Month: February 2022

In one day we receive much more information than a person received a hundred years ago in his entire life. A lifetime would not be enough to read all these contents. Legitimate defenseBy force of circumstances we have to defend ourselves. We have all become expert information selectors. In a fraction of a second we decide whether it is worth opening or scrolling that email, that article, that post on a social media. On what basis does this selection take place? One would say “I choose the most important”. But it is an imprecise explanation. If that were the case, we would all have followed closely the Indian elections (1 billion voters, the largest democracy in the world) or the evolution of global warming. No, the importance … is not important. Neither is the ‘freshness’ of the information. or the authority of the source. What really makes us decide whether to read content is its relevance: how much does this content matter to me reading it. “I read this content”, we say to ourselves, “because it talks about me, because it is ‘made especially for me’. The first rule of communicationBeing relevant is therefore the first rule of communication, especially in a B2B context. The center of communication is the recipient, not the issuer. If you read this text it is probably because it is about you. If it were just about us, you probably wouldn’t have gotten to this line. To be relevant upstream of the communication there must be drastic choices. I cannot be relevant to everyone: I have to get a precise picture of the recipient of my communication. I need to know precisely ‘for whom’ I am writing. The ‘buyer persona’We at Valuelead encourage our customers not only to select their interlocutor but to paint him with a wealth of details. We are not talking about the target (male, 30-50 years old, high school education, manager, lives in a big city) but about ‘buyer persona’. We urge the customer to draw a portrait as defined as possible of his ideal interlocutor (and therefore potential customer): What car does he drive, what kind of house he lives in, what sport he does or would like to do…. The paradox of verisimilitudeBy doing so, do we not risk reducing the effectiveness of the message by narrowing the goal? No. A novelist dedicates pages and pages to outline the protagonist with a thousand unique details. Yet despite this, indeed precisely for this reason, we identify with him. This paradox was analyzed by Daniel Kahneman, the ‘father’ of behavioral economics and Nobel laureate in Economics. Kahneman and Tverski in Thoughts slow and fast, reported an experiment that we propose again with some modifications: Based on this description “Linda, thirty-one years old, she is single, very intelligent and outspoken. She graduated in philosophy. As a student she was very interested in the problems of discrimination and social justice, and she also participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations “; having to indicate the most probable alternative among the following: 1) Linda is a militant of a feminist movement, 2) Linda is a teacher, 3) Linda is a teacher and militant in a feminist movement, most of the subjects chose the third without hesitation. Yet the number of female teachers and militants is a fraction of the number of female teachers (perhaps less than 1% one might think). You ‘sound’ to us ‘more likely’ simply because it is plausible. A woman could identify with this character even if she does not teach or even if she is not a feminist or has no degree in philosophy. There is no relevance without ‘buyer persona’In practice, having a precise image of the recipient of the communication, what we at Valuelead call ‘buyer persona’, helps immensely in the selection of themes and their treatment and extends instead of restricting it, the number of people who ‘find themselves’ in the communication. . But it’s not just this. We dare to say that without investing time in defining the buyer persona (its attributes must not be chosen at random: they must be as relevant as possible … relevant to the purposes of what we want to offer or sell) it is not likely that our communication will be considered relevant .

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Needless to call it word-of-mouth. ‘Spread the word’ is fine. It is one of the best marketing tools, even if it is the oldest and the least expensive. But are we sure it always works? Yesterday I was stopped by a person. The battery in his car had run out and he asked me if I knew a nearby electrician. None of them came to mind. Continuing, not even 200 meters away, I saw the sign of an auto electrician to which I had also turned to even a year before! Maybe it happened to you too. I forgot it. Yet I had been happy with his work; it wasn’t too expensive either! Having a satisfied customer is not enough to trigger word of mouth. It is necessary to impress yourself in his mind in order to be remembered and therefore advised. Reflecting on my experience as a customer – and as a supplier – I started a list of ‘successful word of mouth principles’. Obviously it’s just a start and I hope you help me complete it. 1) Satisfying the customer is not enough, you have to amaze him!Today, as a customer, we expect absolutely error-free, fast and comprehensive service. Therefore, meeting the customer’s expectations fully is not enough to be remembered. We need to give something more. And this ‘more’ is not always the good price: it is something unexpected and personal. Let’s think about our travel experiences for example. What do we remember of a vacation or a stay in a hotel? Was the bed comfortable? Was the bathroom clean? No. We remember that personal and unexpected touch. That ‘something more’! 2) A flow of communication to stay in the customer’s radar.Why hadn’t the electrician come to mind when answering the unfortunate driver? Simply because… in life hardly one thinks of auto electricians. And vice versa, auto electricians hardly think about their former customers. To stay on the customer’s radar, on the other hand, you must always be present in his mind, with a constant flow of communications. Constant but not pressing. In my opinion, a continuous stream of unmissable, limited and exclusive ‘special offers’ makes you nervous. Better a flow of communications that are pleasant to read, with no or almost no overtly commercial connotations and consistent with the type of customer. 3) The miracle of the Prospect-2-prospect.In my opinion, doing so opens up the ‘miraculous’ possibility of being recommended by a non-customer! Like auto electricians, I sell services that are not of continuous use. It may be that my prospect has not yet had the opportunity to become my client but has nevertheless appreciated my way of contacting him. If I was able to give life to a narrative, I created a relationship, let’s say ‘platonic’ with the prospect and it is perfectly possible that this will lead him to recommend me to another potential client.

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