“You may not know exactly what your customer is thinking, but you can know how he or she thinks.” In terms of persuasive communication, this Manna Groups aphorism means that you must understand how the mind makes meaning out of the information that comes through the senses. A good way to start is to acknowledge the difference between delivering facts and creating impact.

Delivering facts is the practice of putting information in front of customers or prospects with the hope that such information will motivate a desired action. A trade show booth outfitted with a video and a stack of brochures is an example of this kind of thing.

So too are the many delivery metrics represented under such names as Frequency, Reach, Cost Per Thousand (CPM), Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Gross Impressions, Net Unduplicated Audience, Cost Per Inquiry (CPI), and others.

These metrics are like a UPS rate sheet in that they quantify delivery cost. What these metrics cannot quantify is delivery value.

Let us be clear, delivering facts is exactly as valuable as delivering an empty box. It doesn’t matter how much it costs to deliver an empty box and it doesn’t matter how timely or articulately the delivery is made. An empty box is an empty box — period!

Fact based communication is more than un-valuable, it’s arrogant. It assumes a customer or prospect can accept that what he or she already believes to be true is false, or at least suspect. No customer or prospect willingly enters into an inquiry about a product, service, candidate, or cause that way.

Even if it were possible to identify the rare individual capable of suspending existing beliefs, the re-evaluation time assumed by fact based communication no longer exists.

Today’s marketplace of abundance is deluged with replicated products, each of which erodes the time, and most especially the equanimity, required to re-evaluate currently held beliefs.

The only effective alternative to presenting facts is to create impact. It’s a hard thing to do, much harder than presenting facts. In truth creating impact is often harder to accomplish than it is to create or develop a product, service, candidate, or cause.

This is an important realization. A product, service, candidate, or cause has very little chance of success if the amount of time, talent, and money devoted to creating impact does not at least equal the amount of time, talent, and money devoted to creating the product, service, candidate, or cause. That’s tough news, but it’s the truth!

So how is it done? How does one create impact and in so doing persuade others to take a desired action? Start by accepting that impact and articulation are different.

Articulation means mastery of the technical skills required for clear communication. Impact is the talent to persuade others to take a desired action.

Impact occurs when the mind links messages that come through the senses to existing convictions, emotions, feelings, and beliefs. This has nothing at all to do with fact(s).

Convictions, emotions, feelings, and beliefs are the alphabet with which impactful communication is created. An impactful communicator knows which convictions, emotions, feelings, and beliefs— which letters of the alphabet — exist within an intended audience. His or her task is to link to, and link together, existing convictions, emotions, feelings, and beliefs in a way that “spells out” an intended action.

An impactful communicator is really only interested in addressing two questions. First, will the message being articulated link to, and link together, existing convictions, emotions, feelings, and beliefs within the intended recipient? Second, will the link(s) effect a desired outcome?

These questions exist specifically to measure what happens after message delivery. They are scarcely, if ever, connected to the cost of message delivery.

Impact requires understanding and parlaying with how the mind makes meaning from the messages received through the senses. Until this ability is mastered, an articulate conveyor of fact will accomplish little more than that of a delivery clerk dispatching empty boxes.

Impact
April 1, 2012 by Bob Manna & Matt Manna
Version: 005A06D5(R05) • Feb 2, 2014
Photo © ArenaCreative – Fotolia.com

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In 1878 author Margaret Wolfe Hungerford gave life to the now familiar idiom, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” In the nearly 135 years since, the assignment of beauty, of merit, of import, etc., remain as perceptions derived on an individual beholder basis. Thank goodness, because persuasion wouldn’t be possible if it were any other way.

Perception makes persuasion possible. And every act of perception requires individual judgment; an individual opinion on the state of affairs in the world. Every act of perception requires active interpretation by individual beholders. If it were otherwise, if perceptions were the same from beholder to beholder, there would be no need for (and no) persuasion. There would only be statements of fact.

But every successful communicator will tell you that facts, standing alone, are incapable of achieving the superior results derived from a strongly felt perception. That’s why we say, a customer is incapable of thinking about a product until he or she has been guided to have a strong feeling about it.

The key to shaping perception, to causing a customer to feel deeply about a product, service, candidate, or cause is to create a message that stimulates the mind passionately. This condition cannot be achieved by a mere recitation of facts.

At Manna Groups we call this talent Sculpture — the ability to create messages that deeply resonate with the convictions already within the beholder. These messages represent the root of persuasion. At their best they connect a beholder to a product by way of a basic and invariable belief. (…)

Consider the following true story…

The last of the invited guests were passing through the rear doors of the conference area as the facilities’ maintenance man approached the evening’s presenter and said, “That was really amazing what you showed those people tonight. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Was this a magic show or something?”

The “magic show” the maintenance man was referring to consisted of three pieces of equipment: a teletype machine, a telephone, and an acoustic coupler (the original modem). It was March 1965 and the presenter had used this equipment to demonstrate the latest in on-line keyboard remote access.
The demonstration consisted of typing in a birthdate volunteered by someone in the audience, pressing the teletype send key, and waiting for the teletype to “come alive” and type the day of the week on which the date fell. The process had been repeated several times and for each repetition the answer was found to be correct.

