“I guarantee if you follow these steps, you will get these results”.

There you go, you have taken all the risk out of the process. The prospective customers can engage with you with no inhibition whatsoever. It is guaranteed. Of course, we all strive to get to that magical state, where the prospective customer’s inhibition has been removed. But it is not as easy as slapping a “guaranteed” sticker on the whole process.

The irony is that every prospective customer out there is looking for a guarantee, but none of them are willing to believe all the guarantees that are out there. So the state that you are vying for is that it is possible to guarantee your offering. It becomes possible from the perspective of your prospect, if all the underlying conditions can be guaranteed.

Whatever your product offering, the prospect is always looking to ensure that:

• All the steps are do-able
• That they have the right level of skills and capabilities
• That you can pull them through when they get stuck

Putting it another way, all of the underlying conditions must be there to ensure that they will be successful in buying your product offering. And this goes beyond just the basics of functionality.

In the early 1900s, with a multitude of car manufacturers, Henry Ford won the high profile cross-country race of the time with the Model T, by quite a wide margin. A great value booster to his brand, no doubt. But what I found most interesting was that winning the race was enabled by the fact that Ford already had hundreds of authorized service centers along the general route of the race; and the competitive models did not.

Anytime that the Model T broke down, it was back up and running in no time. This became a major selling point in the marketplace at the time, as many better and more expensive cars could be laid up for a week at a time. So people believed that it was quite feasible to keep their Model T running, without concerns of downtime. The fact that Ford also provided thorough service manuals further strengthened the confidence of the prospective customers.

So it is with your demand generation system. Creating demand means creating engagement. For that to happen, the prospect needs to be convinced that your product offering can provide a solution to the problem; and that they can be successful in using it.

Information content has to be broken out in pieces and offered up in manner that allows your prospect to put the pieces together themselves. Each piece of content must strive to create the assurance that that step, or that part of the process, is do-able and has the necessary support. The time that it takes will vary, but with each consumption, the prospect moves closer to a willingness to engage with your brand.

The facts of the marketplace are that prospects are showing up at the start of the direct engagement with your sales force, with a much more informed perspective. And this is a complete reflection on the information content that you have put out there.

Information content that continually re-enforces the multitude of small assurances that are needed at different stages, builds a stronger belief that your company is able to stand by their solution. That your company can provide a credible guarantee. And this delivers a prospect who is willing to both talk and listen.

I was listening to the morning chatter on the radio about the decision making process on whether to stick with a new TV show. The part that got my attention was the debate on how many episodes it took to decide. It settled out at between 3 and 4 episodes, depending on the nature of the show. After that point, the person was either deeply into it, or not.

Well, 3 or 4 episodes is definitely way more than 1. So why does it take so long? If the story is worth telling, it has to be developed. It takes time to create the setting, introduce the cast of characters, and develop both the storyline, and the inter-relationships between the characters. When the fuller picture is set, then it is much easier for a viewer to decide whether they find it engaging or not.

The processes that you adopt for your marketing and demand generation efforts are much the same. If you have created a plan, or a process, it takes a bit of time to decide on the effectiveness. You need to give it a chance.

But, in the desire not to throw good money after bad, many people have the mindset that they need to get to failure quickly. Or put another way, they need to find out as quickly as possible whether an initiative is working or not. And sometimes, it is perhaps too quickly. In the race to get to a yes/no answer as quickly as possible, there is a danger that efforts are short circuited.

It is something to watch out for. Going in spurts, from one type of strategy to another is in fact more likely to be most effective at nothing at all. It is simply the case that you have not provided enough time to get traction at anything. Just like when you hit the gas pedal, your wheels will spin fast, you will burn both fuel and rubber. But you will not move forward.

You need to expect that figuring things out will take time. So before you start any new endeavor or initiative, the timeframes needs to be set. That is, you need to determine how much time and resources you can apply to the endeavor. As opposed to working with a time and resource constraint that does not match up with what it takes to get traction.

How long should it take? What kind of results are expected? Is it a linear process? Can you justify and commit to this type of endeavor at all? Is there a staged approach? These are all important questions that need answers in order to choose strategies.

Many initiatives fail because people choose the wrong set of strategies for their business. Or they do not stick with the right set of strategies long enough to make them work. You marketing strategies are just like that new TV show, which may turn out to be a fabulous show, better than you ever imagined, once you got by a certain threshold.

In today’s hyperconnected and hypelinked world, the information flow is mind boggling. The ability to communicate effectively has never been more important. And sticking to a system that enables your message to be heard becomes a must.

I recently listened to Patrick Lencioni speaking about the four disciplines of healthy organizations at the forum put on by the World of Business Ideas. Not surprising, after a company gets this whole leadership team and purpose figured out, the need to communicate becomes paramount. More specifically, the need to over-communicate critical messages becomes essential.

And why does he need to stress this emphatically to a room full of executives?

Because employees, like people, are awash with messages. The skill of ignoring messages is something that they have gotten really good at. And the typical story goes something like:

Management says:

‘Employees are our greatest asset”

“Quality is job 1”

“Customers are always right” wah wah wah wah…

And the employees say:

“…whatever, the last company that I worked at said that. The next one will to. This will all come to pass.”

But from the executives perspective, the ironic thing is that many executives don’t want to be redundant in their messaging. They see it as inefficient. An insult to their listeners.

Yet, research shows that employees in an organization need to hear things 7 times before they believe it. And that is how communication gets lost. The amplification of repetition does not make it to 7 times.

Well, guess what?

In the world of getting customers, it takes an average of 7 touches to get through. We might as well start calling it Super 7. I find it ironic that we actually have a lottery by this name.

