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YOUR MESSAGE CAN BE YOUR BUSINESS ADVANTAGE—If It Isn't Hiding Somewhere

EVERY BUSINESS PROFESSIONAL, and every organization, has a message worth sharing. After all, if we didn't have something valuable to say and offer, then what would be the point of the business?

Your business also needs to grow—whether that growth is measured in revenue, profit, opportunities for increasingly interesting work, or deeper engagement with customers and communities (or all of the above!). Growth, however you define it for your business, is better for everyone. Rising revenue and profit means more financial reward as well as fuel for investing in the future of the business. Building more options and opportunities means you can work on the products and projects that you want (and shed those that are a drag or distraction). Customers, clients, and members appreciate their relationship with you even more because they like dealing with others who are successful.

Growth is also necessary. The alternative is decline and decay; no team or organization can just stand pat or decide to catch its collective breath for a few years. Competition and disruption in the marketplace simply won't allow that to happen.

As important as growth might be, it isn't easy to come by. Many leadership teams focus on major strategic moves such as new product or service lines, locations, technology investments, acquisitions, or partnerships. Any or all of those might be a consideration for your business. But while you and your team evaluate those sorts of big bets, know that there is also one big growth opportunity that tends to be overlooked: how the very people who are closest to your business talk about the business every day.

As Jonah Berger noted in his book Contagious: Why Things Catch On, only 7 percent of word of mouth happens online. That's right—despite all of the attention we pay to social media, there is thirteen times more word-of-mouth activity in the offline world. I would never suggest that the online side of things is not important for your organization. But the numbers are clear, and it isn't even close. If your organization is looking for above-average growth, then why not set your priorities squarely on the area with thirteen times more opportunity?

If that statistic surprises you—and it does surprise many businesspeople—then consider this very reasonable explanation. Online conversations are easy to see (and record, or even search). Our offline conversations, by contrast, tend to go unnoticed. We chat in hallways, at sporting events, on neighborhood walks, and in innumerable other settings. Those everyday messages might be invisible, but they are impactful on what we believe and how we act. And they are, to a large degree, manageable. By knowing where to look, and by following some simple habits, you and your team can lead a consistent competency that in turn puts you in the middle of those extra growth opportunities.

Across dozens of organizations—large and small, corporate and nonprofit, across industries—I have seen how improving everyday business messaging can both grow the business and improve the engagement of all the people in it. You don't necessarily need to change your products, prices, distribution strategy, geographic reach, organizational chart, or the people themselves.

I have heard executives variously describe this as “the secret sauce,” “the missing bullet,” and “the missing piece we didn't realize was missing.” I have come to recognize it as a potential growth engine that is hiding in plain sight.

The great news is that effective business messaging isn't all that mysterious in practice. It does, however, require the leadership to become very intentional about (1) everyone's understanding of the most important “must-knows,” (2) building base skills for leading customer conversations, and (3) socializing and managing the effort in a way that everyone becomes confident in his or her role. That's why a plan and playbook are so helpful in building success. By the way, if you're a leader or solo professional, then you might also need to shed some widely held but false and damaging assumptions along the way.

While advising many very competent and hard-working business professionals over the years, I have found that many get uptight when it comes to their messaging. They don't know quite how to approach it. They are excited about their actual work, yet in the everyday opportunities for them and their teams to talk about the work they find frustration and misses. Some have tried leaving this whole messaging thing to their marketing departments or an outside agency to figure out—and report that the essence of what they want to say gets lost in the creative fog of slogans, taglines, and advertising copy. Others have let the sales or development teams run with the message in a whatever-sells approach—which led to as many different messages as there were messengers. Some leaders have taken the messaging burden on themselves alone, believing they are the only one who really “gets it” well enough to share it.

None of those approaches can fully scale your business for growth. Lack of clarity means you will likely lose lots of deals and potential relationships (and lose pricing power in the deals you do win). Inconsistency erodes your brand and reputation. And no business will prosper over the long haul with a frustrated, burned-out leader and a core message that is stuck in the office.

This very day, there are probably competitors whose offerings aren't any better (or maybe not even as good) as yours but who are grabbing more opportunities simply by virtue of having more and better conversations. That's not right. It does not have to persist.

Your path to far more effective everyday business messaging is right there to follow. Neither you nor your colleagues have to be trained communicators, brilliant conversationalists, extraverts, or “slimy sales-y” (as one client described what she wanted to avoid). Nor do business leaders have to be some sort of messaging hero in a cape, unless of course that's their wardrobe thing. You can create growth opportunities through a simple, practical approach, taking into account all of the noise in the marketplace as well as the inherent anxieties, limitations, and unrecognized strengths of the people around your business. Furthermore, your efforts need not be perfect. Just by being intentional and consistent about the everyday message, your business will be establishing an important, long-term advantage.

