Collaboration is not a new concept— just one that is becoming increasingly inevitable if we are to survive, let alone thrive. As Charles Darwin observed, “In the long history of humankind … those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.”

But collaboration, as Morten Hansen emphasized in his book of the same name, only becomes worthwhile when two or more people adopt a way to work together that generates more value for them than they could achieve by working alone. The greatest keys to productive collaboration are having the right players, an apt collaboration method, and a strongly felt common benefit in collaborating and/or agreed-upon rules of engagement.

From first-hand experience and helping hundreds of groups collaborate, I’ve learned that one vital rule to collaborating is establishing conditions under which an individual or organization can be kicked out of the collaboration. As Robert Axelrod noted, “Groups need both carrot- and stick-based rules to remain stable.” An agreed-upon mix of boundaries and boundless possibilities tends to bring out the better side in participants and support productive work.

Because it’s easier than ever in our connected world to find the right partners, good (and bad) things spread faster and from more places. An upside example is the strength of small special interest groups within Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church. Active groups strengthen relationships, build loyalty and enable the overarching organization to be in closer touch with what the community knows and the changes sought by its members.

Collaboration also spurs people to become more active after experiencing the use of their best talents around others. This effect also brings out their best temperament. We may exist as a community, yet we achieve as teams. As social animals, we thrive on feeling our collective strengths in action around projects that are meaningful for us. After a few positive interactions, our trust in the smaller and larger group grows, as does our sense of belonging. We are better able to talk through conflicts and overlook others’ irritating behaviors because of our desire to stay affiliated.

Ironically, the more we feel attached to a group, the more likely we are to take extreme stands on behalf of it. That’s how tightly knit groups become more extreme over time, as two books— Going to Extremes and The Big Sort— point out.

To avoid this downside, savvy organizations arrange their affairs so that small groups, chapters or other subsets can regularly interact with people outside their unit. This allows them to bring fresh perspectives back to their group and form relationships outside of it. As Steven Johnson wrote, “We need to play each other’s instruments.”

Of course, self-organized small groups within a larger organization are just one of many specific collaboration methods that you and I have come across. Others I’ve found useful include co-creation, cross-promotion, mutual mentoring, crowdsourcing and minicharettes. I’ve written about several of them at my blog, Moving From Me to We. I’d welcome hearing about your favorite methods, collaborative behaviors, rules of engagement and success stories.

This article was first published in: Information Outlook, the magazine of the special libraries assocation.

Many conferences involve a theme, reinforced through a logo, theme, events, and speakers to create an overall “feel” and value throughout the convention. Why not further reinforce your meeting content and mood by enveloping attendees in planned sequences of memorable moments that involve sensory combinations of smells, tastes, sounds, sights, and even “touchable” experiences?

Few meetings can compete with the sizzle of a modern amusement park or an action movie, yet meeting planners and hotel and other site managers can multiply the number of positive exposures attendees experience and thus increase the possibility that those attendees will rave about their meeting.

Conduct a Sensory Exposures Audit

To make the most of the event, conduct a “Sensory Exposures Audit” of all the images to which your attendees will be exposed, from the pre-meeting mailings and other contacts through the meeting itself and post-meeting reinforcements. Just as political campaigns have “advance agents” who walk through every step of an event ahead of time to consider all that might go right or wrong (from slippery steps to photo-opportunity backdrops), you can mentally visualize each “vignette” attendees might experience.

Ask hotel and convention center staff for photos of the actual colors and patterns most frequently used in their sleeping, eating, meeting, and gathering spaces, and take notes on the combinations during your site visit so your theme colors and images are compatible and even complementary.

Ask the staff where you’re going to find the most conflicting and comforting background sounds from piped-in music, other meetings, mechanical operations, catering procedures, or beyond-the-facility noises.

Where do the smells go from the cooking and catering areas?

Are the walkways carpeted?

Is the carpet plush or thin?

Is the facility signage large and easy to understand?

What do the chairs feel like?

Are there many comfortable places to relax and converse between organized activities?

Is there much access to natural light (to elevate attendees’ moods) during daytime activities?

In short, consider the impact attendees might experience on all the senses.

Drive and walk through the major and minor “paths” your attendees will use from the time they leave an airport (if they use one) to the time they arrive back at the airport. Observe what sensory delights attendees might receive before they go or upon their return.

Storyboard the Meeting Experience

Borrow a storyboarding trick from TV advertisement creators. Write out the meeting “story” as a three-part series of sequences or “exposures” attendees will experience: pre-meeting, meeting, and post-meeting.

