The Career Enhancing Benefits of Message Mapping
Filed under: Career, Leadership, Management Education, Marketing, Marketing Yourself, Product Management, Professional Growth, Strategy, Your Professional Development "To Do" List
Critical communication situations demand crystal clarity.
With apologies for my abusive but personally amusing alliteration above, I’m banging the drum again on the need for all of us to carefully form and frame our messages before we open our mouths and trip on our tongues.
There are many critical communication situations that we face in our organizations and in public, and the moment that you open your mouth is not the time to begin thinking about how to best get your points across. And it’s certainly no time to start rambling like so many politicians or hapless business executives caught on the wrong end of a microphone without a plan. We all know the outcomes, ranging from empty blah blah blabbing to disturbing utterances that demand later apologies.
I use a simple but powerful tool called Message Mapping that is ideal for all of those critical communication situations, including:
- Developing and delivering a speech
- Presenting to executives
- Preparing and participating in a job interview
- Launching a new product
- Communicating a new strategy
- Announcing organizational changes
- Helping to get a group on the same page
- Preparing for an interview
- Delivering difficult news
- Anything else that you can think of…
A group of us learned this approach from a public relations professional years ago and went on to adapt it to serve our own needs in creating corporate and product messaging and helping to ensure that trade show and briefing teams were on the same page about new product launches. Ultimately, we’ve all used it to great effect in our personal professional lives for interview and other presentations.
Creating the Map-Simplicity and Complexity at the Same Time:
The approach is simple to explain, easy to visualize and darned challenging to master all at the same time.
Let’s start with the visual in my poorly constructed, but hopefully, illustrative picture here. In its’ simplest incarnation, the map is constructed on a single sheet of paper (landscape), with the core message placed at the center, no more than 4 key supporting points external to the core message and then supporting data or evidence adjacent to each supporting point. That’s the easy part.
The challenging issue is to distill your core message down to its bare-naked essence and get it right. If you are preparing for a job interview, the core message is your personal-professional value proposition, which for most of us, is something that takes a lot of teeth gnashing and revision work to capture and describe properly. If you are launching a new product, this is the core value proposition of your offering…the essence of why this is important and for whom and how it is uniquely different. And yes, this is captured in one or two sentences.
Once your core message or in this case your core value proposition is defined, you need to back that with points (examples, facts, experiences) that support this message. Once again, you face the task of distilling a lot of examples and supporting points down to the very few that most effectively support your case. And yes, I’m serious about limiting yourself to three or at most four supporting points that make the case for your core message. Any more than that, and you’ve not worked hard enough to sharpen your messaging.
The outer ring as I describe it is used for the facts and supporting points that back your logic. The constraint of a single page or flip-chart challenges you to summarize the critical points and to jettison extraneous anecdotal information.
Using the Map:
Once the map is in place and appropriately tested, it becomes an invaluable personal or group tool. You’ve now got a tool to help you practice and deliver in the most difficult of situations. If constructed properly, your map drives your script and serves as an aid in answering questions. Proper use of the map involves making your case according to the flow and answering questions by referencing back to the supporting evidence…key supporting points and core message every time.
One point of caution: politicians are often observed abusing this tool by answering questions using their maps, with complete disregard for the question being asked. Don’t disrespect your audience this way.
The Bottom-Line for Now
I’ve worked for weeks with teams using this tool to form corporate and product messaging and days and weeks with individuals to help frame their own professional value propositions. I’ve also used this in minutes to prepare for interviews or executive updates. We frequently provided these maps to our trade show teams to ensure that everyone could answer the questions, “What do you guys do?” or “What’s new this year?” with something that actually meant something to someone, other than the inconsistent corporate gobbedly-gook that is often spewed in these settings.
Keep in mind that just because you own the finest woodworking tools doesn’t mean that you are capable of creating beautiful furniture. The message map is a tool that demands care and handling and then and only then, rewards you with rich and productive communication experiences.
Measure twice, cut once.
Jumpstart Your Marketing Reading to Retrain Your Brain
Filed under: Career, Marketing, Professional Growth, Your Professional Development "To Do" List
In my opinion, there’s never been a better time to get involved in the field of marketing. The advances in technology, the spread of social media and the incredible need that organizations everywhere have for individuals that get that marketing is a philosophy…a way of thinking and acting, and not a department, has never been greater.