You will need a plan. By a “plan,” I do not mean a dense strategy document, a bunch of statistical research, or a flowery creative guide. Rather, your plan will be based on the best things that people are already doing today as they talk about the business with other people. It will synthesize all of the things you and your colleagues could say (which is probably overwhelming) into a few conversational nuggets that real human beings can remember and use when the moment is right. It will be based on sound research into business messaging and what makes it tick.

You'll want to get started. It's not like the world is going to be less noisy anytime soon.

THE MESSAGING WORLD IS TURNING FASTER

We can agree that there is no shortage of communication activity in our markets. Of course, people have always had a proclivity to talk. In the past, the settings were more likely to be hallways, street corners, club meetings, church social halls, barbershops, salons, and a non-mobile phone. (My mother had a certain chair where she would sit, usually with a cup of coffee nearby, for phone conversations with friends.)

The explosive growth of social and digital media has smashed most of those previous limitations of accessibility, location, and time constraints. Today, the practice of sharing and consuming messages takes ever-larger chunks of most people's time. Social media, as the primary example, has crowded out other foundational elements of everyday life. How much so? The marketing agency Mediakix added together the average time spent each day on YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter, and then projected the total over a typical young adult's lifetime. They concluded that an average person will spend more than five years of their lives on social media! That total still trails the time spent watching television but came in well ahead of the total time those same people will spend on eating/drinking, grooming, socializing, or the necessary evil of doing laundry. Insert your favorite joke here about the people who live on social media not smelling very good.

Our attention spans are shorter than ever as well. This long-term trend has only accelerated in recent years, and message creators of all stripes are trying to keep up. As just one example, a research team led by Cornell University psychologist James E. Cutting found that from 1935 to the modern day movies have progressively used shorter scenes, more motion and movement, and darker settings. The research team concluded, “We believe that all of them have been created by filmmakers seeking to control the attention of their viewers, and possibly to enhance viewer involvement in film.” Now filmmakers even have to deal with audiences who are using their mobile devices and social media during the movie. (Have you been to a theater lately?)

Back in high school, I needed money to help pay for a car and gas; I found a job in my small hometown as a deejay for a country-music radio station. I learned a radio term that applies very well to our digital communication environment today. The “signal-to-noise ratio” compares the level of the signal you desire to send (such as, in that case, a Willie Nelson song) to the level of background noise (such as static). The higher that ratio, the better. Today, the opportunity for “noise” to mess with your intended signal is greater than ever. The noise in your messaging system is in part due to the ways that those technological leaps in communication are absorbing the hours in our days. It's also a function of our more limited attention spans and propensity for distraction. One of today's country-music stars, Kenny Chesney, had a big hit with his song “Noise.”

So this is the increasingly noisy conversational world where our businesses reside. We can't get away from it. The smart strategy would seem to involve something other than just shouting louder—to instead get our message into more of the natural, common conversations where noise levels are less imposing and audiences might pay attention.

But what about your team's capacity to talk about the business effectively in those settings . . . in other words, what can your quality of signal be?

MESSENGERS AND MANAGERS ARE CHANGING, AND NOT ALWAYS FOR THE BETTER

Most people have a natural inclination to seek, process, and share information. The massive demand for social media and wireless communication services provides plenty of evidence for that. Yet the level of communication skills that people have (or rather, lack) today is posing a big challenge to employers.

I hear a lot of complaints from executives and team leaders about the lack of communication and conversational skills in their organizations. They see problems popping up in many important settings: job applications full of errors, interviews in which candidates can't convey a clear thought, reports or emails that expose writing problems, and employees' seeming unwillingness to talk to colleagues or customers face to face. “We have trouble,” an HR leader told me. “This wave of new workers seems most comfortable talking with their thumbs.” (She was demonstrating a texting motion on an imaginary smartphone while saying this.) This isn't good for those businesspeople or the business overall.

Younger workers get much of the criticism. Although some of that might be natural generational friction, it's also true that Millennials show an abrupt break from their predecessors when it comes to communication. (By the way, my view is that categories such as “Millennials” are often used too broadly but because a lot of research into younger workers was defined that way, I have to report it as such in order to be consistent. I trust you'll recognize the larger point.) A Bank of America study found that, on an average day, 39 percent of Millennials interact with their smartphone more than with anything or anyone else; that compares to 29 percent of other Americans (still not necessarily good). Our devices are a common way to avoid other social interactions, too; more than 70 percent of Millennials admit to doing that, compared to 44 percent of other Americans. This does not necessarily portend the end of Western civilization, but as you'll see detailed in later chapters it does require an approach to messaging that takes new realities of engagement into account. Leaders need to prepare their younger workers to coach and lead others, and quickly. Those who simply moan about “kids these days,” like Granddad on his porch, won't be able to adapt.