For each “exposure” that the attendee will experience:

1. Write a brief description of the exposure in chronological sequence, as the attendee is most likely to experience it, down pages of paper in one of three columns: positive, negative, and neutral (exposures).

Describe how the exposure is most likely to be experienced. For example:

* Positive: Candid photos taken as attendees enter the opening-night mixer, placed in pressed-board white frames inscribed with the meeting theme and hung on fish line in the buffet breakfast room the next day for their take-away souvenir.

* Negative: Inevitably long treks between certain meeting rooms.

* Mostly neutral: Conventionally decorated hotel rooms.

2. Then write out what the potential attendee will see, hear, smell, taste, and/or touch. How many of the senses can you include in each exposure to make it more positively memorable?

Try creating more “low-tech” sensory experiences, such as more human touch. Increase the number of times an attendee is greeted by name or a handshake. Two studies were done in 1996 and 2002 in which two groups experienced the same public event, with the only difference that people in one group were safely touched (for example, shaking hands, touch on the top of the hand) just twice in a three-hour period.

The so-called “touched group” described the people sponsoring the event as more intelligent, caring, and good-looking than did the other group.

Try higher-tech sensory moments, such as scenting a general session in keeping with the speaker and convention theme, gradually changing the scent three times — from lemon to lime to suntan lotion — during the course of the 40-minute, midwinter, pre-lunch keynote speech. Lightly scent the handouts to match. Technology now makes it possible to scent to refresh, relax, or renew — without allergic reactions.

You’ll begin to see your meeting as a theatrical production, considering the attendees’ every waking moment. The possible payoffs? You’ll find ways to move more of the exposures to the positive side, often not through more costs but through changes in planning.

Inflame Their Imaginations

For a “negative” exposure such as a long, boring walk between meeting rooms, you could “Burma Shave” the build-up of interest and excitement in the trek with a sequence of messages on stands or on the walls, like the old highway signs of rhyming phrases car passengers passed on long stretches of road. The messages could build suspense toward the identity of award recipients, an entertainment event with a surprise guest, a contest they can win with the right answer for a vendor, or a trivia contest that encourages attendees and exhibitors to talk.

Messages could also be placed in sequence around corners and on the way into meeting rooms, some with cryptic instructions to look under their chairs for more.

Related messages can also appear on the backs of meeting leaders at the podium, who turn for attendees to read them, followed by some of the waiters who appear to serve each other “back” messages. Other messages and clues and teasers might appear under attendees’ hotel room doors while they sleep, next to their plates at lunch, or on the seminar handout on their seats.

Prior to the meeting you might send a “Burma Shave” series of postcards (sending them with increasing frequency as the event approaches) offering more reasons to attend and to sign up early. For example, the first postcards for a midwinter meeting in a sunny locale might be a series with images of blue water and yellow sun, messages to come prepared for warm sun and sizzling topics, and scented with coconut suntan lotion.

Send companion messages via email, directing attendees to your web site for a convention preview and contest.

Use the Suspense-Building Tricks of Blockbuster Movies

As in a blockbuster movie, the most important exposures are the “opening scene,” the handling of potentially slow times, the climax, and the ending. Many meetings have a slow, unexciting beginning (hotel check-in, meeting registration, dead time before the first meeting).

Make Attendees Feel Coddled and Cared For from the First Moments of Their Arrival

Consider having a team of people greet arrivals at the hotel door(s), perhaps in costume and certainly giving them a welcoming gift. Make the gift fun to see, touch, and taste. Have a second gift waiting for them in their room, perhaps a contest announcement. The more cared for attendees feel up front, the more they will perceive subsequent meeting experiences in a positive light, want to participate, and forgive later mishaps.

“Move” to Emotion and Playtimes

In all waiting times, from registration to coffee areas, plan amusements that catch the eye or that people can hold or play with or hear. For example, have modern clowns or ventriloquists or magicians roam the gathering areas around registration areas to build movement, excitement, and involvement. Or mimes might follow and imitate attendees in gentle fun, perhaps giving mementos provided by exhibitors that make them eligible for a drawing if they visit the booths.

Let Them Literally “Picture” Themselves Having Fun

Create ways to get attendees involved and interested soon after they arrive. The best ways are to get them in motion and to let them see motion around them, because motion literally increases the emotion people feel. Here are some examples:

1. A videographer can capture attendees’ responses to the interactions for later use in a continuous-feed loop shown on TV monitors at eye-level in gathering places between meeting rooms.

2. The videographer can interview people for their opinion on a meeting topic and/or comments on a favorite co-attendee. Let the resultant video run as a continuous-feed loop on eye-level TV monitors for future waiting times.

