DRIVING DIFFERENTIATION THROUGH EMOTIONAL ENGAGEMENT

Transcription

1 DRIVING DIFFERENTIATION THROUGH EMOTIONAL ENGAGEMENT A Practical Guide to Developing Industry Specific Messaging AUTHOR: MARK STUYT Neural Impact Inc. mark@neuralimpact.ca Prepared for Microsoft This document is for informational purposes only. The opinions and views expressed in this document are those of Neural Impact Inc. and do not necessarily state or reflect those of Microsoft. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT.

2 EMOTIONS DRIVE ENGAGEMENT Successful marketing & sales professionals have always intuitively known that buyers make emotional buying decisions and then rationalize them with logic. Recent advances in neuroscience have validated that instinct by mapping out the underlying structure of the emotional decision making process in a way that makes it both understandable and actionable. Unfortunately, most Microsoft partners today focus the majority of their marketing and sales efforts on the logical, practical, pragmatic mind, when the majority of the decision making process actually takes place at a subconscious or unconscious level (see below). The human brain has not substantially changed in form or function for over 100,000 years. Long before we developed language (40,000 years ago), and writing (10,000 year ago) our ancestors relied heavily upon a very different decision making process than we do today, one that was primarily focused on survival. Developing messaging and content that speaks directly to prospects emotions (that are rooted in industry dynamics) significantly affects the expectations, perceptions and biases they form around you, your organization and Microsoft. That said, not all emotions are equal. To facilitate efficient recall, our brains organize information and experiences into different memory buckets based on perceived importance and priority, with some buckets being easier to access, and arguably more important, than others. Despite our evolution, these primitive instincts heavily influence what we falsely assume is a rational decision making process.

3 Because they are effectively tied to our survival, experiences that trigger one or more of the six primary emotions; fear, joy, anger, disgust, sadness and surprise, are both highly memorable and easily retrieved. This prioritization of experiences is important to understand because it effectively means that sales and marketing professionals who fail to stimulate any of these primary emotions during their prospect interactions (digital or face-to-face) will be forgotten, as will their messages. To be memorable and interesting we must first fit through our prospects emotional filters. That said, some emotions are easier to work with than others. Of the six primary emotions there are really only three that can be safely leveraged in a business context; Fear (risk), Joy (growth/gain) and Surprise (which inevitably triggers curiosity and engagement). Brain Fact: At an oversimplified level, processing of experiences and information occurs in two primary brain regions; the cognitive system and the limbic system. The cognitive system can process up to 40 instructions per second, the limbic system: 9 million. Brain Fact: The limbic system has no capacity for processing language.

4 BUYING BEHAVIOR HAS CHANGED There is no longer any debate over the obvious shift we have all experienced in customer buying behavior. Increasingly prospects want to: Control their buying experience Remain Anonymous throughout the majority of their research Avoid sales discussions Self-Educate (highly informed) Independently Validate vendor claims (through 3rd parties and social networks) Avoid or reduce Risk Combined, these behavioral changes have resulted in a dramatic shift in the buyer/seller dynamic. Well-informed prospects are now engaging vendors much later in their buying processes, (see below), leaving sales professionals with a limited window of time to influence their decisions. Having already invested a significant amount of time in research, prospects are rewarding marketing and sales professionals that understand their unique industry challenges and can add to what they have already discovered on-line, and conversely avoiding or punishing those that bring limited incremental value to the conversation. Put bluntly, buyers have no appetite or patience for content-free sales professionals, and candidly we now need them far more than they need us. Being able to clearly and quickly communicate your understanding of a prospect s unique EMOTIONAL industry challenges and how your organization has solved them for similar organizations in the past is the most effective way to create an early emotional bias. But to do that effectively and consistently requires research and preparation; which leads us to the first step in building out your Emotional Messaging Framework.

5 EMOTIONS DRIVE ENGAGEMENT It is almost impossible to develop horizontal emotional messaging. Only by observing and understanding the dynamics of an industry can we develop marketing messages and sales conversations that resonate at an emotional level. Given that few business leaders go window shopping for new technology solutions, to drive a meaningful and memorable engagement it is critical that we understand the emotions hidden within and behind their requests for demonstrations, pricing and qualifications. Fortunately, most technology projects follow a very predictable path (see below): 1) Market forces and industry drivers exert pressure on a prospect s business; challenging their business model, profitability, strategic differentiation, or outright existence. 2) These market forces negatively impact one or more of the prospect s key operating or risk metrics, often resulting in a trigger event, making it an urgent and emotional issue. Recent research suggests that we are exposed to up to 3,000 commercial messages per day. In response, our overstimulated brains filter out and ignore all non-essential, generic or confusing messages.

6 A project is then launched that addresses the negative impact (or impacts) of the industry drivers and market forces. These objectives will generally be focused on revenue generation, profitability, cost and risk reduction, as well as improved control. 3) Challenges are identified (broken business processes, technical barriers, resource constraints, etc.) that will need to be addressed. 4) A business or technology solution is defined and documented, including functional requirements and an inventory of key features. 5) A business case is defined (but not always documented) and the project is introduced to the vendor community; which triggers a very predictable procurement process. With inbound marketing largely replacing outbound marketing as the primary source of new leads, prospects will increasingly find you long before you find them. Given this shift, marketing professionals must clearly understand what will resonate with both a business and technical audience as they search (on-line) for potential solutions. While industry drivers and market forces come in many forms, there are a handful of primary categories that are common to almost all industries: economic, regulatory, supplier, competitor and customer, as well as two influencing factors; which are the state of industry consolidation and the degree of product/solution/service commoditization or parity. INDUSTRY DRIVERS & MARKET FORCES CUSTOMER COMPETITIVE SUPPLIERS REGUATORY ECONOMIC EMOTIONAL IMPORTANCE Significant changes in any of these categories typically results in measureable, often negative, impacts to key operating and risk metrics, which inevitably drives emotional responses or reactions from the prospect s leadership team. Understanding these changes and their impact on executive behavior is the key to developing emotional messaging.

