In our last post, we covered the root causes of weak promises from fintech vendors to their buyers. Further, those promises are usually expressed via messaging that is not compelling.
This post will discuss the way buyers consume messages, and a methodology for constructing promises and messages that are urgent and compelling for the buyer, including some examples.
Engaged Listening / Reading
KGA’s best practices center on a few principles about engaging the target listener/reader. Listeners:
- Invest a very short period of time, say 10 seconds, to decide whether to invest another minute, and so on
- Cannot consume more than a short-list of points, say 3
- Listen most-closely to the words that directly relate to what keeps them awake at night
- Pay attention to content that is provocative and specific
- Need to hear the same message several times to translate to their context.
Messaging Style
The goal of a vendor’s promise and messaging is simply to compel the listener/reader to want to know more, with urgency. It is NOT to try and close a deal in one step.
Stylistically, the vendor’s promise and messaging must be:
- What the target listener wants to hear, not what the vendor wants to say
- Bold, including the promise of a specific benefit the buyer has not heard before, with the credibility to deliver
- Structured like a dialogue, not a monologue (even in print).
Messaging Structure
The content can be developed using a structure like the following. It can then be converted to context-specific forms (e.g., spoken vs. short-form-written vs. long-form).
The promise is the 10-second attention grabber and should be structured like:
“if you buy our solution, you will be better-off because…”
- Addresses buyer’s need #1
- Addresses buyer’s need #2, if required
- Addresses buyer’s need #3, if required
Example promises might be:
“Our BaaS solution will enable you to control your new Banking-as-a-Service product, generate fee income, and minimize the upfront investment via outsourcing.”
Or
“We make revenue growth easier and profitable by delivering outcomes that are buyer-centric, scalable, and executable.”
The goal of the promise is to have the listener/reader respond to the promise with something like “…well I’m intrigued by [one of the sub-promises], what do you mean by that?” Each of the (up to) 3 elements of the promise then gets up to 3 explanatory points, but only in response to whatever is intriguing to the listener/reader. Continuing with the first example promise, above:
“what we mean by that promise is…”
- Control your new Banking-as-a-Service product
- Adjust to emerging regulatory guidelines for BaaS
- Overcome the limitations of technical debt
- Invest at the optimal pace for this emerging FI opportunity
- Generate fee income
- etc
- Minimize the upfront investment via outsourcing
- etc
- Control your new Banking-as-a-Service product
The dialogue, whether spoken or read, continues to become more specific based on the buyer’s interest in learning more. Eventually it shifts to how what they have learned applies to them. At that point, the real conversation starts!
Clear Promise & Messages: Another Critical Benefit
One more benefit of a well-crafted promise: it provides a north-star to every employee who needs to know what to do more-of and less-of every day!