3. Several photographers with digital cameras can photograph groups and individuals and use the images in a variety of ways. For example, they could show the images on screens before and after proceedings start in meeting room or enlarge and print the images as posters to laminate and display in hallways and waiting areas.

Eavesdropping on Conversations Along the Way

In advance of the meeting, ask your leaders to informally discuss topics that will interest attendees, such as achievements, humorous incidents and other news about attendees. These taped segments can be used as “overheard conversations” for attendees on portable audiotape and CD machines. Obviously the security of needed equipment is a consideration, so you’ll want to place equipment where staff or volunteers can see it. Consider the registration area or inside the doors people enter for banquets.

The “sounds” can be music, related to the meeting theme, or sound bites of attendees who have been interviewed about their advice or praise for their peers, or an “Eavesdrop”: lively conversation between meeting leaders about the meeting high points. Change the tapes sometimes so attendees can look forward to new experiences.

Sweet Smell of Success

At an association conference designed to strengthen member unity and celebrate success, our theme was “Success is Sweet.” Here is how it goes:

When participants enter the opening evening’s “Five Heavenly Chocolates” mixer in a ballroom, they are enveloped in the enticing, wafting scent of chocolate from the AromaSys-designed scent machines. As they arrive, they are given scented “player cards” with the name and “stats” of a person’s accomplishments, printed in brown ink in the format of a baseball card, and invited to find the person who matches the accomplishments. Huge enlargements of the cards are projected on the walls and constantly changing.

When attendees find their person, they can return to get a new card for a different person. The ten people who find the most matches win chocolate player-card prizes and chocolate “MVP” statues later in the evening. People can use roving mikes to ask for help in finding their person. As attendees mingle, a singer’s song list naturally features chocolate and athletic themes.

Continue the Story Through the Meeting

At breakfast the next day, all attendees receive two forms: one to fill out their own MVP player accomplishments and another to fill out for a colleague they admire, who is attending the convention. All attendees who fill out forms are eligible to have their photo taken for their own two-sided MVP player card, enlarged to poster size. The poster of the attendee who is most written up by his or her colleagues is blown up to wall size and mounted on a wall the last day of the convention, when the person’s name is announced with game music in the background and a rally squad dancing to celebrate.

Make Memories Palpable in a “High Touch and “High Tech” Way

Before the convention even starts, lay out a post-meeting newsletter filled with comments the speakers will offer, awards announcements, and news of important dates. Include actions such as signing up for the next meeting or volunteering for a committee.

Leave places for photos and attendee comments you gather during the convention. Place them in the holes left in the newsletter, and then quick-copy and label the newsletter on the last day of the convention so attendees receive this unexpected “Meeting Memento” very soon after returning home. Send an email version of the newsletter, too, with a “Thank you for participating” message.

Make Meeting Memory Reminders, Sent Home

A week later, send a gift pack of gifts provided by some exhibitors, along with their product offers, and your message, again thanking attendees and reminding them of the calls for action on their part. Few meetings include immediate follow-up to attendees. Fewer still follow up more than once, soon after a meeting. Stand out in their senses and their minds, so they’ll step forward for your next meeting.

Discover more ways to accomplish greater things with others at the blogs:

How We Partner

Moving From Me to We

Say it Better

First, consider these points:

1. Are exhibiting companies giving their prospects what they most need to know to close a sale?

2. Exactly how can exhibit staff help attendees make an informed choice and act sooner?

3. How many steps do even “warm” buyers take to complete the sale, from signing to delivery through possible training on the use of the product?

4. Can exhibitors not only take steps to make buyers happy with their decisions but also to be heroes among their colleagues so they will tell others and buy again?

Don’t bury the key reason to buy.

After walking through over 300 trade shows prior to speaking to exhibitors, I’ve discovered that the exhibitors’ message is rarely the key headline prospective buyers most need to know. That essential message is the main differentiating benefit between an exhibitor’s product or service and that of the top two or three alternative vendors, as the prospect most probably views their options.

Instead, exhibits and promotional materials usually give more prominence to the name of the product and/or the company.

Attendees rarely see or hear about an exhibitor’s main benefit first.

Benefits rarely “jump out” at attendees from the booth or collateral messages or the staff’s explanation. Thus, exhibitors inadvertently hide their biggest benefit.

In most cases, features (how a product is constructed or its “capacity” or how it is operated) are still promoted more heavily than benefits (what the product does for the customer). This is not customer-centered, thoughtful marketing. The prospect has to do more work to make a fair comparison.

Exhibitors can offer succinct, specific, and easy-to-follow comparison sheets that do not insult the competition. One comparison sheet might “headline” the major benefits. Other back-up sheets can provide more detailed comparisons. Put a “human face” on the facts by providing customers’ situational examples to illustrate the benefits.