A sidebar…I absolutely hate the textbook study of marketing and the very narrow view that is perpetuated about this college major, profession and function. I asked for a show of hands recently from a group of college seniors (business majors) on how many believed that marketing was mostly about advertising and promotion. About 80% raised their hands….even with my obvious and leading question. The fault is not their own…it’s a flawed education process developed and perpetuated mostly by well-intentioned people that haven’t been on the hook for creating value through great marketing practices outside of the Ivy-covered walls.
Recently, a number of students and early career professionals have asked me for a reading list to help jump-start their learning (or re-learning) and to help support their job transition process. While my list is wholly incomplete, If I wanted to retrain my brain, jump-start my marketing re-education and a passion for this arena in the next 90 days, here’s what I would read:
Marketing Writing to Retrain and Inspire:
Books in order of my reading preference:
- Duct Tape Marketing, John Jantsch
- Purple Cow, Seth Godin
- Tuned In by Phil Myers, Craig Stull and David Meerman Scott
- The New Rules of Marketing and P.R. (second edition) by David Meerman Scott
- World Wide Rave, David Meerman Scott
- Winning, by Jack Welch (marketing and strategy content)
For Tech and Product Marketers (these are older…but timeless in my opinion)
- The Innovator’s Dilemma, Clayton Christenson
- Crossing the Chasm, Geofrey Moore
- The Discipline of Market Leaders, Treacy and Wiersema
- Innovation, Tom Kelley
Blogs
There are many great blogs out there, and I would definitely check out the “80 Essential Blogs for the Modern-Day Marketing Student,” of which Management Excellence is listed at #22. And while the names are familiar as the authors of many of the books above, these are some of the key people redefining the rules.
- WebinkNow David Meerman Scott
- Seth’s Blog, Seth Godin
- Small Business Marketing Blog (Duct Tape Marketing) John Jantsch
- How to Change the World, Guy Kawasaki
Magazines:
It’s an eclectic list that by design, crosses organizational boundaries:
- FastCompany
- Harvard Business Review
- Wired
- INC.
- MIT Sloan Management Review
- Something or several pop culture pubs, including People, Reader’s Digest (yeah, you heard it here)…and your choice of your favorite
The Bottom Line for Now
While the above list is fairly long, many of the books are quick and fascinating reads, and the blog and magazine content can be consumed on the fly. I’ll be back next week on activities that I would dive into to further my marketing re/self-education, including getting involved social networking beyond Facebook.
Happy reading and here’s to breeding a new generation of professionals that understand that marketing is more than advertising and promotion.
Why Competition is So Great and What Chicago Needs to Learn
Filed under: Current Affairs, Life and Business, Management Education, Marketing, Social Commentary, Social Satire
Note from Art: I love the city of Chicago. I love the people, the energy and I love the feel of the restaurants and museums and the theaters. However, I don’t love the knuckleheaded political and union wrangling that blares from every news channel in a constant drone of finger pointing and accusations and bone-headed moves. We’re battling insane ex-governors and ridiculous retail sales tax increases in the face of a recession. One of the latest issues is the backlash and the stream of excuses for the loss of several major conventions due to complaints of usurious pricing and strong-arm tactics.
After losing major conventions to different venues, the local politicos and the brass that run McCormick Place in Chicago are back-pedaling so hard in defense of their labor and service costs that they are contributing to the wind velocity in this already “Windy City.”
It is shameful to watch the officials and local union leaders attempt to defend or deny their usurious pricing and their strong-arm tactics. If you’ve been involved in setting up a show on the floor at McCormick Place before, you would be flabbergasted to listen to the union official on the news blatantly denying that exhibitors are bullied and denied simple things like the right to put a plug in an outlet without union help.
Bull!
I’ve been on the receiving end of having an employee mistakenly plug in a device only to have the union workers complain…stop work and call over a union official to give the booth manager heck. Additional fees were incurred and the service went from bad to really bad.
Another year, same incident…slightly worse outcome. There must be something about plugging things in when you work for an electronics company, but yet another well-intentioned employee crossed the union line and was observed pushing a plug into a receptacle. Same union crap storm followed by a week of suspicious, intermittent power outages and shockingly slow response times. (OK, that was a bad pun!)
- The reported stories of $50 per gallon coffee…3 gallon minimum, $50 delivery, 20% gratuity and extra handling and service fees are sadly all true.
