Thesis #16: Already, companies that speak in the language of the pitch, the dog-and-pony show, are no longer speaking to anyone.

Don’t Pitch Me Bro Uploaded by chrisheuer

As we’ve established, the language of “pitch”, which includes sales, marketing, campaigns, verticals, leveraging, and more…is ineffective.

When it works, it only works when you cast a net so massive that you are working the power of numbers. If you pitch to hundreds of thousands, even millions of individuals, of course you’re going to have some rate of conversion. But that’s a ton of wasted energy. And in terms of voice, and language, is a great way to the business equivelent of laryngitis.

Why is the language of “pitch” ineffective at anything other than alienating your audience? Think about it this way. While some of us are better at it than others, we all have some innate “lie detection” built in to our communications arsenal. First line of defense? Irregular speach patterns, followed by messaging designed to obscure intent.

Now let’s examine the physiology of “the pitch”. By definition, a pitch is meant to succinctly explain

a) what you are pitching b) why it is valuable c) who you are, related to that element of value

Notice anything missing?

The ideal pitch explains how perfect your product or service is for the person being pitched to.

Unfortunately for the “pitcher”, that’s when our innate lie detection kicks in. For me, it’s the “too good to be true” meter that usually goes off the charts.

That’s usually when I turn my back. I don’t know about you, but the things that set off my lie detector send me the other way.

As soon as I hear a pitch, I assume that I’m in the middle of a bait and switch.

“Here, stay for the weekend in this beautiful ski resort. It’s free. All you need to do is sit through a 2 hour presentation about our time share offerings”.

Right. I saw that episode of South Park and I’m not buying it.

Which is why the companies that use the voice of “pitch” in all of their communications are finding that they look up from their pitch script to realize that they are talking to an empty room.

“Where did everyone go?” the pitching marketer asks.

They’re online, and they’re talking to each other.

While doing some more research for case studies, I came across a research report by the Online Community Research Network from March 2008. Less than a year old, I think it’s still relevant and extremely telling about the effects of the themes we’ve been discussing. Furthermore, like the Cluetrain Manifesto before it, it’s a quantitative prediction based on historical trends of things to come. I cannot tell from their website if they have more current reports than this one available, I’d love to see the results of the year to change.

Anyway, some relevant results from the report that relate directly to the Cluetrain.

One of the questions in the survey was: What were the 1-2 compelling sources of value from your community or social media efforts that you constantly communicate? The answers followed the themes below, which also include direct pull quotes from the survey responses. There’s some solid stuff in here.

1. Community helps problem solve faster and more efficiently than Customer Support, saving our company time and money: • “Customers are able to get faster response and answers to their problem utilizing the community over contacting Customer Support.” • “Knowledge share, and hence problem solving, is more efficient due to the community model.” • “The ROI on employee time devoted to the forums far exceeds the returns on the usual support methods.” 2. Availability of information and content for specific areas of interest: • “Niche communities, focused on specific areas of interest. Market leaders on-line and in print with high cross over traffic.” • “You won’t find this content anywhere else – written by our members to raise best practice within vendors.” 3. Increases site traffic / more engaged relationship with us: • “The more we invest into community, the more organic traffic we get.” • “Our community sites get more than 3 times the engagement for solutions, capabilities and use case content than our traditional sites.” • “Views of photo albums remain the most popular area of the community. Members may not wish to participate in discussions, but they do want to see photos of their events.” • “An online discussion moderated by subject matter experts that followed an in-person event with the same moderators achieved the most participation of any attempts to engage our users.” 4. Idea Creation / What we learn from members of the community: • “We will have the opportunity to get first hand feedback on products and ideas for improvements and enhancements.” • “We discovered some problem areas in usage and service adoption that caused us to change our materials and strategy.” 5. Lead Generation / Conversion: • “Converting contacts, acquaintances, and other informal relationships into donor relationships.” • “Converting contacts into activists and issue leaders.” • “When we enlist our community members to represent us physically or virtually, our reach and conversion metrics dramatically increase.” 6. People are saving time / building skills by using our site: • “People creating and building productive relationships with people that help them improve their practice or do their work better.” • “Our community members credit participation in our community with their increased skills in using our products.” 7. Build customer loyalty: • “Community members are more likely to volunteer their time, services, advice, and financial support than non-members.” • “Employees who belong to the community almost never ‘turn over’. They are consistently the best performers out in the stores.” • “Offering a community to your clients where they can speak to you and each other significantly increases customer loyalty.” • “More connected members spread the word and come back frequently.” • “If you want to understand your stakeholders and develop the relationships, you have to think in communities.” • “Online dialogue creates a more open environment that deepens trust and team work throughout the organization.” • “Research shows that customers in a community can have a sense of involvement with the company as long as we make sure they are heard and that involvement can lead to great loyalty.” • “Our community members are actively engaged with the brand and don’t hesitate to tell us what they like, and don’t like. They feel a real sense of ownership of the brand.” • “Our ability to personally communicate with future users of our product substantially influences their perception of our company.” 8. Online community is growing our membership base: • “Our blog has increased community participation by 80% over the past year.” • “We have doubled the size of our community membership in the last 6 months. 2 years ago, only 34% of our Company’s upsells and renewals were also members of the Community. In 2007, 75% of our upsells and renewals were Community members.”