The maintenance man asked, “Can you do that for my birthday?”

“Sure” was the response from the evening’s presenter, and one more time the demonstration was successfully conducted. To the system analysts and programmers in the audience that evening’s demonstration was a clear and simple (albeit, rather prosaic) version of what the world now accepts as ordinary on-line processing.

But to the maintenance man it was something altogether different. As expressed in his own words: “Man, you’ve invented a birthday machine!”

(This story related to Bob Manna in 1965 by Dr. Dan Scott, a pioneer in remote keyboard access.)

There has never been a clearer or more precise exemplification of, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” What the maintenance man told the presenter decades ago, is that perception is determined upon what customers already believe to be true.

Put succinctly, the truth about “truth” in communication is that there is none. In the same sense as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so to is the truth about a product, service, candidate, or cause.

Consider the following…

In 2005, corporations spent more than $7.3 billion on market research in the United States alone. In 2007, that figure rose to $12 billion. And that doesn’t even include the additional expenses involved in marketing an actual product – the packaging and the displays, TV commercials, online banner ads, celebrity endorsements, and billboards – which carry a $117 billion annual price tag in America alone. But if these strategies still work, then why do eight out of ten new product launches fail within the first three months?

(From the New York Times Bestseller, Buyology, written by Martin Lindström)

The reason 80% of new product offerings fail is because the messages wrapped around the products do not persuaded anyone to give them a try! Until a product is put into use, the truth about failure has nothing to do with what the product does, as a scientist, engineer, or ineffective communicator might think about it.

Until a product is bought and put to use, the only thing that matters is what meaning the customer’s mind makes out of the communication that surrounds the product. How can it be otherwise?

The purpose of communication is not to introduce the customer to new truths. From the point of view of the customer there is no truth other than that which he or she already knows. (…)

Communication’s purpose is to produce positive, deeply felt, perceptions. This is done by re-arranging the truths that are already present in the minds of customers and prospects.

Happy Birthday, birthday machine. It’s been forty-seven years since you reminded us that beauty really is in the eye of the beholder!

The Invention Of The Birthday Machine
March 1, 2012 by Bob Manna & Matt Manna
Version: 004C95FA(R03) • Feb 12, 2014
Photo by AlisonW, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

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It’s hard to imagine someone saying to another, “You know I bought this product because of the extraordinary communication that preceded my purchase.” Yet, that is exactly why products are purchased.

Every purchase is motivated by the communication that precedes it. The communication comes first. The purchase comes second. And what is true for products is equally true for votes, verdicts, and volitions. Every human undertaking is primarily motivated by communication.

Before reading past this sentence take a moment and reread the first paragraph of this article.

Now consider this familiar proverb, “You never get a second chance to make a good first impression.” Can there be any doubt in your mind that the words “good first impression” denote communication? The practical upshot of this realization forms the basis of two important New Year’s resolutions.

Be it resolved in 2012 that first impressions are the sole result of communication. Be it further resolved that facts do not correlate with positive first impressions.

Suppose you have control of a new product that is, in every way, better than other products currently in existence. Your product is well tested. You have satisfied manufacturing and distribution requirements, and assembled a talented sales team. The only thing left to do is take the product to market. Which means what exactly?

You might be tempted to reply that the question is superfluous. Taking a product to market means making the product’s facts known to prospective customers.

Good luck with that! Customers don’t pay attention to facts. Customers (people) pay attention to convictions. Customers use their convictions to filter and cast aside communication that does not strengthen existing feelings. When it comes to impressions and feelings, convictions, not facts, are in charge.

The power of convictions can be quickly demonstrated via the used car salesman test. There is nothing a used car salesman can say that will make you think he is telling the truth. Why? Because you are incapable of thinking beyond what your convictions make you feel about a used car salesman.

A truly sad thing to recognize is that even if a used car salesman is telling the truth, you will not believe what he is saying. A used car salesman is a used car salesman. End of story!

The phenomenon of using convictions as the basis for forming impressions is technically known as perceptual and cognitive mechanics. What the phenomenon means is that people feel deeply, before thinking clearly. A customer will form a positive impression only if he or she is exposed to communication that parlays with his or her existing convictions.

Imagine that part of your “take to market” strategy is to send a blast Email to those who are likely to be interested in your product. Do you suppose there is any list of facts you can include in the Email that will create a positive first impression? The chances are many to one that the Email will never even be opened let alone evaluated.

Email, you see, is an electronic equivalent to a used car salesman. Their form speaks louder than their message.

It is most revealing when a client asks us why we chose a particular medium over another, or why we decided to create a message that did not extol a products technical merit. The question assumes we were in control of how such a communication would be received by those for whom it was intended.

Everyone who is seriously committed to achieving success must accept that product merit comes second to meritorious communications. If it were the other way round, every meritorious product would become successful.

The year 2012, and those that follow, will be better served when we resolve to understand that facts are not the same as convictions, and they are miles from truth as it is understood by the mind and heart.

Persuasive Resolutions
January 1, 2012 by Bob Manna & Matt Manna
Version: 004D9326(R09) • May 18, 2016
Photo © JohnKwan – Fotolia.com

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