Do you suffer from the "better mousetrap" syndrome?

I've dealt with many brands through the years that had interesting ideas and products and yet couldn't imagine why people weren't beating down their doors to get to those amazing ideas.

It's pretty easy to get laser-focused on creating things. Thinkhaus Idea Factory does plenty of innovation and strategy workshops to help companies develop new ideas to take to market. In some ways, this is where better mousetraps are born. But those mousetraps need to be grounded in something more than personal preference.

Before launching your next big idea, your better mousetrap, ask yourself: Does your audience even realize they have a mouse problem?

Here's a simple way to approach the issue:
1. Start by gathering consumer insights to drive innovation. This doesn't have to be some exhaustive study. It can be some simple engagements where the team turns observations into actionable insights that the innovation team can leverage for better ideas. Consumers are lousy at telling you what product they need.

The average house is filled with products people love today but would have never asked for prior to invention. No consumer said they needed a microwave oven before they were introduced to microwave ovens. People didn't ask for refrigerators, televisions, dishwashers, or even lightbulbs, either. The insights around convenience are what led to the breakthrough ideas.

This is why I make the distinction between observations and insights. You could observe someone washing dishes by hand. That's a task getting done. The insights come from the dishwasher's frustration with the soap, sponge, scrub brush, volume of dishes, dirty water, and more. From those insights, you can create solutions that will have an audience.

2. Check out the marketplace in the areas you're considering. What are you going to be competing against? For blue ocean strategies, you're looking for holes you can fill where there are no competitors.

3. Ideate freely.

4. Engage with your target audience to validate your concept and make necessary refinements.

5. Refine, iterate, and keep checking.

6. Solve the mouse problem.

Need help with your better mousetrap? Let's talk.

Brand Storytelling: The art of conversation

They say great conversationalists are first really great listeners.

The communications master Dale Carnegie put it this way: “If you aspire to be a good conversationalist, be an attentive listener. To be interesting, be interested. Ask questions that other persons will enjoy answering. Encourage them to talk about themselves and their accomplishments. Remember that the people you are talking to are a hundred times more interested in themselves and their wants and problems than they are in you and your problems.”

Keep in mind that Mr. Carnegie wrote these words in the mid-1930s. This is not new material. The not-so-subtle jab at the general populace is this: we love to talk about ourselves. We love to talk about what we’ve done, who we’ve seen, the hurdles we’ve crossed and triumphs we’ve realized. If we’re not careful, we can talk about how amazing we are and leave our guest completely out of the discussion.

Brands do this all the time. Agencies do this all the time. All this chest thumping and self promoting leaves consumers and customers on the outside looking in … if they even stay around long enough to keep looking.

So how can brands master the art of conversation in their storytelling?

Stop talking about you

As a young copywriter I was taught to talk about the benefits of each product feature because the benefit is what the consumer/customer is actually looking for. It’s the solution provided by the feature.

But many companies want to talk about their accomplishments, size, scale, equipment … features. This is a TELL approach, as in, “let me tell you about me.” It almost makes sense. After months and years of product and brand development, people want to get credit for their hard work. The problem is that no one wants to listen to you talk about you.

Start listening to them

I have a friend named Karen who is amazing at this. Karen is the kind of person who circles a room meeting people and comes back within a few minutes knowing personal details on every single person. People open up to her and share their inner thoughts, goals, and challenges as if she’s the therapist they never knew they needed. It’s magical to see in person.

So what’s her secret? Karen asks great questions and doesn’t interject her own stories while other people are talking. People open up to her because she is genuinely interested in them. If the other person doesn’t ask about Karen, she’s fine to leave those details out.

Obviously brands can’t work a room in their daily communication. But they can spend a lot more time listening to the wants and needs of their customers. Those wants and needs often show up as frustrations.

In an earlier post I talked about Command™ Brand hanging solutions. The brand had tried for years to talk about the superiority of their technology over other options but consumers didn’t care. It was the better mousetrap no one wanted. But in research consumers talked about their frustrations with punching holes in walls and having to repair them, about not being able to move things around, about wanting to hang some things for the holidays and take them down later without making it a big deal. Those frustrations opened up new opportunities for the brand. By repositioning the brand as “Damage-Free Hanging Solutions” that can let you change the position of your hanging as quickly and easily as you change your mind, the Command™ Brand found audiences who couldn’t live without the brand.

