Meaningful Conversation?

How do you know if you are delivering meaningful conversation?

I’m asking you to consider the big picture in deciding if you are engaged in marketing or meaning-making?

I was reading Lois Kelly’s, Beyond Buzz this weekend. We made the book pilgrimage to the Portland landmark, Powell’s Bookstore where Beyond Buzz by Lois Kelly found me.

It’s not buzz or more information that people want; it’s meaning.

I have been engaged in the profession of sales & marketing since 1994.

Of this I’m certain… I have not been engaged in the profession of meaning-making since 1994.

Meaning helps us make sense of information.

Meaning making helps us make sense of an idea, concept, or product, showing us how it relates to what we already know and believe.

Take our consulting project with Blue Cross-Blue Shield. Lois Kelly mentions the challenge we faced in her book:

Consider the 2006 Medicare Drug Plan, the biggest expansion of Medicare since the health care program began. Information explaining the new prescription drug benefits for senior citizens is so complex and confusing that nearly 80 percent of people eligible for the benefit said they don’t know whether or no they will sign up.

We were hired to equip Blue Cross-Blue Shield to prepare employees to clearly explain Medicare options to people turning 65 and becoming eligible for Medicare.

We met with men and women who were turning 65 to people in their 80′s. We also worked with Blue Cross leadership, front-line employees, clergy, nursing homes, pharmacy owners, and state agencies.

Everyone, including Blue Cross-Blue Shield, were confused about the complex Medicare options.

Here is a picture of me traveling across a state meeting with senior-citizens living in an assisted facility center. The gentlemen somewhat smiled in the picture, but he was confused and frustrated over his options. The Blue Cross-Blue Shield representatives were frustrated as well because they could not legally tell the people who reminded them of their Grandmother or Grandfather “what to do?.”

Can you even imagine for a moment the emotion we felt when seated on a piano bench in a small senior-citizen activity center where many of these fine people we were asking for advice were drinking stale coffee and focused on coloring between the lines in their favorite donated coloring book?

"What do I do now?"

What about you and your own “Blue Cross-Blue Shield” project?

Next time you need to create meaning with your idea, product, or service, try these ingredients for success.

Here are 4 + 1 meaning-making ingredients from the book:

• Relevancy. Relevancy is the function of the brain to make a connection of how something applies to us. In my example of our Blue Cross-Blue Shield consulting project, we made the Medicare options relevant by reminding people turning 65 to open up their mail, turn-on the TV, and pick-up a prescription at their home town pharmacy. Their drug rates were were going up, their coverage options were going down, & they thought once they turned 65 that health care would be covered with little or no charge.
  
• Context. Context applies to how your idea will be meaningful only if it relates to your listener’s experience. For example, car makers talking about hybrid vehicles in the context of being less dependent on gas and being better stewards of the environment.
• Pattern Making. The book, Beyond Buzz points out, marketing anything requires explaining ideas within people’s existing frames of reference-that is, in a context they already understand. Pattern making is when you connect the dots within a larger frame for people. An example is Best Practices or How to pieces. Take a look at some of the best-selling self-help books to prove this point: 1,000 Places to See Before You Die; The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People; and The 48 Laws of Power.
  
• Emotion. Our strongest emotion is love. Figure out how you can share your points of view that are not just rational facts, but ideas that provoke emotionally charged conversation. An example is a personal or third-person story.
• My + 1 is Format. One of the keys to delivering the right meaningful message to the right people in the right way (the way they want to receive) is format. When should you deliver a meaningful message by text, audio, or video? When you are selling something, you should incorporate the most intimate format available to you. That could be the most intimate such as in-person or a video. If you are educating, you can choose a less intimate and more time-shifted format such as text & audio.

What are your meaning-making ingredients for your business?

Comment below…