The next time someone lays a “communication” issue on you, try this:

“That sounds interesting. Help me out. Describe specifically what you see happening and why it’s a problem.”

This should get the discussion going and help drill down to the real issue. This is helpful both internally and when working externally with partners.

source: All Things Workplace

I was chatting with a co-worker about a Logic class she was taking. This brought back memories from my college days – I minored in Philosophy. It also led to the inevitable discussion about how one’s education applies to their profession. Many people assume that I acquired my Marketing expertise while earning my MBA. Likewise, people often assume that my undergrad and graduate studies in the Social Sciences and Philosophy do not apply to my profession, but they’re wrong. Here are 3 reasons why:

1) Empathy – Sociology

Empathy is the most important skill for Marketers.

Empathy is simply putting yourself in someone else’s shoes – like a potential customer or partner. For example:

• “If I was a potential customer or partner, what problems might I have and how might this company’s products help me? If they don’t help me, how do I improve them so that they do help?”
• “Looking at a competing product, how does it benefit me as a customer? If I had to decide between my company’s product and the competition’s, which one would I buy?  What can I do to ensure that my company’s product will win that decision?”
• “How do I best explain the benefits of my product to a potential customer in a way that meets their specific needs and solves their specific problems?”

This is what Marketing, and in particular Product Management and Business Development, is all about – determining what someone values and figuring out how to provide that value or communicate that value to them. If you don’t get Empathy, you won’t be able to do this and you won’t be a successful Marketer.

Let me say it again: Empathy is the most important skill for Marketers. Where do you learn Empathy? Not in a Marketing class. Don’t believe me? Look up Marketing on Wikipedia. Then search that page for “empathy.” It’s not there. The closest concept you’ll find to Empathy is Marketing Research. Marketing Research is not Empathy. Marketing Research does not necessarily put you in someone else’s shoes. If you’re not already in their shoes, you won’t know what questions to ask.

So where can you learn about Empathy? In a Sociology class. Sociology is great for Marketers because it teaches you how to understand and apply Empathy. You also learn how to keep your own background or biases from getting in the way of seeing other perspectives. The trick is making the leap from using Empathy to understand societal issues to using it for business.

2) Opportunity Cost – Economics (yes, Economics is a Social Science)

If you hear things like “What do we have to lose by giving this a try?” to justify a new product or partnership, then you know that this person hasn’t considered the Opportunity Cost.

Opportunity Cost is about allocating resources between competing projects. It is the cost related to the next best alternative. If you can only do one thing, which one are you going to do and what are you forgoing to do it? For example, you have to decide between the following:

• adding a new feature to your most popular product – Net Present Value (NPV) of $5 million,
• entering a partnership to resell someone else’s complimentary product – NPV of $8 million, or
• launching a new product that appeals to a new market segment – NPV of $10 million.

If you chose the partnership (perhaps because you wanted to get to market faster and thought it would be easier to implement), the Opportunity Cost is $2 million. It’s the difference between the new product which is valued at $10 million and the partnership which is valued at $8 million. As long as you understand the implications of this decision and have sound reasons for why you’re doing it (speed to market, easier to implement), then there’s nothing wrong it.

Once Marketers learn how to apply the concept of Opportunity Cost, they’ll make more informed arguments both for and against projects, develop stronger business cases, and make better decisions when choosing between competing projects.

3) Critical Thinking – Philosophy

Speaking of persuasive arguments, it is hard to be persuasive if you can’t think through both sides of an issue. Your brain gets a major work-out doing just that in every Philosophy course (particularly in the Logic class that started this whole discussion).

Philosophy is the study of the big ideas like why do we exist, how do you truly know something, and what is right or wrong. It is known for its critical, reasoned, and systematic examination of these ideas. These are extremely difficult concepts to grasp and every issue has multiple, nuanced sides. It’s enough to start yelling matches and to make your head hurt. Wars are fought over these very ideas. Just as in business, there isn’t always one right answer.

But there is a way to get to the best available answer. Philosophy teaches you Critical Thinking skills:

• how to ask the tough questions designed to get at the heart of an issue,
• how to think through complicated issues with multiple shades of grey, and
• how to see things from multiple perspectives while recognizing that your biases can often cloud your viewpoint.

Armed with these skills, Marketers make better decisions regarding what types of customers to target, what types of products to launch, or what types or partnerships to pursue.

Final Thoughts

Understanding and applying Empathy, Opportunity Cost, and Critical Thinking are essential skills for Marketers. I learned these skills studying Sociology, Economics, and Philosophy. I use these skills more frequently as a Marketer than those I learned in business school. So the next time you see a BA instead of a BBA or an MA instead of an MBA on someone’s resume, don’t assume that the person with the business degree will add more value. Otherwise, you might be overlooking someone that could add a new perspective and significant value to your Marketing organization.

