Freative Friday - Episode 93 - The Art of Communication - Rethink Sales Podcast

Welcome to Free to Friday. Mark Danolo here, art school MBA and CEO of Sales Globe. And it's that day of the week when we get to take a fresh look at creative logic driven problem solving. So in this episode we're going to continue our fast moving topic that's important to plan for your future and the future of your organization, which is AI for sales. And the goal of our conversations, which I'm calling AI or you, is not to review all the developments in AI, but it's to help you think through the human and AI relationship and how you can increase your asset value and build your future and your organization's future. And this is in a world where AI exists and it's going to play a significant role. And as I said before, we want to help you invest in the one personal asset you have that can't be AI, which is your human ability to creatively solve problems. So I want to talk about a super critical skill for problem solving to build as part of your human asset. And I want to ask the question about what happens after we come up with the answer or the solution to the problem that you're solving for and whether you solve that problem with AI or old school human, usually you have to change something. And we talked about the art of change in our last episode. But as we're making the change, we have to communicate effectively to the organization. I'm going to help you with the art of communication and I want to share some tips with you for building your personal asset of communicating change. So if we ask AI for a solution and we get an answer and then we just focus on that solution and we don't communicate it, we can see the solution fail. People don't understand it, they don't accept it. We waste a lot of time and energy and effort not getting the results we anticipated. So I want to focus on a few tips you can use to communicate the solutions you develop, because AI is probably not going to do that for you. And this is one of the areas where you can leverage your human creative problem solving superpower. In addition to AI, I'm going to give you five steps to build your human superpower of communicating change. So we like to think of communications not as an event, but as a campaign. And there's a parallel to advertising. Think about those car commercials we see during the holidays with the attractive couple coming out of the house to find a new car with a big red bow on the top. And it's cute, but it also gets across a message. It's a great Time to buy a new car and take on even more debt before the holidays. And if you do, your wife, husband, significant other will love you even more. And it gets across the message over and over until you can't wait for the holidays to wind up just so those commercials will stop, at least for another year. So the campaign approach builds on that concept, but in a more positive way. Companies that implement and communicate effectively tend to do it with a campaign approach. So I'm going to cover the five points that'll be really helpful to you. Number one, determine your message areas and themes. So as your campaign starts, you want to start with your overall message. And this is the reason you're making the change or you're implementing the solution. And this is where we go back to the why from when you set the vision for the change in the first place. So the why includes the big messages. The organization has to know about the new solution. In addition to your why, the campaign may also introduce a name or a brand so people can remember it easily and identify messaging about that new solution. So a lot of organizations will use this as an opportunity to develop a brand that's impactful and memorable. Number two, identify the audiences for your campaign. So you may think of the audience initially as the organization overall, but with a major change, there's usually multiple audiences. For a sales change, for example, your audiences might include sales, leadership, finance, marketing field sales management, and frontline sellers. And for an offer change, you might have multiple customer audiences. And within those audiences, you may have sub audiences that are maybe employees of different tenure levels or different experience levels. So for each audience, look at your key messages and determine how those messages should be customized. The messaging for finance might be around improved cost control and planning for the return on investment in sales. But for sales management, the messaging might be around making goal attainment easier and giving their reps better opportunities to perform. So, different audience, different message. Number three, create content improve sources. So now you've defined your messaging and you've identified your audiences, you need to create the content approved sources that are the evidence for what you've said in the messaging is true. So it's not enough to say the organization's going to be better off with this new solution. You have to show them how the solution is going to make their lives easier or how it's going to make them more successful. Number four, determine your communication vehicles and modes. Communication vehicles are the tools that you use to get the message out, and the modes of communication are how those vehicles get the message across and the Most effective communications campaigns use a combination of modes and vehicles. So a mode could be verbal communication, and a vehicle might be the channel carrying the message, like video or a live meeting. And that gets your message across over a period of time. People tend to respond to the communication modes that fit with how they learn or how they prefer to process information. So if you introduce the program just one time with a written announcement, a large portion of your audience is going to absorb it, or at least some of it. But a portion of that group will actually remember and reference that information a month later because recall fades and most people need to hear the message multiple times for reinforcement. However, if you leverage several modes of communication and vehicles on a recurring basis over a period of time, it increases the audience understanding and recall of the message by addressing their natural way of learning and processing information. So your portfolio of vehicles might include verbal announcements and large meetings or small teams, a web presence, maybe animated video and interactive tools. So there's a range of communication modes and vehicles you can consider written for processing information through reading. Verbal, which is oral communication in a large format, or a small group or individual conversations that promote learning through listening. Visual, which is images and illustrations to simplify and communicate. And I think a lot of people learn visually because it's easier to look at diagrams and pictures of things to understand them than to look at many, many words. So you're looking at representations and relationships visually. And kinesthetic, these are things like activities or tools or demonstrations that help people learn by doing. And then mathematical, so analytics, calculations that you can see, mathematical relationships and logic. So combining those modes and vehicles in the right blend, like video with written and visual communications, or maybe an app with visual and kinesthetic components that you can play with, will increase your vehicle's impact. And number five, structure and schedule your campaign. So structuring and scheduling campaign is going to pull all the pieces together. This is your message, your audiences, your content, and your proof sources, your vehicles and your modes into a cohesive campaign calendar that lays out the timing for the combination of those vehicles that communicate your new program or your new solution. So at this point, you're going to need to manage the campaign and provide a feedback loop for your audiences to ask questions and get support. And you're going to run your campaign for a period of time. And you may have different phases the organization learns, and you may even adjust the campaign based on that feedback from the organization and how they're taking on the change. So there you have five steps for better change communication using a campaign approach, whether you're solving the problem with AI or you're going old school human. So as you develop your solutions, make the art of communication one of your human creative superpowers and try it in your free to Friday and every day.