Be nice. Be real.

You might think that being nice should be a given in brand storytelling, but it’s not. Brands should choose their tone of voice and brand personality with purpose, teach the fundamentals to everyone who interacts with customers, and reinforce the principles on a regular basis.

When helping organizations launch or rebrand, we spend a healthy amount of time on brand personality and how that will come to life in the marketplace. That may include call center scripts, ad copy guidelines, online content guidelines, etc. Everyone on the brand team must be clear how the brand communicates and what tone of voice is supported. Wendy’s might be able to get away with snarky tweets, but your brand might not. And you should know before you damage the brand.

Let them be the hero

Dale Carnegie said people “are a hundred times more interested in themselves and their wants and problems than they are in you and your problems.” Essentially, we’re all fascinated by ourselves. Think you’re different? Find a group photo you’re in and see who you look for first. Yup. You look for you first. We all do. Then we look at our friends and enemies (hoping they look horrible in the shot), and filter out everyone else as visual noise.

In the brand storytelling world, we must let the customer be the hero. The brand’s position is to help solve their issues and take their pain away. That means helping them be better cooks, better at lawn management, better at home repair, cleaning, office work, workouts, weight management, and many more.

Brands exist to help make the world a better place. They do that by enabling and empowering their customers to take on new challenges and be amazing in their efforts. That means the customer is the hero.

No, really, it’s all about them

We’re only focusing on four steps to brand conversations here because it shouldn’t be that complicated:

1. Stop talking about you

2. Start listening to them

3. Be nice. Be real.

4. Let them be the hero

There are times when brands need to cover details about themselves, but more often than not, the focus should be on the customers and how the brand can help solve their challenges.

If you’re in the market for storytelling help, let’s chat to see how we can support you.

Brand Storytelling: When in doubt, be Q

One of the most common mistakes in brand storytelling is making the brand the hero. It’s an easy mistake to make. Companies work hard on their brands and products, dig to understand what differentiates the brand from its competitors, how it connects with target consumers, etc. After all that work, one naturally wants the brand to get all the credit.

But that would be a mistake.

No, most consumers/customers don’t think of themselves as James Bond. They see themselves living life and facing a wide range of challenges that get in the way of their ultimate goals. When I say wide range, I mean it stretches from cleaning floors and bathrooms, to shaving and grooming, to financial products, to medical devices. People aren’t looking for a brand or product to come in and take over. They are looking for help solving their challenges so they can go on with their lives. This means that the brand needs to act less like James Bond and more like his problem-solving counterpart, Q.

Let’s look at a couple examples:

1.    Cleaning products: Many consumers know Mr. Clean for his handsome good looks, confident smile, and cleaning strength. It would be easy to position Mr. Clean as the guy who comes to the rescue and does all the hard work, but that’s not how consumers see it. When it comes to removing rings around the bathtub, it isn’t Mr. Clean who rolls up his sleeves and scrubs away. That’s mom’s (and dad’s) job. Mr. Clean has permission to be the guy who helps make her job easier by giving her the best solution to cut through grime. He is Q to her James Bond.

2.    Hanging solutions: 3M’s Command brand is an incredibly convenient way to hang just about anything around the house. The adhesive strips apply easily and remove just as quickly once you’re done. This is a classic Q solution. The frustration consumers faced before Command strips showed up was having to punch a hole in the wall to hang something, which required tools, the willingness to damage a wall, and the need to patch a hole if you missed the first time or changed your mind. James Bond in this case was trying to make her space more functional and beautiful but was frustrated by the hole in the wall problem. Then came Q with “damage-free hanging solutions”. Now Bond could change the location of a hanging as quickly and easily as changing her mind.

The model holds true across endless categories. In banking, the financial products offered are tools that enable consumers to succeed. In the kitchen the disposer is the magical device that enables homeowners to clean up in a hurry. In surgical devices, the devices are specialized tools that enable surgeons to perform amazing feats in the operating room. In heavy industry, the valve actuators enable the engineers to route their chemicals to create products that will solve industrial-sized issues.