The book is very engaging and easy to read. But don’t let the simplicity fool you. It’s packed full of great ideas to make you a better communicator that gets results.

The premise of the book is that to be a successful communicator, you need to learn three habits:

1. Connect
2. Convey
3. Convince

You have to connect with your audience, so you can convey your message and convince them to act.

Recurring themes throughout the book are that “less is more,” you have to be “likeable,” and three is “the world’s most powerful number.” These simple ideas will take you a long way when applied properly. This book will show you how to do that and more.

Synopsis and Comments

Habit 1: Connecting – give your audience what they want and value up front so they’ll tune in. There are 3 strategies, each with multiple tactics provided to help you connect.

• Strategy 1: Stay In Their Moment – Be Fully Present
• Strategy 2: Frontload – First Things First
• Strategy 3: Goldilocks Candor – The Right Level of Candor Is Crucial to Stay Connected

A large part of this section deals with how to reach and work with difficult people. It’s full of tips that will prove very useful in product management as you try to sell your ideas internally and to get your projects implemented.

There are also great tips on how to read your audience and adjust your presentation accordingly which is very useful in business development.

My favorite tip – you have to know your recipient’s preferred method of communication (PMOC). Use their PMOC, instead of yours, and you’ll increase your chances of getting a response. If you don’t know their PMOC, just ask. Then put it in their contact file and always use this method as your default means of communicating with them. This is especially useful in business development.

Habit 2: Conveying – manage information by using portion control to get your point across with clarity. The chapter starts off with 10 signs you might be a weak conveyor and tips on how to address the problem. Next up are the 3 strategies, each with multiple tactics provided to help you convey.

• Strategy 1: The Eyes Trump the Ears – Use the Dominant Sense
• Strategy 2: Talk in Triplets – Tap into the Trilogy
• Strategy 3: Tell Stories – Gain Longer Shelf Life

A great visual example of strategy 1 is the contrast used in before and after pictures by weight-loss companies. Here’s an example from the book:

Strategy 2 is another of my favorite tips – the concept of triplets. The brain is wired to think in 3s. Examples include:

• “Stop, drop, and roll”
• “Stop, look, and listen”
• “The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”
• “Hop, skip, and a jump”
• “Blah, blah, blah”
• “Yada, yada, yada”
• And my own addition: “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” from the three wise monkeys.

Things just flow better in 3s. Try it.

One of the tactics for using triplets is to “preload three choices.” Start with the most important item first, the second most important item last, and the third most important item in the middle.

Alliteration is also recommended when telling stories – think Dr. Seuss.

Telling stories is the hardest thing for me to do. But the author gives some nice tips. If you can tell a story about how your product can solve a problem, show some visual examples, rattle off the benefits in triplets, and use some alliteration, then you should have a very powerful and memorable value proposition.

Habit 3: Convincing – use to create commitment and influence decisions, actions, and results. The chapter starts off with 10 signs you might be a weak convincer and tips on how to address the problem. It then follows with the 3 strategies, along with their tactics for helping you to convince your audience:

• Strategy 1: Sound Decisive – Stop Babbling and Backpedaling
• Strategy 2: Transfer Ownership – Create Commitment, Not Compliance
• Strategy 3: Adjust Your Energy – Start Attracting, Stop Repelling

Product Managers and Business Development Managers need to be able to convince their audience in order to sell their products and get the deal done. This chapter helps you to put it all together to do just that.

Strategy 1 – You have to sound decisive. “If you sound like a wimp, you’ll be treated like one.”  The author provides 9 signs that you might have a problem.

Here are some things not to say:

• “I’m not an expert, but…”
• “I could be wrong, but…”
• “I guess what I’m saying is…”
• “I kind of feel like…”
• “I’m only an assistant, but…”
• “I’m probably the only person who feels this way, but…”

For those of you that sit on your hands and bite your lips in meetings, “it’s crucial to contribute to meetings if you want to convince others to see your viewpoints and act on them.”

Bottom Line: If you ramble, waffle, or never speak up, no one is going to take you seriously.

Strategy 2 is a biggie – transferring ownership.

Transferring ownership means shifting your ideas and decisions to others so they will embrace them and act on them.

It’s the difference between others feeling actively involved in their destiny and, therefore, committed to it versus feeling forced to comply. Buy-in leads people to change behaviors, decisions, and actions…

People should feel as if they’re volunteering, not surrendering.

The lesson here is that you shouldn’t shove your ideas down everyone’s throats. Ask for opinions. Find a way to use some of those opinions. Share credit.

Strategy 3 is the hardest one for me to get a handle on. It focuses on your voice, your face, and your body language. Most people don’t pay enough attention to how these things influence people’s opinion of you.