Plus, staff often attempt to build traffic to their booth with contests, drawings, or giveaway gadgets that don’t relate to their main, differentiating benefit or even their product, so they don’t get closer to their hottest prospects.

Further, staff’s icebreaker comments are often general and not relevant to the reason to buy (“Having a good time?” “Want a free..?”).

Unfortunately, those who staff an exhibit seldom get to be involved in the design of their exhibit or promotional materials _- or even what they wear. They must accept the setting in which they sell, attempting to engage prospects as they pass with involving comments that state the main benefits verbally to attendees in a brief, involving way to pull them in rather than turn them off.

When companies don’t make their main benefit easy to see and hear quickly, attendees must be deeply motivated to look and ask for the essential information they want.

Credible benefit statements increase the chances for a sale. A credible brand name then reinforces the reason to buy, not the other way around. Good benefit statements are vivid and specific examples, facts, and comparisons. Passersby are in one of three buying modes:

1. Seeking information to buy a certain kind of product for the first time and trying to select the best product

2. Considering changing vendors if they find a better product

3. “Trolling”:
a. not buying now but seeing what is new for future reference
b. or without the budget or need and will never buy

Serious buyers most want to see and hear information regarding:
a. the main reason to buy at all and, if they do buy,
b. the main reason they should buy from you over your closest competitors, as they see them.

 22 Ways to Attract Serious Buyers to Your Exhibit and to a Sale

1. Draft and memorize a one-to-two-sentence top “differentiating benefit” statement, relative to your two closest competitors and without denigrating the competition.

2. Start with the specific benefit rather than building up to it with general background, so the listener will listen sooner and longer. The specific detail (“Product with the fewest parts that need replacement”) proves the general benefit. The general statement (“We are the people who care”) is less credible and less memorable.

3. Multiply attendees’ positive exposures to your benefit in everything you say, display, point at, stand near, or offer.

4. Be able to reduce that benefit to its essence in one vivid phrase, motto, slogan, or sentence.

5. Make your phrase sufficiently interesting and brief so they feel they’re in charge. They’ll be more likely to stay and ask you enough questions so you can recognize their main interests, level of knowledge, hot buttons, and decision-making process.

6. Offer “real life” situational examples. Cite relevant and diverse customers’ experiences. Tell them what your customers actually said.

7. Give no more than three supportive benefits.

8. Express each supportive benefit like a headline, a “billboard message” of no more than five to eight words.

9. Use everyday, non-jargon, and non-industry-specific language, even if the attendees might know the jargon.

10. The most credible proof of your benefits are third-party endorsements of three diverse customers who have little else in common other than their adoration of your product and their similarity with your prospect.

11. Display a satisfied client’s quotes under each benefit on the booth and in promotional material — preferably each in a different color and type face. When endorsements relate to a specific situation, change, vivid contrast, or improvement, their words are most credible and will be most memorable.

12. Yes! Remove all graphics and words and materials in the booth that do not relate to either the main benefit and (not more than three) supportive benefits, so attendees will be able to take in the information within 12-15 seconds, their average pause-to-scan time in such conditions.

13. Display your main point and supportive points on the booth above the heads of the booth staff and attendees, so attendees’ views are not blocked.

14. Booth visuals and words should guide attendees’ eyes down a “path” from one message to the next.

15. Avoid opening references to weather, “Having fun?”, freebies, drawings, or other non-benefit-related topics that distract and dilute your relationship with your prospect.

16. Verbally and visually make a “Conference Offer”: more information; a time-limited or bundled product order price; consultation; or other vivid benefit to move them closer to a sale.

17. An attendee’s attention span is shortened if you wear patterned or very detailed clothing or accessories (pin, necklace, tie, earrings) or other busy “body signage,” especially on the upper half of your body.

18. For those who know your product (and you know that they are familiar with it):

a. Hand the person a gift (preferably one that does not prominently display your company or product name), while asking them: “May I give you this small gift for taking the time to answer two questions for me?”

b. Then ask, “What do you like best about our product or (service)?” Whatever is said aloud is then believed more deeply by the speaker.

c. Be a complete and supportive listener as they explain. Give uninterrupted eye contact, nod, or offer other responsive gestures that are natural for you.

d. When they have finished, ask, “Tell me more about that.” As they elaborate, they move the topic closer to the top of their minds and they also become more:
- articulate and vivid.
- deeply convinced about the reasons they’ve stated for liking your product.

The result? You’ve moved them closer to being fervent and articulate fans. They are more likely to talk themselves closer to a sale and voluntarily tell others why they like your product.

