These are your company's key communications platforms:
- Keynotes
- Business plans
- PPMs
- Investor presentations
- Sales presentations
- Websites
- TV appearances
Do these platforms effectively articulate your company's value proposition? Do your target audiences get it -- how do you know?
Two indicators of messaging effectiveness are length/close-rate of sales cycle and length/close-rate of capital-raising cycle.
If you ever say, "Those customers are idiots; they just don't get it," you are the problem -- your message is the problem.
*****
Do people ever ask, Tell me again what your company does?
Do journalists consistently mischaracterize your company?
Does every employee describe your company differently?
*****
If the answer to any of these questions is yes, your competitors will eat you alive. I'll bet your best customer could not stand in a crowded room or elevator to explain -- compellingly and succinctly -- what your company does.
Why? Because you can't explain -- compellingly and succinctly -- what your company does. This communication deficiency attenuates your success. It negatively affects product development inside your HQ and its acceptance outside your HQ. Poor messaging repels potential customers, partners, and investors.
Why did people camp out to get the first iPhone, a ridiculously expensive and inadequate product? Because Apple knows how to get people emotionally jazzed up. Apple can communicate.
Look at your company's Website and brochures. Listen to its sales pitches. Are they laden with vendor-speak or replete with customer-speak? Are they full of technology and product jargon, or well-articulated customer problems and associated solutions?
*****
Stop thinking that customers care about your products. They don't. Customers care only about themselves and their problems.
*****
Communicate so that customers react to, remember, and repeat your value proposition, so that investors fatten your balance sheet. Get them to get it!
Most companies cannot do this effectively.
*****
Engage me on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. I can help you get your company's value proposition reacted to, remembered, and repeated. As a radio & TV personality, with exec-level experience in technology, I have the unique blend of skills to help you communicate effectively to your customers, investors, and partners.
*****
Listen to Steve Bengston of PriceWaterhouseCoopers interview me about
why companies can't communicate with customers & investors:
CLICK to LISTEN
|