Patrick Lencioni might as well put on a marketing hat and fill the room with marketing folks. All of the same things apply. Buyers and customers are bombarded with messages. They are completely jaded in the fact that they have heard it all before. And the natural reaction is to ignore the message, and keep dismissing it. Until perhaps, it has taken on some level of permanence and has some semblance of being real.

The only way to break through is with repetition. Within companies, executives must repeat critical messages. Within the marketplace, your critical marketing messages must be repeated. It must be repeated in different ways, and through different channels. This is where the real challenge lies. Finding ways to tell your story such that the core marketing message is carried along with it.

Just like executives with their employees, companies cannot fear being redundant in their marketing message. They cannot fear being redundant, overbearing, or annoying. If they believe in what they have to offer, they must continually seek out different ways to get the message out. There will be pushback in different forms, no doubt. But that is not the most important measure. The true measure of your core marketing message is in how many people are hearing it and listening to it. Eventually.

“Repetition is the mother of learning”. In the marketing context, it means that your message must be repeated in order to be learned by your target market. And so it become that “Repetition is the mother of marketing”.

Do you remember when you were a kid and you would fight for the front seat of the car?

As soon as you were old enough, you were in the scrap. Whether it was your brother, sister or the family dog, it didn’t make a difference. There was always that drive to win the front seat. Being stuck in the back seat just did not compare. The view was not as good, you couldn’t control the stereo, and if it was a 2-door, you would have to wait to be let out. The front seat just ruled supreme.

In our world today, there is change and flux that is touching all industries, driven by whatever combination of technologies that are pushing it forward. Yet, in some companies and in some industries, the marketing function seems to be stuck in the back seat. Or perhaps given very limited and temporary status in the front seat.

Yes, yes, I know, there is the closest sibling, sales. And I am completely respectful of the sales function. After all, nothing really happens until there is a sale. But to continue the car analogy further, driving visibility may not be so good in many markets. The weather may be changing rapidly. The road may not be straight. The grade may not be even. This really would be a good time to have marketing in the front seat.

Marketing is not the tip of the sword. Sales reigns supreme in that role. But marketing must be expected to look further out, and provide that needed navigational guidance for where the car is going. It’s just not going to happen from the back seat. Back seat driving just doesn’t work.

So what does it mean for marketing to be in the front seat? It means that it has to be treated as being grown-up enough to be in the front. It must be given goals and resources to fulfill its key responsibilities. And there must be meaningful metrics in place to determine whether it is safe to keep driving.

The single most important measure for marketing must be whether it is making that distant connection, with those destination points that are not yet close enough for the sales function. Those connections have to be made at multiple distances.

But it is not an easy task, and marketing is bound to make mistakes and be fooled in where it takes you. And throwing marketing into the back seat again will not make it better. Instead, it is much more useful to figure out what the errors are that have occurred. And what is the thinking, the assumptions, that has put you in the position you are? All of these things must be tracked if marketing is going to get better at its task.

At the pace of change today, it means that the road ahead is constantly changing. Marketing must take on duties from the front seat. More must be expected from it. And the learning from the journey must be shared so that it brings a synergy to the operation of the car. You are in a race out there. And you want to get to your target faster than the next guy.

I don’t remember my dreams and I don’t give it a second thought. A good night’s rest is all that I care about. But when I watched the movie Inception, one of the greatest science fiction movies of our time, it kind of makes me never want to have a dream again. Whether I remember anything or not. At least not anywhere near a sleep lab.

The premise of the movie is that two or more people who are hooked up to a fictitious dream machine can share the same dream. The plot is based on the science of lucid dreaming, where an individual who is having a lucid dream can actually control what they are dreaming about. So the lucid dreamer can share their constructed or lucid dream with the natural dreamer, who is not conscious that they are in a dream at all. All the connections go through the fictitious dream machine. Thankfully, it would take some super advanced quantum computing to actually transcode and synchronize all those EEGs.

The storyline of Inception is about a team of lucid dreamers who are on a mission to implant an idea, by way of the dream, into the mind of a powerful oil executive. But when you look at the situation, whether it be a dream or reality, the right set of circumstances need to be created in order to get someone to willingly think about something, and consider the alternatives.

Now when it comes to marketing, there is no way around it. In order to get your message through, you need to get inside the head of the customer. You must know or seek to understand those things that are going on in your customer’s mind. You must think like a customer if you are going to introduce new ideas to the present situation. If you cannot somehow assimilate yourself into the conversation going on inside the customer’s mind, you cannot expect to get real attention for the ideas or solutions that you want to introduce.

When prospective customers are dealing with their problems, there is typically not a flash idea where a complete solution presents itself. Rather, ideas are planted in some manner, and they must germinate before action occurs. Here is a key point. For any idea to be planted, it must be relevant to that existing context of the customer’s situation. For the idea to germinate, there are bits and pieces of information or insights that get aggregated through different customer experiences. If you can connect with that train of customer experiences, through various touch points, you can place yourself on the path to consideration.

Now, this is not as simple as an autosequence stream in your marketing automation; although that could help. But, it is going to take more than your medium alone. Naturally this is where the outside world comes into play. There must be proof out there that your ideas are a viable way forward. And that proof must be perpetuating itself throughout conversations that are going. People may be wary of herd mentality, but somehow they still look to what the herd is up to.

So there you have it. To successfully market and sell your solution to a problem, your messaging must fit into the conversation that is going on inside the customer’s head. You can share their dream, their vision, and you can strive to extend the framework to include your solution. But you won’t be able to get there through your own efforts alone. Your messaging, and your solution must fit or complement with the big picture of where things are going. If they don’t, it turns into a nightmare.