One CEO of a large multi-national company we worked with liked to say that everything his company did was to help their customers win. He understood that even though his company made some incredible products, the reason his customers bought those products from him was because his entire company functioned as Q. Their job was to deliver amazing solutions that enabled their customers to be the heros.

That’s exactly the right way to think about your brand.

James Bond is always on the run, always getting himself into unexpected situations in his quest to save the planet from the evil of the hour. He desperately needs someone looking out for him and creating solutions Bond doesn’t even know he needs yet. When brands get their position and story right, consumers and customers embrace the brand as part of the family. When the brand tries to be the hero, they compete with the consumer and are more likely than not to suffer a painful demise or, worse, languish in the world of the irrelevant.

When in doubt, be Q.

15 Essential Rules for Effective Brainstorming

Getting great results out of a brainstorming workshop can be challenging, but less so if you stack the odds in your favor. Use these tips to maximize your output.

As a workshop facilitator and participant, I’ve been in thousands of brainstorming sessions. Some great, some good, some horribly forgettable. I’ve found that helping set the tone for the meeting ahead of time can be critical in two key areas: 1, if the people attending the workshop aren’t brainstorming professionals and; 2, if they aren’t used to getting their ideas out of their own heads and in to the team workspace where others may build on the ideas and make them even better.

I prefer to send the principles out to the team prior to the meeting and usually with the workshop agenda, which is tailored to suit the challenge at hand.

PRINCIPLES OF BRAINSTORMING

QUANTITY OVER QUALITY

When we brainstorm, we want to get as many ideas out as possible, and think out loud so others can share in the creativity.

THERE IS ROOM FOR JUDGMENT—BUT NOW RIGHT NOW!

Start with the mantra: there are no bad ideas. In brainstorming, every idea has merit. Get them out first. Assess later.

BUILD ON OTHER IDEAS

Every idea is a building block for something new, something different, something breakthrough and never seen before. Remember, we need your ideas so the collective team reaches better solutions.

DIFFERENT PEOPLE MEAN DIFFERENT IDEAS

It’s critical to have people on your brainstorming teams who think differently than you. They need you on their teams for the same reason.

WELCOME WILD IDEAS

Brainstorming is non-linear. You can’t always do it sitting at your same old place at the table. Be willing to mix it up. Have fun, get expressive, get away from the norm. Your brain, and your team, will thank you.

The Rules of Engagement are meant to be used during the workshop to unite the people involved and give everyone permission to deliver their best. One trick is balancing the personalities in the room. Some people need help releasing their inner genius while others need guardrails on the types of behavior that won’t be permitted. You can’t let the neighborhood cynic and curmudgeon crush the fragile ideas of one or two people in the room and still expect to have dramatic results. But you can give the room license to laugh, smile, have fun and create something magical.

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

THINK FAST AND OFTEN

Don’t dwell on your ideas. Get them out quickly.

CAPTURE EVERY IDEA

In brainstorming, the only bad idea is one not captured. Remember, it’s your responsibility to make sure your ideas are expressed. They might not win in the end, but they must be expressed in order to help the team.

THERE ARE NO BAD IDEAS!

Reserve judgment until the proper time. Just get the idea out.

BE OPEN TO NEW THINKING

Your ideas are great. So are the ideas of the other members of your team. You need their weird, oddball, left field ideas as much as they need yours. Share and share alike.

THINK “AND” NOT “BUT”

It’s hard to build a house when others keep removing the supports. Be a good builder. We all know that anything preceding “but” in a conversation is irrelevant. Instead, rephrase responses along the lines of: “That’s an interesting idea AND I think I have a way to make it even stronger ...”

ONE CONVERSATION AT A TIME

Especially when it’s time to share with the whole group: Everyone has good ideas. Let’s make sure we can hear all of them—but not all at once.

STAY PRESENT IN THE DISCUSSION

You can’t be a good participant if your brain and interests are on something else. You owe it to yourself and your team to stay engaged physically and mentally, or be honest and take care of your other priorities first. Laptops and phones should be off limits until breaks or unless needed for research in the meeting.