This section is full of great tips. Here are my favorites:

• Record yourself to see how you sound. Likewise, video yourself to see how you look (watch it with the sound off).
• Use shorter sentences.
• Emphasize action verbs.
• Use pauses for emphasis.
• Don’t suck in your stomach. Breathe deeply from the diaphragm. This will help to calm you down and make your voice sound lower.
• Maintain eye contact, but try looking at just one eye and then switch to the other eye.
• Keep your lower body still.
• Use the power stance – “When standing, keep your feet about shoulder-width apart. Soften the knees a tad. This is the best position for the lower body to come across as relaxed but powerful.” Shift your weight from one hip to the other to mix it up a bit.

Remember: connect, convey, convice.

I’ve only scratched the surface of all the great stuff that’s in this book. I highly recommend it to anyone in product management or business development looking for an edge to better sell your ideas, your products, or your proposals.

But I’ve always thought that Machiavelli had a lot to say that’s relevant to start-ups, product management, new product development, and partnership/business development. Here are some of my favorite quotes:

This note, however, is not about the fact that episodes of ’’It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’’ were taken down. Rather, this note is to communicate to our users that we screwed up royally with regards to how we handled this specific content removal and to apologize for our lack of strong execution. We gave effectively no notice to our users that these ’’Sunny’’ episodes would be coming off the service. We handled this in precisely the opposite way that we should have. We believe that our users deserve the decency of a reasonable warning before content is taken down from the Hulu service. Please accept our apologies.

Given the very reasonable user feedback that we have received on this topic (we read every twitter, email and post), we have just re-posted all of the episodes that we had previously removed. I’d like to point out to our users that the content owner in this case – FX Networks – was very quick to say yes to our request to give users reasonable advance notice here, despite the fact that it was the Hulu team that dropped the ball…

Well done.

A former co-worker at Verizon who was new to the group once asked me what it takes to learn how to be in Partnership Development. At the time I didn’t really have an answer. It had seemingly just happened for me. But after much reflection, it didn’t just happen for me. In addition to some basic skills, I had a lot of help along the way. Here’s what I think it takes to be effective at Partnership Development (and Product Management):

1. Vision – ability to see the future and visualize possibilities
2. Persuasion – ability to sell this vision to your management and your potential partner
3. Negotiation/Contracts – patience and attention to detail necessary to grind out an agreement, the requirements/specifications necessary to implement it, and the perseverance to manage the partnership (product) once launched
4. Leadership – ability to inspire members of cross-functional teams and get them to share your vision in order to develop and launch the partnership (product)
5. Communication and Organization – ability to keep everyone on the same page and up to date

All of this starts with a mentor to help you master these skills.

Vision and Persuasion
My former boss Shane taught me how to see the big picture and to sell that vision as we cranked out a multi-stage e-commerce strategy for a wholesale distribution company taking the company from a crude web site, to a polished online catalog, along with e-commerce and customer support applications that were back-office enabled. He was a great mentor and a friend.

Negotiation/Contracts
My former boss Patricia mentored me on the intricacies of negotiations, term sheets, and the contract process leading to a handful of multi-million dollar deals and dozens of smaller deals. It takes patience, perseverance, and creativity. She too was a great mentor and a great friend. She created the Partnership Development executive in me.

The attorneys I worked with (Allison, Cody, and Mark) were very gentle with me and helped me through the contract process. I still consider them friends today.

Together, all of these kind people helped me to understand the value of and how to get to a win-win-win partnership (both companies win, along with the customer).

Leadership
My former boss Kendall taught me how to survive in a matrixed organization with the result being the successful launch of over a dozen new features in a 3-month window for an online trade show startup. She was very good to me. A great mentor and a friend. She’s the one that pushed me into a larger organization to beef up my Product Management skills.

My former boss Karl taught me how to lead large cross-functional teams. He was a great mentor and a great friend. He created the Product Manager in me and helped me develop the confidence to try new things resulting in multiple successful product trials and the launch of millions of dollars worth of new products.

The Communication and Organization skills seem to come from practice. Lots and lots of practice.

If there is a theme in this story it’s that you need people to help you on your way towards developing the skills of your profession. I was very lucky to have had some great bosses/mentors/friends along the way to help me grow into my Partnership Development and Product Management roles. Thank you.

I look forward to passing these skills on as I advance in my career.

If a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing badly first. In the real world, doing something new almost always means doing it poorly the first few times. Improvising never produces a polished result, but it’s nearly always the first step towards creating something new and worthwhile. To do something new, you have to make a conscious decision to let yourself try things that you know you can’t do. That’s practicing “Conscious Incompetence.”

It served as a much needed reminder of how I learned what I know. There was lots of trial and error along the way. I highly recommend this post for those who’ve gotten really good at what they do and seldom venture outside of that area of expertise.