19. When you first meet a prospect, find the quality in them you can most like and admire and keep it uppermost in your mind as you talk with them. You are more likely to bring out that aspect of their personality when they are around you and less likely to react to their behaviors that irritate or otherwise bother you.

20. When you stand opposite someone, you are more likely to literally oppose them. Instead, “sidle” whenever possible.

Men instinctively “sidle” when together, shaking hands and then standing more or less side by side. Women instinctively continue to face each other or a man. When standing side-by-side, people feel more comfortable with each other, themselves, and their surroundings. They listen sooner and longer and are more inclined to agree with each other.

21. Get people to remember what you say, even if they are not trying to.

•  People remember more and feel more intensely — for good and for bad — when they are in motion. Say your main points while you’re turning, shaking hands, demonstrating a product, or pointing to something, when a part of the booth is in motion, and/or while the visitor is reaching for something.

•  Things are most memorable when you’re both in motion. They are next most memorable when the other person is in motion even if you aren’t, third most memorable when you are in motion, and fourth most memorable when you are both watching something or someone in motion.

• The more dimensions of motion involved (up, down, left, right, forward, and back), the more memorable the experience. Ways to involve motion to reinforce memory include exhibit demonstrations, staff gestures and walking, video vignettes, and parts of the exhibit.

• Relate your benefits to their three core life experiences:

1. Family (theirs, yours, or a metaphorical family of services or products)

2. Where they work or have worked

3. Where they live or have lived.

22. First refer to one of their currently pressing interests (not your product).

Then refer to how you two share a common interest in the topic.

And then to how it relates to you and your product’s main benefit.

This method is called the “You-Us-Me” approach. Here’s an example:

   A. “I gather you are the expert in… “YOU”

   B. …and that by discussing this with you… “US”

   C. I’ll get more ideas about if and how our products can best serve people in your situation…. “ME”

23. To maintain rapport, use specific, emotion-laden language when stating the positive, and report the negative neutrally — “just the facts.”

24. Begin your comments with a direct response to the prospect’s last comment until they feel heard instead of working up to your response with other background information they might not want to hear. Characterize your benefits in direct response to:

• A specific, negative “hot button” or problem they’ve expressed, which you can make better or solve, or

• Some strong positive preference the prospect has just expressed.

Closing Tip: Familiarity Breeds Acceptance


Continuously nurture your best prospects, seeding in their minds your main and vividly stated differentiating benefit and providing ideas and help at “non-sales” times. Make every aspect of your behavior, booth, and promotional material repeat, reflect, and reinforce that benefit before, during, right after the conference, and later, again to your hottest prospects.

What’s the Biggest Single Change Most Exhibitors Can Make to Move Prospects Closer to a Sale?

Exhibiting companies can make their “main differentiating benefit” the most prominent message in everything that they display, give away, or ask their booth staffers to discuss.

Problem: Exhibiting companies rarely do this. In fact, the majority of the people who staff trade show booths are not involved in the design of the booth or the promotional materials that they give away at trade shows.

 Discover more ways to accomplish greater things with others at the blogs:

How We Partner

Moving From Me to We

Say it Better

And then she goes out of her way to prove it to you some more? Why? Because our biggest gut instinct is for survival. That primitive, instinctual reaction causes us to escalate in situations in which we are unhappy, or to withdraw and complain to others.

More negotiations break down over ego differences than over content differences.

Ironically, the person who has the most to teach you right now is the person you perceive to be the biggest jerk in your life. Understanding how you can have more positively powerful reactions to their difficult behavior will give you greater options around that person and others who also prove difficult. Consider that jerk your boot camp, from which you can graduate to living a less stressful and more satisfying life.

Don’t let somebody else determine your behavior. The sweetest revenge is a well-lived life.

Burning or building bridges

The sign of a positively powerful person is that she can often turn a situation around and bring out the jerk’s good side, even deepening the relationship in the process.

When you act to let someone self-correct and save face, instead of withdrawing to complain or escalating in defense and telling them to change, you can deepen that person’s trust and her loyalty to you. You can build unlikely allies and friends.

Unless someone feels safe with you, they will literally not be able to hear you, let alone respond. Get along by reading the other person’s  “operational manual” 
What causes people to like you and agree with you?

The two main predictors of someone’s behavior toward you are:

1. Their operating manual, which they are constantly showing you by their strongest reactions to others.

2. The manner in which they characterize the good and bad behaviors of others.

Learn where they put their most intense energy, attention and conversation: Their hot buttons or blind spots (what makes them angry or afraid), their points of pride (what makes them happy or confident).

