Sales Innovation - Go Beyond Benefit

I love the truth. 

The more I understand the truth of a subject, the better I can understand it. The more transparent a process, the more likely it can be made to work. The more honest a person is, the better I can trust them. Honesty and truthfulness are foundations for how society works and for how we all become better people living in a better world.

Very few would disagree with the statements above...and yet we all live and work in a pragmatic world, where shadings of truths, omissions, contextualization and emphasis can make things less than transparent, slightly misleading, a bit less true - especially when it comes time to sell something.

I'm not suggesting that selling is dishonest- but when one sells or tries to persuade, the accepted practice is to show, describe or even demonstrate benefits. Few people sell by telling a potential customer what's wrong with their product, service or idea. That's why a "pitch" for something describes the positive, downplays or omits the negative, and paints a splendid picture of how our lives, businesses and communities will be improved by those benefits.  

It's not a lie, it's a pitch.

No one believes a lie...but no one really believes a pitch either.

That's one of the main reasons why advertising is steadily losing its power to sell...not because the ads are bad, quite the contrary, some of our best design, writing, photography, and acting are applied towards pitching products and services. It's hard to imagine better produced or better distributed advertising than what is seen today. But here's the problem: no matter how well produced, how entertaining and how well placed an advertisement, no matter how compelling the benefits described- customers know immediately that they are getting "pitched".  

"Pitching" makes people more skeptical and it becomes more difficult to persuade them. Quite often, no matter how well produced, people will buy something despite the pitch, not because of it.

If someone tells you how wonderful they are -  can they be believed? 

Could it be that describing benefits isn't the best way to sell?

Here's a little thought experiment. Imagine a single woman meeting a single man for the first time. This hypothetical man is very handsome, has an Ivy League education, possesses a considerable financial portfolio and runs a successful company that builds schools for lower income children. If this hypothetical man, let's call him "Mr. Right", is interested in striking up a friendship with our hypothetical woman, ("Ms. Right"), perhaps leading to a romance and a long-term relationship how successful would the following sales strategies be?

1. Features:  Mr. Right describes his background in colorful detail, with stories and accomplishments that prove how he is a valuable, charming, and interesting guy.
   
   
2. Benefits:  Mr. Right describes the benefits of dating him.  He could describe his passion for long walks in beautiful park land, meals in Parisian cafes, sweet nights watching old movies with someone special.  He could talk about how he is so good with kids, how he can provide a stable economic future for his family, how he is a good shoulder to cry on, how he can make a long-term, loving relationship a reality.
   
   
3. Conspiracy:  Mr. Right asks Ms. Right questions.  He listens to her answers.  He asks more detailed questions until he finds something about her life that he shares with her.  He would then find out what Ms. Right wants to do tomorrow, next week, next month and perhaps for the rest of her life - and what might be standing in her way.
   
   For example, Ms. Right might mention that she loves music from the 1940's but never learned to swing dance.  Mr. Right realizes that there is something they have in common.
   
   He says - "You know, I've always wanted to go to one of those retro dance places with a big band, but I'm a complete klutz - how does someone learn to dance like that, anyway?"
   
   She says - "There are classes you could take."
   
   Ever so delicately, our hypothetical couple will start to learn together the different ways they might learn how to dance a Fox Trot...and there's even a chance that they might go take a lesson together...and eventually dance together.

Which of the three strategies is more likely to bring Mr. and Ms. Right together?

The Conspiracy Strategy I described is all about getting on the same side as a prospect and figuring out how to collaborate together for mutual gain. As a colleague of mine, Buckley Brinkman described it recently, instead of defining a pain point for a prospect, then describing the benefit of your solution"...it should be about conspiring with them to solve a problem."

But conspiring with someone requires a kind of direct - at times even brutal - honesty about your self, your capabilities, and the potential obstacles. People only conspire with people they trust...and people don't trust you if you talk about how great you are.

This form of conspiring, of creating alliances with customers has long worked for individual sales people.  "Rain Makers" or master sales people, whether consciously or not, have used this technique as long as there have been products and services to sell.  But can it be scaled beyond an individual sales person with an individual customer?

