SEARCH

Search

Explore

Blog
Podcast
Free Live Event
Self-Assessment
Manifesto
Book

Work with me

Connect

SUBSCRIBE

Search
Close this search box.

Where great ideas go to die

Recently, in a marketing brainstorming session with a table full of snacks and charts.

Chief Trend Officer (CTO): “Alright team, we’ve got the latest trend report right here. Fidget spinners are making a comeback! We need to integrate them into our campaign.”

Marketing Intern (tentatively): “But, um, isn’t our product a high-end coffee machine?”

CTO: “Precisely! Imagine: a coffee machine with a built-in fidget spinner. Every time you brew, you spin!”

CEO (trying not to laugh): “Or, maybe we could explore why people love coffee? The aroma, the morning ritual, the conversations over a cup? Dive into the shared experiences and emotions?”

CTO (with an enthusiastic grin): “Sure, all that deep stuff is great, but just imagine a GIF with someone sipping espresso while spinning a fidget spinner! Viral content!”

CEO: “Well, while we’re at it, why not add a whistle? Brew, sip, spin, and toot! We’ll revolutionize morning routines everywhere!”

CTO (pausing, thinking deeply, then with a eureka moment): “…Can we patent that?”

Ear to the ground

Good communicators want to be understood; great ones start by understanding.

The good ones strive for clarity to make it easy for their audience to catch their message. They’re skilled and their ideas often leave an impression.

But then there are those who seem to possess an almost magical touch in the way they communicate. They stand out not because they’re louder or more extroverted, but because they approach communication differently.

Instead of starting with a message and searching for ears to hear it, they begin with an ear to the ground, attuned to the heartbeat of their audience.

When we encounter one of them, we feel understood. We’re not just being told; we’re being invited into a shared vision. It’s less about them and more about a collective “us”, less a transaction of information and more a transformation of perspective.

These communicators understand that lasting change comes not from dictating what others should see, but from lighting the path so others can see it for themselves.

In a world filled with noise and distractions, these leaders don’t just capture our attention; they capture our hearts. And it’s there, in that space of emotional connection and shared understanding, where real, lasting change begins.

In the vast sea of voices, the ones that resonate are those that truly understand their listeners.

They won’t know what hit them

Alright, this is it. The big meeting. I’ve got all the facts lined up, PowerPoint is flawless, and my talking points are sharp. I’m ready to persuade the heck out of them. They won’t know what hit them.

Okay, opening slide – good. I can see they’re listening. Time to ramp it up. Point one, point two, hit them with a statistic! Why do they look confused? No worries, I’ll explain it again, but faster and with more emphasis.

Wait, why is Sarah looking at her watch? And why is Mike doodling? They should be hanging on to my every word. Alright, double down. Speak louder, be more assertive.

Uh oh, I’ve lost them. They’re nodding, but it’s that empty nod people do when they’ve checked out. What went wrong? I pushed all the points, I laid out all the facts.

“Don’t persuade harder, resonate stronger.” That phrase suddenly pops into my head. My old mentor, Michael, used to say that. I brushed it off back then, but it’s ringing true right now.

I need to pause. I need to breathe. What do these people care about? What matters to them? I’ve been so focused on what I want to say that I’ve ignored what they need to hear.

Alright, shift gears.

Let’s try this again.

Slow down … tune into their frequency … and hit the right notes.

Time to resonate …

Resonate stronger

When their brilliant idea loses to an inferior one that’s among the most frustrating experiences for any entrepreneur or leader.

Even more so when the others are playing it unfair by promising the blue from the skies and using all sorts of sneaky marketing and sales tricks.

But the solution is not to play by their rules and persuade even harder. It’s to change the rules and resonate stronger: understand your audience so well that you can craft messages that resonate so strongly that they become irresistible.

I imagine a world in which those of us who have an important story to tell, a story that has the potential to change the world, find the words to make that happen.

What’s your story?

Addressing objections

A great way to improve your communication is to listen to your customer-facing teams, such as sales, tech support, or social media managers. If you have a system in place to collect all the objections that customers tell your teams, you can address each of them in your communication.

The obvious way to do this is to find (or come up with) ways to convince your audience that these objections are kind of untrue or don’t matter that much (or that it wasn’t your fault).

A much more unusual way is to use the collection of objections as a filter and embrace some of the objections to separate who your service is for and who it’s not for.

That way you can strengthen your communication for those who it is for.

In a way, rather than arguing why your are right and those who complain are wrong you acknowledge that both might be right and then you use it to reinforce the message for those who agree with you.

No!

In elementary sales school you learn that a prospect’s “no” is short for “not enough information”.

And so, whole armies of salesforces bombard their prospects with ever more info when the prospect has already tuned out and started to feel annoyed.

A better way is to consider the possibility that your customers are actually, you know, smart and that they might actually know what they want and need.

Sure, sometimes a “no” means that you haven’t explained it well enough or that a crucial detail was missing. But other times, a “no” really does mean “no”.

If it’s the latter, rather than adding more detail you might want to consider fixing the product or finding a better match. Only if if’s the former will tweaking your communication have an impact.

(It helps, of course, to become good at distinguishing the two.)

A no-brainer

If customers knew everything that you know, it would be a no-brainer for them to buy from you, right? They would queue up in an instant.

Why then don’t they?

What’s the missing piece? What do they not see?

More importantly: how can you make them see it?

Who is “us”?

This week, I’m asking one simple but important question each day for you to ponder (on your own or with your team):

When a customer reads your “about us” page, would they come to the conclusion that they are included in “us”?

Would they still buy?

This week, I’m asking one simple but important question each day for you to ponder (on your own or with your team):

If you told your customers the full truth about your product, would they still buy? What do you need to change so that you can tell the full truth?

Their brilliance

This week, I’m asking one simple but important question each day for you to ponder (on your own or with your team):

Good communicators know how to surface their brilliance. But how can you make your audience feel brilliant?

Spread the Word

Dr. Michael Gerharz

Dr. Michael Gerharz