STAY POSITIVE

It’s almost impossible to get to a new idea when you’re being negative. Brainstorming is “yes we can” territory.

THERE ARE NO DEVIL’S ADVOCATES!

Playing Devil’s Advocate is a cheap way to excuse yourself from any negative comments you use to kill someone else’s thoughts. Don’t do that. Ever. Own your ideas. When it’s time to critique the session output, you speak for you and no one else.

HAVE FUN!

This is brainstorming, not brain surgery (unless you’re brainstorming about brain surgery)! Enjoy yourself. Smile. Laugh a little. And come up with something really, really big!

Five steps to winning on stage in presentations

You've been asked to speak in front of an audience. Your deck is prepared. You've rehearsed. It's the day before your presentation and you still hate the idea of going up on that stage. What do you do?

Here are five tips I use with my clients to help win on stage:

1. Get rest and stay hydrated. Being tired and dehydrated affects the mind and body. You need all your reserves so you can concentrate and nail your presentation.

2. Wear something you feel confident in. It seems simple, but you need to know you look good. The mind plays tricks on you when you’re nervous or feeling vulnerable, and knowing you look good lets you focus on presenting well.

3. Smile. Smile while you practice. Smile before you go on. Force yourself to smile during your presentation. Your mind likes to follow what your body does. So smiling helps you look and sound friendlier. And tricks your brain into thinking you’re having a good time.

4. Breathe. Remember to breathe and give yourself a fighting chance. A deep breath here and there gives you the oxygen you need to stay mentally alert. So smile. And breathe.

5. Nail the opening. Then, regardless of how you do in the middle, nail the ending. Your audience will love you for both.

I remind all my clients that the people in the audience generally WANT YOU TO DO WELL. Think about this for a minute. How many times have you seen a speaker step up to the podium or on stage and hope they fail miserably. Most people don’t think this way. We like for people to do well. We want to hear a good presenter. We want to be delighted by the experience.

Relax and give them your best. They want you to nail this.

Books We Recommend

Everyone has their favorites books and topics. Here at Thinkhaus, we like books that delve into how people connect, sell, communicate and help people find a better way. We’re always looking for more. What should we add to the list?

1. 101 Secrets of Highly Effective Speakers by Caryl Krannich

2. Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures, by Dan Roam

3. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, by Malcolm Gladwell

4. Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant, by W. Chan Kim, Renee Mauborgne

5. Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, by Jim Collins

6. Click: The Forces Behind How We Fully Engage with People, Work, and Everything We Do, by Ori and Ram Brafman

7. Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors, by Michael Porter

8. Creativity Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration, by Ed Catmull

9. Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers, by Geoffrey A. Moore

10. David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants, by Malcolm Gladwell

11. Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work, by Chip and Dan Heath

12. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, by Daniel Pink

13. Emotional Intelligence: Why it Can Matter More Than IQ, by Daniel Goleman

14. Fail Fast, Fail Often: How Losing Can Help You Win, Ryan Babineaux

15. First Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently, by Marshall Buckingham

16. Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, by William Ury and Roger Fisher

17. Go-Givers Sell More, Bob Burg

18. Good to Great, by Jim Collins

19. Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck—Why Some Thrive Despite Them All, by Jim Collins

20. Grit: Why passion and resilience are the secrets to success, by Angela Duckworth

21. You Can Negotiate Anything: The World’s Best Negotiator Tells You How To Get What You Want, by Herb Cohen

22. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

23. In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America's Best-Run Companies, by Robert Waterman and Tom Peters

24. Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t, by Simon Sinek

25. Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries, by Peter Sims

26. Love Does by Bob Goff

27. Made to Stick: Why some ideas take hold and others come unstuck, by Chip Heath

28. Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change, by William Bridges

29. Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It, by Chris Voss

30. Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace, by Gordon MacKenzie

31. Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers Into Friends And Friends Into Customers, by Seth Godin

32. Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions, by Dan Ariely

33. Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable, by Seth Godin

34. Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More Without Settling for Less, by Robert Sutton and Hayagreeva Rao

