Communicating the Counterintuitive Good 6
Have you ever tried to sell an idea, product, or service that could be classified as a counterintuitive “good”, at least at first glance?
- 37signals encourages software companies to have “less features” to win more users (and less traffic signs !).
- Several marketing gurus suggest companies give away some expertise in order to make more money.
- In Blink, Malcolm Gladwell examines reducing information – even information you’d think is related to a problem – to increase the accuracy of your decision.
How each of these things worked was not immediately evident to me the first time I heard about them. They violated some intuitions I had picked up along the way. To be better, have more features. Don’t give away intellectual property, charge for it. To make an accurate decision, have as much background information as possible.
There’s some of this whenever you’re advocating a change from the status quo, be it change in action or in spending. Lets narrow our scope to ideas whose positive results aren’t immediately seen from the audience’s viewpoint.
I think there’s a unique challenge to communicating a counterintuitive good. I think its more difficult to shift a paradigm than to verify an option that someone already had in mind. What are some methods to communicate about counterintuitive goods? Read on for two that I use.
Contextualize It
It seems like a counterintuitive good is counterintuitive because of the number of steps in the effectual chain before you see positive results. As communicators, our goal is to zoom out from the prospects paradigm and incorporate the outcome/value in the frame.
I’m prone to over-wording such effectual thinking, so I find it very important to think visually here.
Sometimes, I use some imagery adapted from The Grove , such as this one that’s normally used for strategic visioning. I first saw these charts when my dad used them in his work. Good inspiration to add visual context in your own work.
Xplane creates some of the best “value in context” illustrations I’ve seen.
Sell an Outcome, Save the Process
I think this is a good practice in general sales, but for any of you who have worked with more than one branding firm, you know we’re bad about this. There’s often a slide, page, or discussion about process on the upfront sales end. The fact is that for most of us, process is not a differentiator, but critical up-front attention is often spent here (but we have clever names for the phases, you say!).
Why spend that time on the how, when your audience is interested in the what – what’s in it for them, to be exact.
For counterintuitive goods, this means working backwards. Your result -> the effect chain -> your counterintuitive sparking action. That momentum can get you through the contextualizing process.
Robert Middleton outlines this one well, and in a sales, branding, and marketing role I use it often.
What about you? What concepts have you worked with? What tricks do you use? Comments are open.
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While I think that you may be on to something with the “counterintuitive good,” I think there is something else to get to first.
I think we need to get out of fire fighting mode, and get into fire preventing mode. When the pain is high enough, this takes a long time. When the pain is low, this is super-easy, and clear though is abundant.
So, if we are in a fire prevention mode, then seeing things as intuitive becomes a bit easier. Therefore, the counterintuitive part of this “good” is not so illogical.
I guess that makes this post worth about $.06 now (post, plus a couple comments at $.02 each). ;)
~Toby http://www.tweblog.com
So for the purposes of communication, how would you draw someone out of fire-fighting mode and into prevention?
I wish there was a simple answer to that question. From my limited experience, the thing that works to move people from fire fighting to fire prevention is patience and letting failure or crisis happen. No, in general you don’t want to encourage either of those, but until pain is felt, change is hard to sell.
I’m hoping to gain more experience trying to sell the wiser approach. My current experience says, “Time is my friend.”
Usually stepping back and trying to have clear thought and trying to objectively look at a situation is a start. Case studies or other past experience can help sell the idea too. Building trust is huge. To get buy-in on change, if you are a proponent of change, you NEED to be trusted. That takes time.
~Toby http://www.tweblog.com
Interesting. I’d say you have more patience than I do!
While I agree time is the best teacher, I really hope to continue to develop effective ways to persuade before consequences occur. That’s a big part of marketing. My job depends on it! :)
Yes, Toby…the pain has to be strong enough to motivate for change. There are “towards” people (motivated by a potential reward) and “away from” people (motivated by a potential consequence). Do you sleep when you’re tired, or in preparation for an exciting day tomorrow? In my work I encounter both, but by far the majority are “away from” folks. One maxim of sales is that people mostly buy to alleviate PAIN—Problems, Anxieties, Irritations, and Needs. True in my experience.
I think another element of moving to fire prevention mode is the notion of building a reserve in significant areas, such as: time, money, space, etc. When you don’t have a reserve, or buffer, you’re more easily drawn into the urgencies and fires of the moment. Having some room to move helps you stay more strategic and take the higher view. I say this as one who has experienced both prevention and fighting. Right now I’m in a fighting space and it sucks.
The journey is likely a sine wave path between the two boundaries of fighting and prevention. The key is to be able to see it in context and enjoy the ride.
Seth Godin recently touched on this topic in his blog.