Voice As Real Competitive Advantage

(This is the companion post to the Business Journal column on how developing your unique voice can create positive marketplace distinction, attracting coveted target prospects)

While the Journal column highlighted a few important characteristics necessary when developing a genuine voice that creates strong prospect and customer connections, what we’ll focus on in this follow-up post is how to make Voice a sustainable, long-term effective force inside your company (or sales territory) – one that helps drive meaningful PRG.

At The Third Door, we strongly encourage our clients to perform “third millennium marketing” (once we’ve helped them discern “Who They Are” and any competitive advantages), and that includes public speaking, writing, and performing all forms of social media.  How does a business create the discipline to make this activity an ingrained, key component to their sales and marketing efforts?

As Dr. Deming taught us, management owns the company’s systems and processes, and this fact is at the core of The Third Door philosophy:  if real change is to occur, the systems and processes must change – and only management can make that happen.  PRG is a leadership responsibility.  Always has been, always will be.  Salespeople must be put into a position to win, and it’s top management’s responsibility to do so.

1. Hire “right.”  Employing righties – the right-brain, creative types (MFAs vs. MBAs) –  with the desired skill set is Rule #1.  These people should permeate your company across all departments.  Also, the list of salesperson skill set “gotta haves” has changed dramatically.  Gone is the loquacious, hard-charging, inwardly motivated putz who’s sole purpose is to make the sale.  The Attractor (vs. traditional farmers and hunters) is adept at articulating compelling points of view across a myriad of mediums.  Expertise attracts profitable business, and it’s developed via skilled articulation … which pours out in gallons from righties.
2. Set expectations.  We have clients who encourage ALL of their employees – not just the salespeople – to be engaged in social media throughout the day in addition to performing their regular jobs.  Crazy?  When trust is present, people do the right thing.  Regularly participating in key market segment or industry conversations where your “tribes” are having important discussions is smart business.  Who knows you is far more important than who you know.  Be sure to include entries into employees’ job models that require them to engage in blogging, other social media, and public speaking as an important part of their employment contract.
3. Train.  Even though you’ve hired an articulate, well-read, curio-empathetic person doesn’t mean they don’t need more knowledge to help them become an expert.  There are multiple outlets available to help people enhance their writing and speaking skills.  Make them available to your troops, encourage them to learn, and monitor their progress.
4. Measure.  What gets measured gets managed, and what gets managed gets done.  Determine your metrics, provide transparent and omnipresent dashboards, and watch how people respond.  Additionally, it will become apparent who’s on board … and who’s not.  Get rid of pretenders.  Cancer tends to spread quickly.
5. Reward & Recognize.  Think one-on-one pats on the back and words of encouragement versus throwing a parade.  A public mention doesn’t hurt, just know that some people are embarrassed by gobs of it.  Leaders should seek “special moments” to recognize since they tend to be more emotionally meaningful to the employee.  Tailor the reward and recognition to the individual.
6. Compensate.  People tend to behave in correlation to how they’re paid.  Determine an appropriate percentage of pay correlated to these types of activities, and the desired behavior will occur.
7. Inspire.  Nothing says “Follow me!” like leading by example.  If the boss isn’t sharpening her Voice skills, writing that new, pithy blog post, or updating her Facebook page with some customer-friendly, newsworthy comment, then what does that say to her people.Unleashing the human spirit throughout an organization – and subsequently making that spirit available to the world – is the new sales frontier.  Others have already pioneered it.  All you have to do is refine it to reap the rewards you’ve only dreamed about until now.