35. Secrets to Closing the Sale by Zig Ziglar

36. Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey

37. Simply Brilliant: How Great Organizations Do Ordinary Things In Extraordinary Ways, by William C. Taylor

38. Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action, by Simon Sinek

39. Strategy That Works: How Winning Companies Close the Strategy-to-Execution Gap, Paul Leinwand and Cesare Mainardi

40. Strengths Finder 2.0, by Tom Rath

41. Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behaviour, Ori Brafman

42. Swim With the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive: Outsell, Outmanage, Outmotivate and Outnegotiate your Competition: Out Sell, Out Manage and Out Negotiate Your Competition, by Harvey Mackay

43. Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, by Chip and Dan Heath

44. The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business, by Patrick Lencioni

45. The Essential Drucker, by Peter Drucker

46. The First 90 Days by Michael Watkins

47. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni

48. The Improbability Principle: Why coincidences, miracles and rare events happen all the time, by David J. Hand

49. The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail, by Clayton Christensen

50. The Three Box Solution: A Strategy for Leading Innovation, by Vijay Govindarajan

51. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, by Malcolm Gladwell

52. The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home, Dan Ariely

53. Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

54. Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, by Seth Godin

55. Discover Your True North by Bill George

56. What You’re Really Meant to Do: A Roadmap for Reaching Your Unique Potential, by Robert Steven Kaplan

57. Who Moved My Cheese: An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life, by Spencer Johnson

58. Yes, And: How Improvisation Reverses "No, But" Thinking and Improves Creativity and Collaboration--Lessons from The Second City, by Kelly Leonard

59. The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: Dan Ariely

60. The Power of Moments: Chip and Dan Heath

61. The Undoing Project: Michael Lewis

Four Principles for Being a Better Communicator

It’s been said that a confused prospect never buys. Know yourself, know your stuff, know your audience, and know what success looks like, and you too can be a successful communicator.

Nosce te ipsum—Know Thyself

In the world of effective sales and communication it boils down to one simple truth: People buy you before they buy your product or service.

Ever since I was a kid I’ve heard the aphorism, “you never get a second chance to make a first impression.” Usually this was said in the context of making sure I didn’t screw up some big performance or meeting. It’s been applied to everything from code of conduct to dress to presentations and proposals to tone of voice and eating style.

One of the best and hardest experiences of my life was selling books door to door for two summers for the Southwestern Company while in college. During an intense week of Sales School, in which hundreds of college students from around the country are taught how to sell, one of the fundamental ideas driven home is that people buy you first and whatever you have to sell eventually, maybe. For a student trying to pay for college selling door to door, it’s an easy concept to adopt because you know beyond a doubt that you aren’t that good at selling anything and, if you have any hope of surviving the summer, people had better think you’re a decent person.

But there’s more to it than just being decent. People tend to make decisions at a gut level, emotionally, very quickly and decide whether you’re worth their time or not. When you’re selling door to door, your prospects check you out before they open the door. If they determine you’re not a threat, you might get a chance at pitching your goods. It’s what happens in speed dating: in just a few minutes we believe we can determine whether the person sitting across from us is worth another cup of coffee. Scientists call these kinds of snap judgments rapid cognition.

Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Blink, addressed the idea of rapid cognition, where decisions are made in one to two seconds and at a gut level before your rational mind has a chance to catch up. I liken it to the average couch potato racing Olympic world record holder Usain Bolt in a 100-meter race. Bolt would sprint down the track, cross the finish line, change his shoes and grab a drink before Mr. Potato stumbled to some sort of ending.

Science tells us over and over that most of us feel a long time before we understand. In communication, that feeling is hugely important because you must know that the people you’re communicating with feel a connection with you—or don’t—in only seconds. So your well-prepared message, your 200-slide PowerPoint deck, your incredibly detailed logical, rational discourse on your topic du jour doesn’t stand a chance if your audience is turned off by you in the first few seconds and certainly first few minutes of your engagement.

This means you need to know you very well; your strengths, your weaknesses, your presentation style, when you tend to oversell or shut down, what you evade and your natural biases. Self-awareness helps you avoid some obvious social landmines so you don’t stumble in your first impression.