- As reported by ABC News, “A plastics exhibitor vented on a trade group website that when he ordered four cases of Pepsi for his booth, McCormick Place hit him with a bill for $345.39.”
The defense from McCormick Place, “These are the industry standards.”
In another example: “The sticker price of soda aside, it’s the labor costs at McCormick Place that rile most exhibitors. One exhibitor at the recently departed Health Care Information show said the electrical services bill in Chicago reached $40,000. In Orlando, the same work costs $4,000.”
Mayor Daley’s response: “McCormick Place has had a difficult chore in getting and keeping shows unless they get their costs down. It’s as simple as that,” said Daley.
In true Chicago fashion, the head of the Union responds, “We’ve stepped up.”
Keep stepping, buddy.
The Bottom Line:
It’s a big competitive world out there and the good news is that businesses and in this cases marketers and convention-going firms have options. If I’m Orlando or Vegas or any one of a dozen other venues, I’m all over the Chicago-conventions that have had enough of the expense abuse.
Sad for Chicago in the short-term, but maybe good in the long-term. A big dose of competition and a shock to the system will either result in the right improvements or things will just deteriorate. There are few venues that can offer the menu that is Chicago for a conference destination. Here’s hoping for a great response. After all, we’ve solved the Governor-picking problem…errr, I mean the sales tax problem….err…. . Oh heck, I hope we fix this one.
Good for free enterprise. Now if only there was an airline (aside from Southwest) that gave a crap about customers. But that’s another rave for another day.
Leading in the Trenches-What Do You Do? And No One Buys Gobbeldy Gook
Filed under: Career, Customer Service, Leadership, Leadership Skills, Marketing, Marketing Yourself, Your Professional Development "To Do" List
OK, this might seem like an odd one, but ask most people what they do and what do you get? “I’m an accountant,” or, “I work in marketing/customer service/support” etc.
Attend a business-networking event and listen to the introductions. “We’re a leader in…” or, “We make…” or, “We’re a software company…” etc.
Boring. Hard to stimulate interest with an answer that makes someone want to reach for the bacon-wrapped water chestnut and shout, “Next!”
Take it a step further. Apply a modified form of my “Trade Show Floor” test to your colleagues at work. It goes like this: “Hey, if someone asks you what our firm does, how do you answer that question?”
Quick background on my “Trade Show Floor” test and a note to marketers and sales executives everywhere: when I walk trade shows, I like to ask the booth staff what their firm does. Instead of crisp, audience/customer-focused verb phrases that make me want to learn more, I usually get unintelligible gobbledygook. The more tech-oriented the show, the more tech filled gobbeldy gook that I get.
To the best of my knowledge, no one is in the market to purchase gobbeldy gook. If your numbers are down it is possible that your people are trying to market and sell gobbeldy gook. Remember, no one is buying this stuff!.
Back to your colleagues and the question. I’m willing to wager a cup of leadership caffeine or your favorite coffee that the answers are closer to gobbeldy gook than to clarity. Imagine the chaos if you have a whole company of people that cannot simply describe what your firm does and for whom. (Sure hope I got that whom/who thing right…it’s been a life long struggle.)
Core questions to ask and answer:
- Who do you serve? Who are your customers?
- What vexing problems do you solve for your customers?
- How do you uniquely solve those problems? (Your Purple Cow factor. Thanks, Seth Godin.)
Wrap it all up in a verb phrase. Before you know it, you’ll have John Jantsch’s (Duct Tape Marketing) version of a talking logo. I love John’s examples (I paraphrase):
Typical: “I’m an architect.”
Revised: “I’m an architect that shows contractors how to get paid faster.”
Typical: “I’m a tax accountant.”
Revised: “I show recently divorced women how to dramatically reduce their taxes.”
Executed properly, you’ll have people saying, “Wow, tell me more.”
The Bottom Line:
Quit boring people to death with your personal and professional introductions. Tune up your descriptions, try them on for size and when the accurately describe what you do for a specific audience in terms that seem to interest people, make certain that the description is taught to everyone in your firm and that it jumps off of your website and all of your materials.
Don’t leave people guessing on the most important of all personal and professional marketing issues.
“Hey, what does your firm do?”
Leading in the Trenches: How Well Do You Know Your Customers?
