You think a pill will make you feel better and so, it does. It's the famous placebo effect.
This effect goes beyond medicine, and right through your door every day.
You enter a lobby and think, This must be a good firm. And so it is. You meet a prospective manager for your investments and decide she seems smart. And so she is.
You are surrounded by placebo effects, constantly working their alchemy. We have the experiences we expect to have, based on our perceptions that preceded those experiences. Our perceptions create our expectations -- and those expectations so influence our experience that we can say this:
Our expectation changes our experience.
Social scientists call this Expectancy Theory. People experience what they expect to experience and see what they expect to see. Our challenge in marketing, especially invisibles, is to shape these expectations. We need to manage placebo effects.
Do you create the expectation that you will be skilled, reliable, trustworthy? Does your business card? The people who answer your phones?
Does your advertising distinguish you? Do you look better, smarter, more successful? Does your lobby beat your competitor's? What does your briefcase say? Are your materials made with better materials?
Is your website smart, quick, and clear?
In this world of placebo effects, how are yours?
Study everything that can affect people's perceptions of your quality -- and make each excellent.
Watch and manage your placebo effects.
Your Prospects:
Everybody's Talkin' at Them
We are in the world of Midnight Cowboy. In that film of the same name, Jon Voight plays an unsophisticated Texan in New York. As he walks New York's streets, a song captures the feeling of being a simple person in an increasingly complicated world.
He hears the words "Everybody's talkin' at me."
What happens when everyone talks at you? The next words of the song answer that:
"I don't hear a word they're saying."
No one can hear when everyone is talking. So when everyone talks, no one can hear, so everyone stops listening. This has several implications.
First, don't talk when everyone else is. Advertise where your competitors do not, so that your message differs from what people are hearing.
Second, say little. A single point penetrates. A mass of messages merge into a blunt object that penetrates nothing.
Third, speak visually. We often cannot hear words, but we notice images, especially appealing ones.
Fourth, make each word count. If people learn that your communications rarely say anything, they will stop listening, even when you do have something to say.
To be heard you must say something different, simple, and visual.
Your Answer
Next time you ponder your strategy, ask: If I ran a competing firm, how would I beat ours?
Which weakness would I attack? What would I do to distinguish this new firm and seize business from our current one?
Then do this: Eliminate that weakness. It is your soft underbelly -- the reason you are losing some business.
Then build that distinguishing strength -- before someone else starts doing it.
Always ask, "How would I beat us?"
Another Good Question:
Whenever you consider your business's next steps, ask, "If we were starting this business from scratch, what would we do differently?"
Then do that.
Now and then, start from scratch.
Your Final Step: The Frenchman-on-the-
Street Test
A French mathematician devised the first rule of communicating: "A theory is not complete until you can explain it to the first person you meet on the street."
The appeal of your key message -- the description of what you do, your key point of difference, and the benefit of your point of difference -- should resonate with everyone. Unless everyone can understand your message, too few people will.
Edit your message until everyone understands it.
The Lighter Side
The Washington Post's Style Invitational asks readers to take real words from the dictionary; alter them by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter; and thereby supply a new definition. Here are some favorites:
Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very high.
Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
Dopeler effect: The tendency of dumb ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
Karmageddon: It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.
Bozone: The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.
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Harry Beckwith is the best-selling author of Selling
the Invisible, which has been named one of the top
ten business books of all time, with over 675,000
copies sold in 14 translations. He is also author of
The Invisible Touch and What Clients Love, which
have sold over 275,000 copies in 13 translations. He has been a keynote speaker for 14 Fortune 200 annual sales meetings and the National Speakers' Association convention, and has |
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made presentations in Europe, South America and Asia. He is
cited regularly in national media including CNN,
The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Entrepreneur,
Crain's New York Business and numerous
American, European and Asian newspapers. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Stanford University, Harry resides in Minneapolis with his wife Christine Clifford Beckwith. He is the father of six children. |
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