You will find it more difficult to recognize these two areas in people for whom you already have strong negative or positive feelings. It’s easier to determine the areas in people you know less well or feel less strongly about. You can build a connection with someone when you either help them through times that bring up their hot buttons, or align with one of the parts of themselves they most like.

When someone feels good about himself when he is around you, he will instinctively see in you the qualities he most admires in others, some of which you may never demonstrate that you actually have.

He may also give you credit for things in which you’ve played only a minor role. He may go out of his way to help you, even putting your needs and interests ahead of his own.

If, on the other hand, he does not like the way he acts when he is around you, he will blame you for it, more than he is consciously aware.

He will see in you some of the qualities he does not like in others. He may not give you credit for your accomplishments.

He may instinctively undermine your work, even when such sabotage will also hurt him.

Here are tips to building genuinely good will and enduring relationships: Make them shine.

If people don’t like the way they are when they are around you, they will blame you for it, and not be aware they are doing so. They will sabotage projects on which you’re working, even to their own detriment. They will fail to give you credit and see qualities in you they don’t like in other people.

On the other hand, if people like the way they are when they are around you, they will see in you the qualities they like in other people (even if you don’t demonstrate you have them), give you generous credit, and go out of their way to help you.

Give up front. 
To show your commitment to reaching agreement, offer something up front, unasked.

Demonstrate consistent, visible good will

As a daily habit to all, not just to important contacts, remember people form first impressions in the first seven to twenty seconds, which take a significant emotional event to change.
You ask people to change. We may want to yet we instinctively don’t like to change even if we say we do..

People are most likely to change when:

• You are able to demonstrate how your request is an extension of their values, self-image, or prior actions.
• Or they may change when others they respect have already done something similar, not when you are asking them to do something new.

Ask the best question in the world

What’s the single most effective question you can ask?

Men: Whenever you ask any woman (co-worker, family member, vendor) this question, you will bring out her better side, and make life happier for you! Keep reading.

Deepen their commitment before you ask for support or a sale. The more time a person has spent on a project, prospective purchase, sale, or relationship, the less likely they are to withdraw.

Further, the more actions people take on behalf of a belief, the more intensely they will believe it.

To make your customers more articulate, loyal advocates who are more likely to praise your product to others, try these steps:

Ask what they like best about your product or service. As they answer, be a complete listener who leans into the conversation with full eye attention. Then thank them for their views and ask if you can share their thoughts with your co-workers to further improve your product. Could they write down their views in just a sentence or two?
Each step deepens their belief and helps them hone their argument. People are always more inclined to buy for their reasons, not yours. You’ve just helped them be more aware and committed to their reasons, thus more likely to suggest that others also buy.

Best all-round question you can ask to show respect: Can you tell me more about that?

Ask this versatile question when you want to strengthen, not fray a relationship. Use it in situations where you:

• Are spitting mad and need to cool down.

• Have a blank mind and want to re-group.

• Want to make that person more committed to what you two are discussing.

Discover more ways to accomplish greater things with others at the blogs:

How We Partner

Moving From Me to We

Say it Better

“See” the picture? Here’s the pity. As adults, we tend to lose our “picture-making” way of speaking. We forget to share the details that tell the unforgettable story. We’ve gradually lost our capacity to speak English like it tastes good, even when we desperately want people to remember what we are saying. Our conversations often begin with sweeping generalizations. To further numb people, we talk about “work” by using longer sentences, full of jargon that even colleagues won’t remember the way they’d remember everyday language wrapped around an example.

Unlike most children under the age of 12 or so, we adults offer qualifiers and chronology before we finally get to the delicious details that are most involving, credible, and evocative. By then, even well-intentioned listeners have taken several mental vacations. Think of the speeches, advertisements, and conversations you most remember. Did the words evoke some visual experience?

Let ideas roll around in your mouth like a good merlot. The specific detail proves the general conclusion. It’s also more credible and memorable. The generality fades quickly. For several years, many ad campaigns featured a group photo of “diverse” people, with some variation of this headline: “We Are the People Who Care.” Banks, insurance companies, hospitals, and other large institutions thus offered a generality that perpetuated their impersonal image instead of promising some specific service, guarantee, or customer story that proved how they were better than the competition.

Avoid gray generalities. Speak in Technicolor. Say less, better. Make your most important truths well-told — how you describe those who matter most to you, or your job, product, program, cause, or idea. Ironically, because you are so close to these topics, and you care and know so much about them, you are most likely to speak generally about them than you do about a recent, negative incident you’ve experienced. And, as Adlai Stevenson once said, “When you throw mud, you get dirty.”