Business leaders need to find their best combination of improved signal and lower noise in the middle of this new communication environment. Organizations themselves are learning to play in a more mobile, digital world. But individual business professionals also need to communicate and work effectively across age groups, personalities, locations, and cultures. This tension begs a couple of questions: Can we simplify and clarify our understanding of business messaging so that a leader can know where and how to address it in his or her organization? And can we present information in a way so that diverse work teams can harness more messaging opportunities?

BUSINESS MESSAGING SITS ON A THREE-LEGGED STOOL

Some businesses seem to have figured this out better than most. Their customers or clients tend to be not just satisfied but actual raving fans, proudly and frequently sharing their experiences with friends. The employees have a clear sense of exactly what the company does, whom it serves, and for what benefit; their clarity in turn becomes an organic, gravitational pull for recruiting new employees. The vendors, alumni, and other friends of the business likewise are pretty much on the same page. A powerful growth engine is at work. The question for other businesses is: how do I get some of that?

I have had the same curiosity. Fortunately, I have been able to examine many different types of organizations over many years and through different lenses. As a PhD and consumer researcher, I have had access to the big picture of persuasion and behavior. As a corporate marketing leader, I had to get very practical in changing our message and how it was conveyed; although we were far from perfect, in just two years our little niche brand was judged to have the best integrated marketing and public relations program in the huge global bottled-water industry. These days, as a consultant and speaker, I work with leaders to help them implement new messages as part of their growth strategies. These experiences have revealed to me a rather simple yet powerful model for understanding how to go on offense with business messaging.

This model has three components. The degree to which they fit and work together determine whether your business messaging will either help you grow or hold you back:

• The Message. Your message could potentially encompass dozens and dozens of specifics, ranging from your vision or mission statement to the company's history to its logo to product details. And that's part of the problem in equipping people with a message for everyday use. For our purposes, we will focus on carving out simple, conversational language with a healthy dollop of storytelling; those are the messages people tend to remember and share in customer conversations. Save the other stuff for the website (or leave it out of there, too).
• The Messengers. These are the people with whom you want to share the message, on the job and in the community. Your portfolio of potential messengers is probably larger than you think. Many leaders limit themselves by thinking too narrowly according to job roles (only the sales or service people) and personalities (only the extroverts). We'll cast a wider net, make it easy for the messengers, and help everyone avoid big potential mistakes.
• Management Habits. The organizations that excel at messaging don't think of this as some time-limited promotional campaign. Instead, their leaders made a conscious decision to change for the long term how everyone in the business would talk about the business. They keep things fresh, model the right behaviors, coach their direct reports, and establish a few simple habits and reminders.

Now think of those components as the legs of a three-legged stool. We need the three legs to be of equal length and strength for the stool to be a strong foundation. (The other chapters of this book are divided among message, messengers, and management.)

If your business is small, then the legs of the stool might be short but the overall structure strong. When I was chief marketing officer of that bottled-water company, it was easier to keep those components aligned than it would have been for one of the industry giants. If you're managing a big team or organization—and the legs of the stool get longer—things can get wobbly in a hurry. Just as a carpenter would see the need to add some well-engineered bracing to the legs, managers in growing organizations have to build systems of internal communication, training, and onboarding.

WHEN IT GOES WRONG: CRICKETS, COWBOYS, AND COMMODITIES

If business messaging really does sit on a three-legged foundation, then we need to make sure each of the legs is strong enough to hold up under pressure. Often they don't. When one leg is weak compared to the other two, then the structure will collapse in the direction of the weakness—with predictable, painful results.

How would you know if you have a particular point of weakness? Well, consider these three comments—all paraphrasing things I have heard lots of times from business leaders:

• “There just isn't any buzz about our business.”
• “We can't seem to stay on message.”
• “We have a strong value proposition, but that doesn't get across.”

Each represents weakness in a different leg. On several occasions I have had to learn (the hard way) about these weaknesses and how best to address them. Do any of these ring true in your business?

• Crickets: Too few people are using the message. During the summer evenings in my small Georgia hometown, you could usually hear lots of crickets chirping. That was because there were no other sounds; not much was happening! Today, “crickets chirping” is a popular phrase to point out silence, as when a bad joke is followed by . . . um, not much of anything from the audience. In business, a similar lack of buzz or response is the enemy of growth. If this is your symptom, the underlying cause probably involves your messengers (as in not having enough of them). This is Gap #1 in the Message Management Model.

  Years after my high school deejay-ing experience, I was co-owner of two tiny-market radio stations. As is often the case with a small-business operation, the owner (yours truly) did a little of everything. My business partner and I were even the morning-show hosts. It was fun—for a while—but we put too much on our own shoulders. We needed help. I see a similar weight on other entrepreneurs and small-business leaders. If you're in that boat, I ask: Are you equipping and encouraging enough people to take the message to their networks of peers and friends?

