Confuse and you'll lose

Attention!

The success of our work often depends on whether people are paying attention.

But it's hard to cut through the noise.

You send an important email... and get crickets in return.

You invite 45 people to an important event... and 3 accept.

You bare your soul on LinkedIn... and get 1 like... from some old school friend... who used to bully you in art class. (No? Was that just me?)

The problem of capturing attention has fascinated me for years. It's led me to dozens of books and hundreds of YouTube videos. I've invested thousands of my hard-earned dollars trying to figure it out.

And what have I learned?

On purpose

Last week I ran a leadership development day before MCing The Tourism Summit on the wild West Coast.

"What's the purpose of a regular team meeting?" I asked.

They said things like:

• It's to connect
• To share information
• To ensure we're on the same page.

And I responded: "Yes... but so what?

Why connect and share information?

What will that help me achieve?

What value will that create?"

A harsh truth

Nobody cares what you do. (Not really. Not when they're busy.)

They don't even care why you do what you do.

They care about what's in it for them. Plain and simple.

You need to spell out for people the value they'll get from your email, message, meeting or request. Show them how you'll make their lives better.

(And yes, this applies whether you're selling widgets, building public infrastructure or saving the world.)

But how?

The three currencies of value

Ten years ago, a sales coach taught me about eight different “currencies of value”.

A "currency of value" is a way of categorising what matters to people.

I kept forgetting the eight currencies. So, I’ve condensed them down to three for my memory's sake:

• MONEY: People want to make more money or save money
• TIME: People want to save time
• HAPPINESS: People want to feel good – whether that’s physical health, social status, or mental health.

Show people how your stuff contributes to those - money, time and happiness - and they'll be much more likely to trust you, listen to you and take action alongside you.

Confuse and you lose

Too often we confuse people with jargon that hides the real value we create.

It's totally understandable why we do this, as we get so used to these words when we work in an industry for long enough. We also want to appear smart and we think that jargon will attract people to our cause. But it does the opposite.

As Donald Miller says in the book Storybrand: "When you confuse, you lose!"

To stand out in a busy world, our messages need to be about what they need. ("They" being your customers, clients or citizens.)

Get clear on that and people will start beating a path to your door.

Ngā mihi,
Paul