Filed under: Customer Service, Leadership, Leadership Skills, Leading Change, Making Decisions, Management Education, Marketing, Organizational Transformation, Performance, Product Management, Professional Growth, Quality Systems Management, Strategy, voice of the customer
Note from Art: Leadership is about driving the right results in the right way. We often focus on the interpersonal dynamics of leadership and the characteristics and behaviors of effective leaders. And while those issues are critically important to a firm’s success, so is ensuring that everyone is focused on the activities that create value. This inaugural “Leading in the Trenches” post will introduce an on-going series focused on applying effective leadership practices to improving critical organizational practices.
Enjoy!
The word “Customer” takes on a larger than life meaning inside most firms. It’s bandied about in meetings in slightly reverent tones. “Oh, the Customer raised this issue. This must be important.”
It’s used as an argument stopper by those that claim to speak with the Voice of the Customer. “If that’s what the customers want, we’ll have to give it to them.”
Sometimes, it almost seems like the customer is the enemy. “They don’t understand our product. If they would simply attend training, we wouldn’t have to keep simplifying our user interface.”
And at high levels, THE Customer is the reason for new strategies, directions and programs. Listen to a CEO spout a new direction or shift a paradigm and the name of THE Customer will be invoked somewhere.
Spend some time listening to all of the things done in the name of the customer, and you would be correct if you asked yourself and everyone around you, “who is this customer, anyways?”
I do this with clients (notice the subtle word shift!) and the answers are fascinating.
Them: “Well you know, people who buy are products.”
Me: “Who?”
Them: “You know, consumers.”
Me: “Which ones?”
Them: “The ones with money.”
-
OK, that’s a bit of an extreme case, but it happened. More often than not, I’ll receive a description of a general class of individuals surrounded by demographic and geographic information. When I probe for a detailed understanding of who these people are, why they buy and what key problems they are solving with our offerings the answers begin to resemble the narrative above.
The Issue:
If you don’t know your customers at a sufficient level of detail, including their hopes, dreams and emotions, everything you are doing includes a high degree of guesswork and randomness. Your messaging likely includes a great deal of blah blah about your firm. Promotional activities are fired from a shotgun, and while they occasionally hit something, there is no viable, sustainable marketing system in place.
Sales efforts are grossly sub-optimized and new product and service development efforts are at best hunches.
Yikes!
It’s time to Grok Your Customers:
The authors of Tuned-In (one of my three most referenced marketing books along with Duct Tape Marketing and Crossing the Chasm) talk in detail about the need to understand individual buyer personas at a deep level. They invoke the term “Grok” popularized by Robert Heinlein in his science fiction classic, Stranger in a Strange Land, and encourage firms to “grok their customers.”
While I don’t encourage the method used in Heinlein’s book…final grokking (if memory serves) occurred once someone died and their remains were made into a nice soup and consumed, if you were able to effectively “grok your customer,” you would come to understand him as well as or better than he understands himself.
The essence of this is of course, you want to understand the customer at an emotional level and use this knowledge to create and deliver messages, products and experiences that address core emotional needs and that fix vexing problems.
John Jantsch, author of Duct Tape Marketing, talks about defining an ideal customer…one that values what you offer, is profitable for you, and values you and the experience so much that he/she will readily refer you. In order to reach the point where your focus is solely on people that value what you do (the ultimate, well-qualified target audience), you’ve got to put effort into pushing beyond the demographics of a class of customers into learning through observation and interview.
Knowing Your Customers is an Issue for Large and Small Alike
In a recent article (somewhere) on the on-going makeover and turn-around program at Starbucks, it was reported that Howard Schultz bowed to internal team pressure to begin forming a detailed understanding of customer personas…a shift away from the traditional Starbucks focus on creating a culture around their mantra of “rewarding everyday moments.” Accordingly, it is reported that you can hardly walk through Starbucks headquarters without tripping over cutouts of the core customer personas…all named and labeled with demographic and psychographic attributes. Instead of building a culture for an amorphous audience of coffee drinkers, they can focus on defining their stores, products and services for very specific consumers that value what they have to offer.
The Bottom Line:
Quit talking about customers as an amorphous glob of individuals that you bill. Start understanding who your profitable customers are and importantly, start learning about the real problems that you solve.
Remember, Peter Revson of Revlon cosmetics didn’t sell make-up, he sold hope. And the person buying a drill at the home store doesn’t need a drill, he needs a hole.
Quit guessing about your customers and start observing, listening and revisiting on all levels how you are engaging with these people that value what you do for them.
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