ABSTRACT
Whether you want to close a major account sale or raise venture financing or convince a star executive to join your team or enter a new partnership, you face the challenge of overcoming doubts and misgivings and winning the agreement of decision-makers. This article describes what it takes to get to “yes” and ensure that the deal, whatever it is you are working on, will have the best chance of success.
GETTING TO “YES”
History looks kindly on the America involvement in the liberation and subsequent rebuilding of Western Europe and Southeast Asia during and after World War II, but at the time, not everyone in America supported the idea that the country should sacrifice the lives of tens of thousands of its young men and spend countless billions of dollars on someone else’s problems. The leaders at the time knew what they wanted to accomplish by getting involved in the war, but to close the deal they had to convince millions of people to buy into their vision.
In every area of business where people need to come together to support a common goal, whether it is closing a major account sale or raising venture financing or convincing a star executive to join your team or entering a new partnership, people face the same challenges of overcoming doubts and misgivings and winning the agreement of decision-makers. This article describes what it takes to get to “yes” and ensure that the deal, whatever it is you are working on, will have the best chance of success.
OPERATING IN REALITY
Before you even consider approaching your potential customer or investor or partner or employee, take a long, hard look at your business and make sure that your firm has a clear understanding of where it is at, its strengths and weaknesses, and that you have taken steps to address any concerns.
In the early 1990’s, British Airways wanted to remake itself as a primary world carrier that would once again be known for reliability, service, and the other positive qualities that had once defined the brand. To help begin to restore the former luster, they decided to launch an advertising campaign in New York, which was one of their primary markets. They considering announcing that they were once again reliable, service-oriented, etc., but the marketing people knew that the reality of the situation would not support such a claim. Their goal was to quickly get to a place where they would be known for positive qualities, but at that particular moment in time, customers knew that BA was struggling with all kinds of problems such as poor customer service and late flights. They therefore launched an advertising campaign which simply announced that BA had more flights per day between New York City and London than any other airline. This was a true statement, and it would give customers at least one solid reason to consider BA in their travel plans. As BA began to address some of the other service issues, the marketing messages changed to reflect the positive steps, but the firm’s marketers were always careful to ensure that the message they projected lined up with reality, so as not to create a disconnect in the minds of customers.
One of the principle objectives of advertising is to overcome or circumvent what is known as “cognitive dissonance”, where a customer’s experience of reality differs from their perception of it. Say you just bought a new Ford F-150 pickup and you had to bring it into the dealership several times to fix or replace a few components that were not properly installed in the factory. Your experience would tell you that the F-150 suffered from poor workmanship, yet because you had just spent $40,000 on the purchase, you would want to believe that you had actually made a good decision and that the truck’s positive qualities outweighed your negative experiences. When you then viewed an ad for F-150’s on television or read one in a magazine, you would use the ad, which would obviously remind you of the truck’s positive qualities, to help you overcome your cognitive dissonance and convince yourself that your purchase decision was a good one. Advertisers know that their ads are most closely read and watched by people who recently made a purchase rather than people who are thinking about making a purchase, and so they design the messaging to convince these customers that they in fact made the right choice.
However, if the marketing message is too widely divergent from the customers’ experiences with the product or service, then it is impossible to close this gap and the company loses much of its credibility, which makes future marketing even more difficult. Recall the story of Saddam Hussein’s Minister of Information, who aggressively maintained in press briefings that the Iraqi forces were successfully resisting the American invasion, when in fact American troops were at that very moment camped out at Baghdad airport and in the city center. Talk about unfettered cognitive dissonance.
TARGET THE “COIs”
Assuming you can back your claims with “real” supporting evidence, the next step in getting to “yes” is communicating your message to the Centers of Influence who will evaluate it and then pass judgment on whether or not they believe you and support your product or strategy or venture. Think about a major account sale in the software industry. To close the deal, the sales team needs to first convince managers from the functional area addressed by their software, for example accounting or human resources. Once this hurdle is cleared and they demonstrate that the proposed solution meets the prospective client’s functional requirements, they must next convince
- the IT managers that the proposed solution will work within the existing IT framework,
- the financial managers that the proposed solution can be justified with a valid business case,
- and the senior executives and directors that the proposed solution helps the organization meet its overall strategic goals.
In the case of selling American involvement in World War II, the country’s leadership had to convince COIs in all areas of society: the media, the military, academics, trade union leaders, business leaders, the clergy, educators, entertainers, and so on. Fortunately for the countries of Western Europe and Southeast Asia, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor injected a highly emotional element into the debate about American involvement in the war and carried the day for those supporting involvement. The nation of course lined up behind the COIs and leaders and thereby transformed the history of the world.
I helped a software developer quadruple its revenue in less than twenty-four months by targeting COIs with the marketing message that this company was the world leader in an emerging market space. The reality was that there were three other companies with equally good products, but none of these competitors were marketing themselves aggressively or seizing the leadership position. We targeted the trade press, OEMs, and engineering leaders with a massive multi-pronged communications campaign. Our somewhat facetious internal slogan was, “We want our company to be the last thing the target thinks about when he goes to bed at night and the first thing he thinks about when he wakes up in the morning.” This communications campaign resulted in leading OEMs in that sector approaching my client to bundle our product with their solutions, which caused sales to explode. This approach would not have worked if my client did not have a “real” product to back up our claims of leadership, but neither would the growth have happened if we didn’t aggressively work to influence the influencers and shape their perception of our position in this emerging market.
People want to associate themselves with winners, and they are generally open to follow credible, convincing leadership. In George W. Bush’s campaign to bring democracy to Iraq, his credibility suffered immense damage when he based his campaign on the WMD issue, which was in fact never substantiated, leading to a widespread loss of support. If an organization wants to convince a star candidate to join their team, they first have to lay the groundwork and create an environment of “believability”, so the candidate feels she is making the best possible choice out of the many options before her. To close a major account sale, you may have the best product or service or solution, but if you don’t position it and present it and support it in a credible, convincing way, you seriously undermine your chances of beating out the competition. For the buyers, perception is reality, regardless of the features and benefits of the proposed solution. When they choose your solution, they want to “know” they are choosing a winner, meaning they believe the solution will solve their problem and that the company and people behind the solution will be able to deliver on their promises.
In the darkest days of WWII, when it appeared that Germany was going to invade England, Winston Churchill made his famous radio address where he told the citizens “we will fight them on the beaches, we will fight them in the streets” etc. Few people realize that right after the address was over and the microphone was turned off, Churchill was heard to say, “And we will hit them on the head with beer bottles.”He knew that England was woefully unprepared to resist a mechanized invasion (imagine a mob of teenagers, factory workers, and pensioners, armed only with light weapons, facing down a column of panzers!), but in public he ignored the nation’s sorry condition and convinced the people this war was winnable, thereby strengthening their resolve for the battle ahead. This was one of the turning points of the war, when Churchill got to “yes” and closed the deal with his fellow countrymen. In business, your goals will be that much more attainable if you win the hearts and minds of your employees, customers, partners, financiers, investors, suppliers, and other key parties.
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