at a moment’s notice and embrace the new. Technology has made it so that we can end our years of intimacy, divorce and re-marry, by simply holding the power button for three seconds, turning off the old forever and turning on the new, and never looking back.
Enterprise software has also reached the point where our customers can turn off the old, walk away, and embrace the new.
So, what you’ve done for them in the past does not matter; how you extend what you’ve done can differentiate; looking forward had better be as good, and as easy to embrace, as the competition.
Get ready to win them over, again.
Change is difficult. It’s hard to learn something new.
Yet there you are, standing in front of an audience, demonstrating with great zeal and gusto all sorts of new things and better ways and innovative solutions.
Get ready. Your audience is about to unleash a barrage of pointed, impatient questions.
It’s not that they don’t like what you’re showing. They simply don’t understand what you’re showing. They understand their world and what they do in specific, familiar ways. What you’re sharing is different, a something-new your product and technology make possible. And because it is new and unfamiliar, they don’t understand it and they are trying to make sense of it through their questions.
So help them. Give them an analogy that explains your product, your positioning, your solution in a way everyone can understand. Let the analogy apply a concept they do understand to their current challenges, helping form your unique solution.
I provided a day long session where I used the theme of a master-planned housing community with all sorts of related analogies: pick from one of four basic home designs, choose your own fittings and fixtures, landscaping is later, be the first ones on the block, etc. It was a huge pantry stocked with analogies*. In a follow up call months later, the customer didn’t remember our product’s features and functions, but she excitedly recalled “the house! The house!”
Mary Poppins was a great Pre-Sales Engineer:
In ev’ry job that must be done
There is an element of fun
You find the fun and snap!
The job’s a game
And ev’ry task you undertake
Becomes a piece of cake
A lark! A spree! It’s very clear to see that
A Spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down
The medicine go down-wown
The medicine go down
Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down
In a most delightful way
*See how I did that?
They remember their impression of the details.
They remember your analogies.
They remember that you understood their vision.*
They remember you.
You.
*If a leader in the room has a vision you can articulate, it almost doesn’t matter what your product can do. When you can help someone achieve their vision, you’re the most valuable person in the room.