“But we sell to a technical buyers,” she said, “why do I care about the story?”
“But it’s easy to use, why do I need to invest more in customer success?, ” he asked
“It’s just about differentiation!,” they all said.
Like a loud bar, I was having a hard time keeping the discussion straight in my head. The VP of Customer success only cared about THE PRACTICAL even if it wasn’t powerful. The Head of Sales only cared about THE POWERFUL, even if it wasn’t possible. And the Marketing Director only cared about the Possible, even it wasn’t practical. WOW.
Then the lightbulb, I realized that the listener cares about all of them, the Possible, the Powerful and the Practical. And we have great Voices to describe each of these, marketing, sales, customer success. And each of those Voices had a different impact that they wanted to achieve with the listener, the buyer. The Marketer talks about the Possible to achieve Attention. The Salesperson talks about the Powerful to achieve Action, and the Customer Success Owner talks about the practical to create achievement. These topics or motif create our chorus of value voices.
With that in mind, the bar chatter starts to sound like a well orchestrated Chorus which sounds beautiful and coordinated, and on paper looks like this:
Like a chorus, these voices need to be tied together with a single theme. And that theme is VALUE. Our Value conversation is like a chorus. When we align the voices, the possible sets up the powerful, the powerful is supported by the practical. We can get the attention of buyers, motivate them to take action and reinforce their action with achievement. If not aligned around common Value, our conversations sounds like a disorganized barroom. But when we do, well, it can be beautiful music, a Value masterpiece. Welcome to the #ConversationEconomy !