Whoever most vividly characterizes a situation or person usually determines how others see it, discuss it, and decide on it. If your description is more interesting than another’s, even if that person has more money, smarts, or power to push his message, others are more likely to recall and repeat yours. Even those who disagree are likely to use your description as they talk about their disagreement. Think how influential you are when you thus speak English like it tastes good.

Become more memorable by saying it better next time in one or more of these specific ways:

• Before you speak, reverse the sequence of what you instinctively say, putting the example before the conclusion. Give the specific story, detail, vivid contrast, or client’s situation and how you solved it or an unexpected twist of detail that pulls listeners in.
• Speak or write to evoke a smile, or at least a pause. Evocative words deepen the listener’s memory and feeling for what you say. Such words can be heartwarming, quirky, poignant, humorous, inspiring, startling, and more.

Heart-warming: Isn’t “Doggie Care” a more emotional name for a dog-washing and kennel service than, say, “Canine Care”?

Quirky: I dedicated my second book this way, “To Thelton, without whose companionship this book would have been completed much earlier, but life wouldn’t have been nearly as sweet.”

Poignant: The first words of an inexpensive but highly successful radio public service announcement began with a man saying: “One in three women who are murdered in this state (pause) are murdered by their husbands.” He ended the two-sentence PSA with, “If you even think there’s a slight possibility that someone you know’s life is in danger, do what I didn’t do for my sister. Call this number…”

Humorous: My friend Paul Geffner’s chicken take-out restaurant in San Francisco was called “Poultry in Motion.” Montana cowboy friend Hank D. modestly accepted an award for heroism by saying simply, “The sun don’t shine on the same dog all the time. Thanks for this sunshine.”

• Use words from the real world. Which was easier to remember the first time you heard these company names: “Intel” or “Apple”?
• Use a metaphor from the common cultural experience of the people with whom you are talking. For example, columnist Albert Hunt wrote recently, when describing the winners and losers in Congress’s impeachment debate: “A man who touches more bases than the New York Yankees, Tom Daschle now has the solid support and confidence of the other forty-four Senate Democrats.”

Use these four techniques to get people to remember what you say, even when they did not try to:

1. Imagine that the brain is like a wall with clothes hooks on it. For the brain to catch and retain a detail, that detail must hang on one of the memory-inducing hooks that is already in the brain.

The biggest hooks are the three universally felt, core life experiences:

• Family
• Hometown or town where you have lived or are living
• Past or current kind of work

For family, relate what you’re saying to a family situation: yours, theirs, someone else’s, or even a metaphorical family of services. Or relate your topic to the listener’s work situation or work with which she is familiar. People also remember landmark places where they live, have lived, or have visited or simply well-known places. For example, our business is in Sausalito, which evokes pleasant by-the-bay memories for most who’ve visited here.

2. Motion makes memories.
Whenever people are moving or see movement, they remember more and are more emotional about what they remember. Get others in motion with you in a positive experience and they will be more fervent, vivid, and believing fans, more likely to evoke their bragging rights and likely to share their experience with others. That’s why we literally move to offer samples, getting people to reach out, so they feel the experience more deeply.

An experience is most memorable when you and the other person are both in motion, such as when you shake hands, walk together, or reach to exchange something. Pick those ripe moments to say the most vivid, specific detail you want the listener to remember and repeat to others. Times are next most memorable for the listener who is in motion even if you are not.

Ask the person to reach or turn for something while you’re saying your tasty tidbit to remember. The next most memorable movement is when you are in motion, even if your listener is not. A final valuable way to evoke a memory is for you both to watch motion from something or someone else.

Warning: Movement is a two-edged sword — it is never neutral. The listener who experiences something negative where motion is involved will also remember the experience longer and more intensely. As to a vibrating pole, we hold on sooner, longer, and more strongly to the negative incidents of life than to the positive, because the primitive triune part of our brain — wired to help us survive — causes us to respond to appearances of danger more strongly than to those of delight.

3. Speak first of the other person’s most current, pressing interest. Just as those in the market for new cars are most likely to hear car ads on the radio, all people listen sooner when you first speak about what is most on their mind at that moment. Sadly, in fewer than 5% of interactions when we want something from someone else do we first speak about what matters most to them. We are more likely to speak about our own interests first.

4. Speak in vivid, specific details that have a high emotional value for the listener. The good news? If you practice speaking first about the other person’s interests, then about what you share in common, and only then about how that commonality relates to your interests, four amazingly powerful changes occur in how that other person relates to you. The person listens sooner, listens longer, remembers more, and assumes you have a higher IQ than if you first speak about your own interests.

Discover more ways to accomplish greater things with others at the blogs:

How We Partner

Moving From Me to We

Say it Better

Together, they did what they could not have accomplished on their own. They offered a highly valued, emotionally-loaded, and media-attracting service AND increased foot traffic into their stores and offices: “I Am Loved” free immunizations for kids on Saturdays just before school started.