Yes it can.  The transformation of electoral politics in 2008 demonstrated that quite well. When President Barack Obama's campaign "advertised" through media, the Internet, and in person, the emphasis was not on the benefits, but rather on an invitation to join together or "conspire" to create a different government. In the process - constituents (or customers, if you will) began to join in the marketing of Obama - there was far more independent marketing than there was campaign marketing.

It's time for marketing and sales to innovate away from the dogma of benefits - and to move towards conspiracy and truth.

What is innovation...really?

Innovation is far more difficult, yet far less mysterious than we have been led to believe.

In a time of global warming, energy shortages, recession, conflict and war, many now believe that innovation is perhaps the only way to solve today's challenges. According to a 2009 Kauffman Foundation study, 78% of Americans believe innovation is important to our economic health. 

Innovation will allow us to build more sustainable communities. Innovation will help our countries back down from wars. Innovation will help struggling businesses thrive once again. Innovation will bring food to the hungry, opportunity and freedom, warmth and comfort to those in need.

If only we can find the best ideas, then we can solve problems, win customers and improve our world...

I don't disagree with the idea that innovation can solve our problems, but how did innovation start to be described in almost religious terms? 

Too often, innovation is described as something done only by magical geniuses. Stories dwell mostly on the flash of insight, or "Eureka" moment. How many profiles of innovative companies describe the beginning with a brilliant ideas that led to great success? Scott Berkun, in his marvelous book, The Myths of Innovation, describes this as "They myth of epiphany"

"Even if there existed an epiphany genie, granting big ideas to worthy innovators, they would still have piles of rather ordinary work to do to actualize those ideas.  It is an achievement to find a great idea, but it is a greater one to successfully use it to improve the world."

I worry that too many people are waiting for the "great idea" to solve their problems.  For every Fortune 100 company that started from a brilliant invention in a garage - there are millions of people with great ideas that never went anywhere. And yet, entire industries have been built up to serve the faith of ideas.  Consultants, executives and businesses spend money and time to brainstorm, to elicit and evaluate new ideas.  Investors often make decisions based on a valuation of an idea or business model.  Politicians are evaluated by voters based on the perceived value of their ideas. 

And yet, the success of the company or the government is only partly determined by the quality of the ideas.  Ultimately, inventors are only successful if someone is willing to pay for their invention.  Businesses become profitable not because they have a great business model, but because they persuade enough customers to pay more for something than it costs. Politicians become good leaders through competent management, sound decision making, and quite a bit of slogging back and forth in order to persuade people to work together...the ideas they sold during the election are often left behind or reworked once they enter office.

Sit inside a coffee shop and you can hear any number of brilliant ideas. But unless those ideas are turned into something real, the ideas are worth less than the coffee.

The best ideas don't win. Good ideas that are used for actions, products and new behaviors can win...sometimes.

Think about the most successful companies, the most successful leaders, the most successful countries.  Did they have the best ideas?  Or did they have good ideas that they translated into good products, services, markets, companies, laws, governments, and treaties.  If you look close enough, you can find any number of really bad ideas that those successful entities have used to succeed despite themselves.

So why do we think that ideas are so valuable? Why do otherwise rational people believe that the best ideas will save their company, their country, their family?  

Perhaps it's because ideas, brainstorming, planning are much more fun than the reality of innovation. The reality of innovation is much like the reality of scientific discovery - as exciting as it is to imagine how something works, that imagining is only part of the process.

In very broad terms, the process known as "the scientific method" can be broken down into the following steps: Observation, Hypothesis, Testing/Experiment and Evaluation. Innovation follows the same process:

First, in order to innovate, it is necessary to Observe reality as closely as you can to discover what is currently happening.  

Second, the innovator gets to have fun with ideas - (s)he forms a Hypothesis of what might work better.

Third, that hypothesis needs to be tested in an Experiment prototype or pilot, where a small form of reality is compared to the hypothesis.

Fourth, measurements from the experiment are used to Evaluate the original hypothesis - did it do what was expected?  Can that hypothesis be changed in order to affect the desired change?

Mysterious?  not really.  Both scientists and innovators follow a process, evaluate data and find new answers to old problems.  Science and innovation isn't magic, it's just a way to find the truth - about physics, about business, about politics or about how we live - and then act on that truth in a better way than before.

Easy to understand, but quite often hard to do.  And yet, innovation can become a little easier when faith in "the great idea" is put aside - and "good enough" ideas are put to the test of a scientific or innovative method.