How you dress and speak are somewhat obvious elements as well. If you overdress for a casual discussion, or wear shorts to an executive presentation, you communicate that you don’t know your audience. Since we tend to prefer people who are like us, your social mismatch can close down the pitch before you get started. And your audience may never tell you why you missed.

If you haven’t already, it’s worth your time and money to look into some type of personality assessment tool, like Myers-Briggs Type Indicator or DiSC. These tools can help you understand how you're wired and how the rest of the world may see you.

Know Your Stuff

Clarity starts with company purpose then cascades down to what products the company makes or services it offers.

I’m always amazed by how many people show up to presentations underprepared to talk about their own products or company. It’s a fundamental element of sales and good communication—you must know what you’re talking about. So get and be prepared.

You can’t sell what you don’t know. Why does your company exist? Why should anyone care that you are here and why would they care if you went away? According to the Meaningful Brands Index released annually by Havas Media, 73% of all brands could disappear and consumers wouldn’t care. The study covers brand authenticity, brand stories and brands contributing to the overall well-being of society.

I work with a range of clients every year to clarify and define their authentic story. We’ve found that companies without some fundamental purpose beyond making money have a hard time rallying the troops within the organization, and confuse their customers as well.

You might ask, “What does company purpose have to do with good communication?” The answer is simple: when you don’t first understand your organizational purpose, you run the risk of chasing after any shiny object. When that happens, two people from the same organization may have a difficult time telling the same story about their company, or the products and solutions that company offers.

Become an expert in your own company, its products and services, its history and legacy stories. If you're selling a service, you owe it to yourself and to your audience to know exactly what you can and can’t do, how your product is different and better than the competition, and how to solve the challenges your audiences face. Once you have the details down, you will be able to tailor your communication to suit your audiences. Not everyone is going to be excited about the same things, so you must be able to adjust. But you can’t adjust if you don’t have the fundamental knowledge to draw from in your conversation.

Know Your Audience

People desire information that addresses what they need, so you stand a better chance of making a true connection if you start with what’s most important to them.

We humans are a selfish lot. We think about ourselves first and often. Think you’re different? Find a group picture with you in it. Who do you look for first? That’s right, you. Most people do. Then we find the people we like in the photo, then the people we don’t like (just in case they look bad in the photo) and finally, if there’s time, the other people who just happened to be sharing our space at the moment the photo was taken. It’s natural, it’s human, and it’s the way your audience thinks every time you try to communicate. You have to know they are more interested in themselves than they are in you. So it makes sense to understand what you’re up against.

In his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey identified one habit as “seek first to understand, then to be understood.” Making it a habit is exactly the point. In sales and communication you have to overcome your own desire to talk about yourself and whatever you have on your mind. Your audience is looking for information based on what they need. Seek first to understand them, then move on to help them understand how you and your product or service might solve a problem.

Just as personality tests help you figure out your communication style, they can also offer some barometer to measure your audience. Some people like big stories, some just want the facts. Some want to know you’ll always be there and cover all the details along the way. The faster you can read your audience the better chance you have of effectively communicating and closing a sale.

Know What Success Look Like

Start with the end in mind, and make sure both parties share in the spoils.

Stephen Covey also said to “think win-win”. In its base form that’s all there is to it. You need to have some idea of what an ideal outcome is—and that outcome should always include some form of shared value. Unbalanced outcomes aren’t sustainable for the simple reason that we humans like things to work in our favor. Bend the odds too far in one direction and the other party is eventually going to opt out of the deal. This is true in relationships, marriages, business deals and trips to the casino.

When you begin your conversations with the idea that the outcome will be good for both parties, you are more likely to look for positive compromise and stay open to creative solutions to the challenges on the table. Since both you and your audience ultimately want to win, it only makes sense to build your conversation from that angle and work to help both sides succeed.

Effective communication doesn’t have to be tricky or difficult. It’s one of the reason I use the tagline “logical branding.” When you apply these four principles—know yourself, know your stuff, know your audience and know what success looks like— conversations, sales calls, ads, social media posts and more just seem to end well on a more regular basis.