Pediatricians gave immunization shots at convenient times in a roomy, cheerful children’s store with a party atmosphere, where the kids were the center of attention. Parents heard about the offer through all the participating outlets and received free snack coupons after the kids received their shots so they could reward their children with a snack from a nearby store. Partners could provide better, more news-catching service at less cost and inspire greater community and customer loyalty — while spending less.

This is not an isolated incident

Here’s another success story. On a recent Valentine’s Day, several neighborhood businesses — including a women’s medical clinic, florist, health food store, clothing boutique, shopper newspaper, museum store, gym, bookstore, and beauty salon — joined forces for a month-long promotion to attract and serve women. The bookstore hosted a series of “Beauty Inside Out” in-store demonstrations and mini-seminars, each led by a manager of one of the participating businesses and highlighting a book collection and the local partners’ related products and services.

Each presenter offered a handout that also included reference to at least one of the other cross-promoting organizations, plus a joint offer of services with one of them. Each presenter wrote a guest column based on their presentation, which was featured in the shopper newspaper, with the author’s follow-up offer and email noted at the bottom of the article. Of course each column author quoted others in this mutually beneficial alliance.

What’s the lesson here?

You don’t have to work alone when you attempt to market your products, services, or cause. It is not as much fun nor as credible or efficient. Regardless of the size or kind of business (or nonprofit or government agency) you operate, you can grow it faster, not through “solo” networking, advertising, or other promotional efforts, but through cross-promotion with others.

Look for other successful, non-competing businesses, clubs, and government agencies that also serve your kind of client. Propose ways you can improve how you contact or service your “mutual market” together.

Instead of solo advertising, the Valentine’s Day group joined forces to offer a combined service that naturally pulled their customers in. The partners’ keys to success were a common market, non-competing products or services, shared values, and comparably valuable resources to contribute to the cross-promotion. Partners created a “passion bond” relationship with each other, their customers, and many others who didn’t even need shots but were motivated to try the partners’ services anyway.

All kinds and sizes of organizations are enthusiastically adopting this outreach approach. Cross-promotional marketing is a growing trend because it is perhaps the least expensive, most efficient, least time-consuming, and most-credible method for growing an organization. Simply put, cross-promotional marketing is the act of strategically aligning businesses that target the same market but do not directly compete with each other.

Cross-promoting provides a growth opportunity for any organization, from the home-based, to the public sector, corporate, or franchise operation.

Another Easy Example

A dry cleaner attached a lucite box to the front of the cash register to hold coupons worth $3 off the customers’ next tank of gas at a nearby gas station / convenience store. The convenience store operator placed a similar box, displaying coupons worth $3 off the customer’s next dry cleaning. That proved so successful that they recruited more partners and offered customers additional value: coupons from their cross-promoting at a nearby hardware store, beauty salon, fitness gym, and shoe repair shop.

The Profitable Results?

Their partnering businesses’ coupons build loyalty from their existing customers. They can appear where their competition isn’t even in sight. And they don’t have to pay for the position — they trade for it. Nothing beats the credibility of another business touting your product’s differentiating benefit. Partners reach more prospective customers at a lower cost. Prospects are introduced to each business in a powerful way — through vendors they already use. Using your imagination, familiarity with your customers, and the right cross-promotion, your can outwit companies with massive promotional budgets.

Here are some low-risk and high-opportunity ways to jump-start your first cross-promotion.

1. Print joint promotional messages on your bills.

2. Offer a reduced price, special service, or convenience if customers buy services or products from you and your partner.

3. Hang signs or posters promoting one another on your walls, windows, or products.

4. Mention one another’s benefits when you speak at local events or are interviewed by the media.

5. Show the joint use of your services and their benefit on the health of patients

6. Pool mailing lists and send out a joint promotional postcard.

7. Promote your partners’ products during their slow times, and ask them to do the same for you.

8. Share inexpensive ads in local shopping papers or a nonprofit event program.

9. Give a joint interview to local media.

10. Put one another’s promotional messages on Lucite stands on counters or floor stands in waiting areas.

11. Encourage your staff to mention how your partner’s products can be used with yours.

12. Give your partner’s product to your customers when they buy a large quantity of your product, and ask your partner to do the same.

13. Use door hangers, posters, flyers, or postcards to promote special offers for one another’s products.

14. Co-produce an in-store or other event, demonstration, celebrity appearance, free service, or lecture.

Discover more ways to accomplish greater things with others at the blogs:

How We Partner

Moving From Me to We

Say it Better