As a salesperson and/or presenter, it’s easy to fall into the trap of assuming the customer knows much more about the subject, company our products than they actually do. The result is often that we take shortcuts and skip information we consider old or obvious. In the cognitive bias world this is referred to as “the curse of knowledge”.
For the customer, this is about as bad as Bruce Springsteen skipping “Born in the USA” at a concert because he thinks the audience is tired of it. We never are. On the contrary, we constantly want to be reassured in our core perception of a song, company or product – simply because we don’t encounter it that often as the person presenting or singing it.
One example is brand awareness, where we need to realize that we are not the center of the world for most potential customers. When we were active as Pyramid, we did heavy marketing for many years towards marketing functions in export companies, positioning ourselves as the leading B2B agency in Sweden. We even discussed if we were too active for the market, and in fact irritating them with too frequent marketing. At one point, we asked a telemarketing agency to contact 100 potential B2B customers in southern Sweden. Their first question was “Hi, we are calling on behalf of the B2B advertising agency Pyramid. Have you heard about us?” Can you guess how many knew us in our core target group? 14%… After the disappointment had calmed down, we realized that the average marketing manager probably has 100’s of challenges more urgent than keeping track of advertising agencies when he/she is not actively looking for a new.
The same mistake constantly happens with communication concepts and design. When the new CEO or CMO starts insisting that “we need a new look,” or even a new agency – regardless of whether the current approach is working or not. If the current solution is working, the smart move is to stick with it for at least three times as long. When you are deadly tired of a concept, it’s a sign that your potential customers might have started to recognize it. Instead of inventing a new concept – stick with the existing one and repeat, repeat, repeat, and sometimes finetune. A classic example is Bregott, who has successfully built there communication around black-and-white cows and “Bregottfabriken” for 30 years.
The bitter truth is that you are much less known than you think. Besides not being “the most important thing” for most of your prospects in general, there are many persons to approach in each company – according to LinkedIn up towards 25 persons are involved in a buying process. So, one simple advice is to never forget to sing your hit songs! Sing them over and over again, so you are on the buyer’s list when the need for your products or services arises.
If you want to discuss effective marketing, you reach me at ulf.vanselius@comprend.com