So ROI is alive and well in Social Media…

And we see a solid reinforcement that Cluetrain theses are a driving force behind the value being noted.

For more details on this report, see Bill Johnston’s blog post.

1. A good marketer is a Community Advocate
2. A good marketer knows today’s brands aren’t built in boardrooms or ad agencies or brainstorming sessions
3. A good marketer plans a little, but changes alot
4. A good marketer doesn’t only respond to community needs today, but also knows what needs will arise tomorrow
5. A good marketer rewards the community members who stand behind him/her
6. A good marketer gets involved in the community
7. A good marketer is her/his own client
8. A good marketer knows when to back off
9. A good marketer learns to use the tools available to them
10. A good marketer never takes her/himself to seriously

Now go read the whole thing. Tara’s explications of each of these points are briliant.

Thesis #15: In just a few more years, the current homogenized “voice” of business—the sound of mission statements and brochures—will seem as contrived and artificial as the language of the 18th century French court.

The homogeneity of voice predicted by the Cluetrain of 1999 has been realized. What’s worse, is that its artificiality has this creepeing effect that leaves no corner of communication untapped.

The Cluetrain has been cited as a precursor, possibly even a crystal ball, into the world of Social Media that we live in today. Of course it seems that way, hindsight being 20/20 and all. Realistically, though, I think what the Cluetrain did was recognize patterns in how humans communicate in real life, how humans communicate in business, and the differences between them. Social Media, whatever it can be defined as at the very moment that I’m writing this essay, is the convergence of those conversations. Human conversations and business conversations.

But we’re experiencing a culture clash.

Funny for some, uncomfortable to watch for others. Either way, a poor representation of reality.

The language we use to describe business activities is almost equally as absurd if you consider it in the context of the rest of your life. In the rest of your relationships.

I recently “overheard” a dialogue recently, a couple of Tweets shared between between Dave Troy and Tony Bacigalupo about “sustainability” as related to business.

Sustainability is a term that’s thrown around in business a whole lot, typically tied to business modeling. Even worse, it’s found it’s way into marketing, and we’ve started talking about building “sustainable relationships” with our business partners and customers.

Think about that for a second. It sounds positive at first, but put it into context.

Right.

The homogenized business voice is so unaware of itself and how contrived it sounds that it doesn’t even know that it’s in a hole, let alone how to dig itself out. Meanwhile, the human conversations are more real than ever before, with more people discovering their own voices and how powerful they can be when they are honest and authentic.

Here’s the problem. Discourse in business is taking place as if it’s still “us” versus “them”. Like this is a high school dance and the boys are afraid of touching the girls.

Cooties. Ew.

I’ll let you in on a little secret.

There is no them.

Thesis #11: People in networked markets have figured out that they get far better information and support from one another than from vendors. So much for corporate rhetoric about adding value to commoditized products.

Uploaded by Brassard

Imagine walking through the aisles of your local Walmart with a shopping list. You know with a certain degree of confidence that you’re going to be able to grab each item on your shopping list, and the more generic the contents of your list are, the better your chances of leaving with 100% of what you came for. Walmart, and other mass market vendors, have mastered this model by carrying not just one, but many of the same commoditized product.

To the undiscerning eyes (or the carefree shopper), soap is soap. Socks are socks. Televisions are televisions. So long as they do the same thing, the sale goes to the lowest bidder.

Walmart is the intermediary, and doesn’t care who the lowest bidder is because they make a margin on it either way.

But people have fundamentally changed, and they are more than just value conscious.

The carefree shopper cares more now than ever before, because they are more informed. It’s an interesting set of cause and effect, too.

Companies are too busy selling a line of marketing drivel, so in true “Boy who cried Wolf” fashion, every bit of messaging companies sent out is assumed to be marketing drivel.

Now consumers have networked markets. They have each other to find which soap leaves their skin the softest, which socks keep their feet the warmest, and which television the big game will look best on.

And they trust each other WAY more than they trust your marketing department.