• Cowboys: Everyone is doing it their way. Does it seem like everyone in the business tells their own story in their own way? If people are “rolling their own” (as one client described it) and delivering messages inconsistently, then you have a management issue. This is Gap #2, and it can be fixed.

  Corporate marketing leaders often have the role of “brand cop” (as my former CEO called me), assigned control of the marketing assets and standards of the organization. They take that role seriously. If team members in the field are telling different stories and making inconsistent claims, then over time potential customers won't know what or whom to trust. One marketing leader complained that one week after a carefully prepared and vetted PowerPoint was distributed to the sales team, there were already eight different modified versions making the rounds. On the other hand, teams that are generally consistent in their messaging—even allowing a little wiggle room for people to express a bit of autonomy—build credibility. Is there enough consistency in how your message is delivered across teams and roles?

• Commodities: We sound like everyone else. Some businesses have unintentionally allowed their messages to become bland, boring, and self-centered. They speak in acronyms and industry lingo. They convey a lot more about their passion and great intentions than about the value they bring to customers. This is Gap #3.

One of the biggest red flags I see is when a business leader says something like, “We need to educate the market.” I was once an educator myself, teaching at three universities and publishing research in a bunch of journals (that probably dozens of people read). Professor types are the quintessential subject-matter experts, whose audience of students basically shows up because they have to. Let's not fall into the trap of trying to educate the market but instead aim to engage it. Sometimes a seemingly simple change in language or tone can make a huge difference. Are the words, phrases, and stories of your business separating you from the pack?

A PLAYBOOK APPROACH WORKS

There is a simple, proven approach for getting past chirping crickets, commoditization, and cowboy behavior—one that builds consistency in customer conversations across the organization without some overbearing script or massive education process. The answer is a “playbook,” a concept that has grown in use far beyond sports teams to include many work teams and entire companies. No clipboards, whistles, or embarrassing shorts required!

Organizations use playbooks quite successfully for a variety of purposes. For business messaging, playbooks include bite-sized talking points with guidance on how to engage customers, share stories, and convey the things that make an organization unique. A properly constructed playbook matches the learning and conversational styles of attention-starved workers.

Unfortunately, some leaders get enamored with the idea of a playbook but don't fully understand how to create one or coach to it. This book will guide you through the process, step by step, in a way that you can tailor to your business needs.

I recommend that you and your team begin with a clear understanding of what a good playbook is and is not:

• Good playbooks are not rule books. Playbooks don't take the place of employee manuals or handbooks, nor should they read like a legal document or car owner's manual. We know how everyone feels about those documents, right? They are created to be comprehensive, covering every conceivable circumstance and generally protecting the corporate rear end. For our purposes, we will go for simple over complex and less over more.
• Good playbooks are not libraries of product descriptions or sales collateral. Messaging playbooks—if used properly—are great for helping the business grow. Some bosses, frustrated at disconnects between sales and marketing, try to force the issue. They might create a library or repository for all of their sales collateral, toss in the content, call the finished product a playbook, and nag the sales team to use it. That approach does help everyone to know where to locate things, but it provides no guidance on when and how to use the information.
• Good playbooks are guides for specific conversations. In team sports, coaches use playbooks so that all team members know exactly what to do in specific plays—which themselves are designed for specific goals (e.g., score quickly, convert a third down, or run time off the game clock). For business messaging, we organize playbook content around certain conversations, audiences, or initiatives—omitting stale, irrelevant, or overly complicated content. That strategy helps everyone stay focused and move faster.

When a journalist in Maine asked a group of successful high school football coaches about playbooks and how they used them, he found some variations. A few coaches still use actual books with hand-stenciled routes and formations. Others have adopted digital versions so that players and coaches can see all of the content on their phones. But there was unanimity on one point: keep it simple. “It can turn into a monster real quick,” one coach said. “You can get carried away and try to get cute and creative.” The value of the playbook approach lies not in the playbook itself, but rather in the behaviors and opportunities that happen because of it.

Let's Start Building Your Plan

Just as coaches select specific plays in support of an overall strategy or game plan, you will want to get clear on the business purpose of the playbook, including the specific behaviors and business outcomes that the playbook should help produce. (Along the way, the people you expect to use the playbook will ask themselves or you, “So why are we doing this?”) It's also a good practice to involve all of the relevant business units or functions as you create and validate your playbook content. That might include high performers from sales, marketing, product development, operations, or finance. You might also involve some great customers who will provide honest feedback.

Remember that your playbook is not an exercise in command and control. Rather, it's about strategy, simplicity, understanding of roles, and the importance of practice and coaching. It will serve as the bracing that keeps your three-legged stool strong as you grow.

The first step in building your playbook is to get clarity on its “why.”