Thought Leaders: PLEASE tell me something I DON'T know!

This year CMG Partners, an East-coast based marketing strategy firm hosted a panel discussion entitled Why Good Products Fail & How to Improve the Go-to-Market Process. The face-to-face event was complimentary to the local business community in Northern Virginia, and included experts from four enterprises: startup beverage company Honest Tea, National Geographic Channel, WeatherBug, and Intelevision.

Five minutes into CMG’s introductory PowerPoint, a man in the audience named John interrupted the presenter and opined “You’re the experts in marketing strategy, and yet, I don’t hear anything new. You haven’t provided anything we don’t already know!” He continued by reciting the unremarkable bullet points projected on the large screen in the front of the room, and emphasizing that he wanted to hear thought provoking insight worthy of his time. The slack-jawed audience at the McLean Hilton fell so totally silent you could hear a Blackberry hitting the plush carpeted floor.

Faced with this unexpected detractor, the presenter replied with such aplomb that his response belongs in the history books along with Lloyd Bentsen’s legendary debate response to Dan Quayle : “Well John, you get what you pay for!” The widespread laughter that followed was evidence that the tension of the moment had been broken.

The exchange somehow ended amicably, although I don’t think John will receive an e-invitation to CMG’s next event. The panel tried hard to live up to John’s expectations, thanks largely to Mark McNeely, CEO of Intelevision (more about that in a moment). During the post-panel networking, I introduced myself to John and thanked him for voicing an opinion that was probably unspoken by many, including me. “I might not have said it the same way, but I appreciate that you spoke your mind. There have been many times that I’ve wanted to say what you said, but didn’t.”

John might have been similarly moved during the recorded one-hour webinar on social media and selling I listened to on Monday. The topic is of particular interest as I’m completing a series of interviews with salespeople for an article I’m releasing next week. Like CMG’s event, there was a panel of thought leaders with cross-functional expertise—a great blend that should have created pungent discourse. And there were some good ideas that I jotted on my notepad and marked with an asterisk. But a few opinions were so over-worn that I stopped the recording and pushed back the timer a few seconds to make sure I heard them correctly: “We have to be in touch with our customers and understand what’s OK for them and what they expect from us.” And “It’s becoming more critical to know your customer.” Really? I acknowledge these comments are removed from the context of the discussion, but they were as attention-grabbing in the webinar as they are here.

Which leads to a question: are thought leaders fostering a sort of institutional stupidity by being too timid to espouse bold ideas? Or are thought leaders simply reacting to a perception that businesspeople need to be spoon-fed unremarkable ideas (not too big, not too small, not too hot, not too cold) so they can be nudged into considering larger ideas? On the other hand, could executives and managers simply be too intimidated by the multitude forces that are upending their business plans and strategic objectives to consider big ideas?

Mark McNeely might have answered the question when he synthesized the reason for the problems American businesses face: “there’s no oxygen in the room. Companies are run by management that is stagnant, bureaucratic, and self-satisfied.” He predicted that will change—because, if you subscribe to the idea of a Darwinian process for business, it has to.

Resolving our global economic situation demands the creation of provocative ideas. Controversial ideas. Ideas that are unpopular or disagreeable. We don’t need any more Mom and Apple Pie. In marketing and sales, nothing great will happen when well-known truisms are dusted off and passed on as contemporary expertise.

To those who regularly offer contrarian views, keep doing what you’re doing. The world needs your fresh perspectives now more than ever.

Ready to Sell? Quick--Name Your Prospect's Issue!

Author Michael Korda said “great leaders are almost always great simplifiers who cut through argument, debate, and doubt to offer a solution everyone can understand and remember . . . straightforward but potent messages.”


As the photo illustrates, simplicity alone doesn’t make a message potent. What’s missing? Two crucial factors that Howard Gardner describes in his book Leading Minds: how effectively the scripts are enunciated and how convincingly the deliverers of the communications embody the scripts. On those dimensions, “now serving food” doesn’t demand rigorous analysis.

In marketing and sales, we live and breathe message potency. We have to. Everything we do must nudge, push, or demand a change in one or more entrenched behaviors. So, when it comes to potency, could the intended change be as significant as the message itself?

To answer that, we must address a challenge even more basic than potency: how to select the right issue to address in the first place. From experience, I know it’s hard to get it right. In business, we tout high ROI when our clients want strategic enablement. We push strategic enablement when cost reduction matters most. We communicate about best practice knowledge transfer when the greater issue is how to build communities. We promote social media tools to build communities when a client’s overarching concern is managing profitable growth. Our assumptions leave us in a fog of sometimes-happy ignorance. Most exasperating, our prospective clients usually can’t tell us that we’re attacking the wrong issues because they’re not even aware of our companies or our products!

Happily, every now and then, we find a great example that reminds us that we can connect to visceral issues and make our communications potent—but first we have to understand what the issues are. An advocacy group called Food Democracy Now (FDN) has a mission is to advance “the dialogue on food, family farm, environmental and sustainability issues at the legislative and policy level.” Against a powerful food industry lobby intimate with the complexities of the Farm Bill and the machinations of the National School Lunch Program, Dave Murphy, FDN’s president, faces a daunting challenge. According to a recent article in The Washington Post (“Where Policy Grows," March 25), Mr. Murphy recognizes that it’s not only important to understand the legislation, but to “recast the debate about good food from a moral battle to an economic one. Take the school lunch program, which Congress will review this year. Food activists have long argued that more fruits and vegetables from local producers should be included to help improve childhood nutrition. But Murphy says the better way to sell the idea to legislators is as a new economic engine to sustain small farmers and rural America as a whole (italics, mine). Talk about nutrition and you get a legislator’s attention, he said. ‘But you get his vote when you talk about economic development.’”

Bland? After all, ‘economic development’ lacks originality—many times over. In addition, because righting economic wrongs isn’t FDN’s primary mission, Mr. Murphy could be forgiven for being more pedantic about nutrition, health, and the environment. But he knows that by building an economic frame around his cause that FDN will accomplish more than it could through moral grandstanding. By going after the wrong issue Mr. Murphy would find promoting his cause a much tougher row to hoe (pun intended).

Mr. Murphy’s circumspection about issues applies equally to other marketing challenges with differing complexities. What does finding the right issue mean for achieving a targeted return on invested capital? Sales productivity? Reducing sales risks and shortening sales cycles? Meeting revenue forecasts? Everything. Attacking the wrong problems (or attacking the right problems the wrong way) creates a cascading set of selling failures. When it comes to changing entrenched behaviors, not all issues are created equal. For maximum potency, messages need a highly motivating context, and that means choosing the right issue.

Like FDN, when you find the right one, you can change the world!