7 A PRACTICAL EXAMPLE To illustrate how industry drivers and market forces lead to emotional trigger events, and then to IT or IT supported business projects, it is best to view the Emotional Messaging Framework through the lens of a real scenario. Imagine you are the CEO of Contoso, an 80 person engineering firm that serves both the residential and small to medium size commercial building markets. In that sector today, the EXTERNAL industry drivers and market forces that you have no control over, but impact your business are: 1. The economy is recovering and housing/building starts are up, which has led to a growing project backlog, however skilled resources are becoming increasingly more difficult to source. 2. Changes in local, state and national building codes require you to train your engineers on new green/sustainable design practices or face fines/penalties. 3. Competitors, primarily new entrants with lower cost off-shore resources, are aggressively pursuing your historical customers, which is driving down billing rates and profit margins. 4. Customers are increasingly demanding LEED/sustainable engineering and building skills to take advantage of government subsidies, but want them at fixed fee or discounted rates.

8 Combined, these industry drivers and market forces are exerting increasing pressure on many of your key operating metrics. Yet while the day-to-day challenges associated with these external pressures continues to grow there is no reason to make significant changes to the operational systems until a highly emotional trigger event occurs. IDENTIFY EMOTIONAL TRIGGER EVENTS Every FUNDED IT project is preceded by an emotional trigger event, an experience that persuades the business owner, or one of the leadership team members, to move into action quickly. Trigger events are not pedestrian business challenges, they carry a significant emotional charge and always come as something of a surprise. And while trigger events can come in many forms, they inevitably fall into one of four change driver buckets: growth, fear, risk or control. In the case of Contoso, as a result of the growth in LEED certified projects (customer demand), changes to building codes (regulatory), an inability to differentiate (competitor) and an increasing number of bid/proposal requests (economy) Contoso decides to merge with another firm that specializes in sustainable engineering designs.

9 On paper the merger makes a great deal of sense, as the two companies are highly complementary. However, in the new organization the two companies are geographically located on opposite ends of the country. As the two teams begin working together on bids, proposals, statements of work, contracts, building plans, and client projects, communication and document sharing challenges quickly arise. The result is the submission of an inaccurate estimate; a bid that they unfortunately win, which ultimately results in a lost customer, expensive litigation, a tarnished reputation, and a large project write-off. These four emotional-trigger events compel the CEO to look for a business system that will reduce the likelihood that he or she will never experience the same outcome ever again. As mentioned previously, prospects do not window shop for technology solutions. Instead, they almost always begin their on-line research immediately after experiencing an emotional trigger event. Marketing organizations that understand these events and how their solutions align with them can configure their SEO, SEM, landing pages, blogs, case studies, videos and conversion tools to resonate with the researcher s emotions. Unfortunately, marketing and sales organizations often create a mountain of logical, practical, operational, WHAT/HOW content without ever truly understanding the emotional reasons WHY their prospects are looking to change their systems. SEPARATE THE WHY FROM THE HOW & THE WHAT WHY companies look for new technology solutions is far more important than WHAT they are looking for in a new system or HOW it will be used. Too often, marketing and sales professionals focus the majority of their time and energy on identifying and/or communicating solution functionality and features (the HOW and the WHAT ), and fail to identify the WHY, which results in developing relationships primarily with operational and/or tactical stakeholders. For clarity, WHAT/HOW oriented interactions and content are just as important as WHY based interactions and content, the key, however, is to align the right message with the right profile. As a general guideline WHY stakeholders are primarily interested in trigger events, HOW stakeholders are focused on business processes and functionality, and WHAT stakeholders are most interested in key features and the underlying technology. By aligning trigger events with strategic business processes and then determining the specific features and technology required to enable business change, marketing and sales professionals will elevate their prospect engagement experiences to an entirely new level. Returning to Contoso; with disparate team members from the recently merged companies collaborating on estimates, statements of work, proposals, contracts and client documentation it

10 did not take long before multiple engineers were working on different versions of project documentation and estimates and proposals were being submitted based on bad data and incorrect assumptions; which combined led to an inaccurate bid, a poorly managed project, an angry client and financial loss. Staying with the Contoso/AEC theme (Architecture, Engineering and Construction), the highlighted areas below represent the HOW business processes and requirements as well as the WHAT features and capabilities that could potentially be addressed by a Microsoft Cloud solution set. In this scenario, the obvious answer is SharePoint using workflow and document repository features, but could also include elements of MS CRM Online and PowerBI. PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER When viewed as a whole it becomes clear that the individual features and functions that prospects look for in new cloud solution sets and services can ALWAYS be directly tied back to business challenges that originate outside their realm of control and that inevitably lead to TRIGGER EVENTS that business leadership has no option but to respond to. Partner organizations that truly understand the root causes and trigger events that lead to IT projects will be in the enviable position of being able to develop solution offerings, marketing messages and sales conversations that resonate at an emotional level with all three buying stakeholder groups. A completed example of an AEC (Accounting, Engineering and Construction) Emotional Messaging Framework is provided below.

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