Doug DavidoffMy speaking schedule requires me to travel regularly to destinations I have never been to before. Travel to an unknown place is obviously more exhausting than traveling to the familiar ones. The most exhausting part of traveling to a new place is commuting to and from the airport. This is where I (and others like me) always get the feeling of being lost without knowing for certain whether or not I am.
Recently, I was in Houston, Texas, driving from a presentation back to the airport. One of the participants gave me very good directions (information) about how to get there. I left my speech feeling confident. That confidence faded quickly as I started worrying that I may have missed a turn or an exit. Mind you, I wasn’t sure whether I missed anything; I was just concerned. Every couple of minutes, I received even more information about where I was in the forms of road and exit signs. Every bit of information that I received further aggravated and confused me. In a moment of exhaustion, I shouted, “I miss my GPS.”
That was the moment I realized the power of Global Positioning Systems (GPS). The power of GPS lies, not in the fact that it tells me where I am, but in the fact that it tells me where I am in relation to where I want to be. That relation provides context, and that context (or how all of the information about where I am impacts me) empowers me and gives me confidence.
Our marketing efforts should be no different. Too often, in an effort to get people to ‘understand’ what their company does, sales and marketing people pile on more and more information in an effort to ‘explain’ things. This information is analogous to the detailed directions and the road signs I saw in Houston. It lacks context. Without context, customers get confused when they are presented with something new and unknown. They have no “GPS” to determine how the information about this new thing relates to their needs (or where they are going). As they attempt to make sense of the information, they latch on to those pieces they are familiar with and tend to disregard the rest. Without a context, prospects, left to figure things out on their own, will see no difference between what you offer and what they’ve seen before. Any value the company could have provided is lost. This serves to commoditize the offering – leading to a vicious cycle of confusion, frustration and, ultimately, compressed margins.
The goal of all communication with clients and prospects should be the creation of knowledge. Knowledge is information understood, specifically, information and how it relates to me and the results that I want. You might say that knowledge exists at the intersection of information and context. Those sellers that give buyers a way of knowing not only where they are but also exactly how far they are from where they want to be, will on the road to accelerating their sales cycle and expanding their profits.