The Commercial Shift | Issue Three
The magic of fluency
Over the last two weeks we've looked at value creation and why solution sales are uncovered, not created. This week is about a quiet force in every buying decision, how easy you are to understand.
The Shift
From complexity → to fluency
Many people still believe selling is about finding the right words to persuade people to buy but psychology would suggest something different is going on.
Every time we take in information we notice how easy or hard it was to process. Psychologists call this feeling “fluency” and our brains use it as a shortcut for judgement. People judge fluent information to be more true, more likeable, more familiar and to come from a more intelligent source.
Fluency shapes buyer behaviour too because when propositions are harder to process, people are more likely to put off the decision to change and to stick with their current default option. I bet you can think of a time you have done this yourself!
For your customers, the default is usually what they already do or who they already use. Making a change is often seen as difficult and too much like hard work. So a complicated proposition doesn't just fail to impress it actually quietly hands on-going success to your competition.
To win you need to make your proposition so easy to take in that it can be recalled at the two moments that matter 1) at the point a customer has a need and 2) this second point is so often overlooked...when someone in their business or network asks who they would recommend.
A fluent proposition is easy to remember and easy to pass on. A complicated one is neither.
The Gap
The effort test.
Read your website homepage, your marketing on LinkedIn, the last proposal you lost or the first slide of your pitch deck as if you were a busy customer. How much effort does it take to understand what you do?
Every piece of jargon, every long word and every extra line makes your message harder to process, and makes it easier for a customer to stay with what they know.
The Question
Could the last ten customers you spoke to recall your proposition simply and accurately?
The Action
Borrow their words
Before Friday, speak to three customers. Ask them, as simply as you can, what challenges they are trying to solve right now. Then listen, and write down the exact words they use.
Those words are your raw material. Build your proposition from them: their challenge, in their language, and how you solve it. Nothing is easier for a customer to process than their own words played back to them, and nothing shows more clearly that you are the company that can solve it.
The research: Oppenheimer (2008), The secret life of fluency
Until next week,
James
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