Grant Leboff: One of the things that is interested in your book, is you talk about the importance of a prologue. I'm not sure if anybody's, maybe, heard that language before in sales. So what do you mean about the prologue?
Nicola Cook: Well, we used to talk about having an elevator pitch, a ten second sell. The idea being that you walked in an elevator, your ideal prospect walks in next to you and you had 10 seconds to say something to them. I think that's a bit old hat now, it feels a bit dated, but you definitely need to have some kind of engagement statement that you can say.
I call it a punchy prologue. And the way that I liken it to is; it's a bit like seeing a trailer for a good film. When you see a trailer at the cinema or on telly or whatever, they give you the highlights and they give you a sense of what you can feel when you watch that film, but the don't give away the twist at the end. They don't give away the whole story. And that's really what you need to do, you need to find a way to explain in a short, punchy, way what the potential value is, so when someone asks you this question they literally, physically, lean in and go, hmmm, so how do you do that?
That 'lean in' these days, could be anything from responding to an email or connecting with somebody on Linkedin, because of course, these days, we do less face to face selling and a lot more of that initial engagement is done online. But the philosophy is still the same. It's creating an opening for the client to ask the question 'how?' as opposed to you standing there and telling them; I'm this, we do that, we're the best, we're award winning, Blah Blah Blah...
I say there are four things to developing a punchy prologue, but one of them is about being distinctive. My challenge to people is to find a way to describe the value of what you do, in a way that's never been done before. It disrupts the pattern of what people have heard before, so that it makes them open a question in their mind and they go, 'Ooh, that sounds a bit interesting, so how does that work?'
Then that is the first start of a conversation, whether you can tell them a little bit about it, but then more importantly engage them into some questions and you can start your qualification process from then on in. As opposed to being that person that you stand there and go 'we're this, we're, that, we're amazing, we do this... and you see the 'deer in headlights' stare come across them and they just kind of go 'hmmm'... and then walk away or don't respond to you.
So it's finding a way to say what you do that offers value in that first short, punchy prologue, just like a trailer would for a film that engages people and say it in a way that they've never heard before.
Grant Leboff: For someone who is watching this right now, it makes a lot of sense... but I don't know how to do it. How do they start? Where is their starting point to try and get to this prologue?
Nicola Cook: There are two ways that I would suggest that you can think about this. The first one is, work with your team. Get a flip chart up there and brainstorm what is the value that we offer? Not what is it we do, but what does that actually give somebody?
You may be a training company, but what does that actually mean for the customer? You may offer marketing services, but what does that actually do for the customer? You could offer a product or service, you might sell telephony or mobile phones or Internet, but what does that actually give the customer? See if there's some language that you can play around with and start to formulate that into some statements.
The second thing that actually really worked for us as a company was to talk to your customers and if you ever do a customer survey or you have a forum and you invite people in, literally ask them to answer the question; how would you describe us? We asked that question of our customers and someone actually wrote in a survey back to us and the words they used were: 'a kick-ass sales acceleration agency.'
I was like, wow! that's really interesting. Nobody's ever described us like that before and nobody in our sector describes themselves in that way before. So if we added some value onto that, which is that we are the UK's leading sales acceleration agency, that enables businesses to create 'accelerated growth'... It's the 'accelerated growth' bit that the prospect would really hear and go, hmm, how does that work? What does 'sales acceleration agency' mean? It's not language that people have heard before, so it disrupts that pattern, as opposed to the standard answer to somebody like us, which is: 'we're a sales training company', or 'we're management consultants'. People have heard that over and over and over again, and it offers no value.
Grant Leboff: So you talk about disruption. How does someone draw that fine line between coming up with something that's inventive and interesting... but then, of course, the other danger is, if someone doesn't know what you mean at all, they just glaze over... because they don't understand. You want to make it easy for people, so where's that line for people?
Nicola Cook: My best advice is try it. Go to somewhere like an exhibition, maybe with two or three ideas in your head. In those kinds of environments you're always gonna make me meet people and they're going to say, so what is it you do? Or they're going to look at your name badge and go: so what's... ?Company Shortcuts? and then you say your punchy prologue at them and if you get the complete 'deer in headlights' stare and they just wander off, then you know you've missed the mark. But if they, if you get that 'lean in' and they go, 'hmmm' then something you've said is just lit a spark. It will take time and it takes practice and it evolves and you will work out what works and what doesn't work for you.
Ultimately the purpose of a punchy prologue is quite simple. It works when people engage with you. If you're face to face with them, they're leaning in the asking questions or if you're connecting with them socially or electronically, they're responding. It works when they go: 'so how does that work?'
As soon as they ask that question, what they're internally asking is, how could this work for me? And there's something that you've said there that has intrigued them enough that they want to know more. If they don't want to know any more than you've not engaged them.
