Whether you’re selling to a customer online or speaking in front of a live audience, communicating a shared belief connects us.
To dive into that concept, I spoke with Steve Pacinelli, the CMO at BombBomb, a speaker who’s delivered more than 1,000 online and in-person presentations, and co-author of the new book Rehumanize Your Business: How Personal Videos Accelerate Sales and Improve Customer Experience.
In this post, see the highlights of what we discussed – and listen to the entire conversation.
Going Inside BombBomb to Explore Customer Experience
The Customer Experience Podcast is a weekly podcast that brings together marketing, sales, customer success, customer support, branding, and customer experience professionals to share best practices for what I think is the single most important thing we create and deliver for our customers … the experience.
In addition to the episodes released every Tuesday, we also release one extra conversation each month with a member of the BombBomb team; this is the first of those episodes.
Find The Customer Experience Podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or Stitcher. It’s also embedded in these related blog posts.
Hear the entire conversation with Steve Pacinelli right here …
Listen to “6. Be a Problem-Solver, Not a Seller w/ Steve Pacinelli” on Spreaker.
Customer Experience as the Exploration of a Shared Belief
One way to think about the customer experience is as the exploration of a shared belief.
In the prospect or “future customer” phase of the relationship, the experience explores a potential shared belief. As a customer, it’s the exploration and practice of an actual shared belief.
All of the touch points throughout the entire life cycle are part of that exploration, moving it either backward or forward, based on the interactions that customers have with your company.
That shared belief should be clear in all of your marketing materials. It’s in your messaging. It’s in your ads. That’s what you use to hook people to engage with your brand.
They want to explore your company in terms of how it can benefit them. When they speak to a salesperson, does that salesperson share the same belief?
When they look at your marketing material, does that convey the same message? When they buy your product, and they begin using the product, do they still have that belief? How well you do as a company come alongside them and guide them along that exploration?
Do they believe fundamentally in what your product offers? Are you doing a good or a bad job throughout the customer experience in getting them to understand the value that you’re offering?
Steve explains this concept he’s still developing in this video clip …
Help Your Customers Survive and Thrive with Simplicity
As humans, we are repelled by confusion and attracted to clarity. Our brains operate in such a way that they’re always working to make sure we survive and thrive.
Despite being only 2% of your body weight, your brain consumes about 20% of your calories, even at rest – a massive share of calories burned. When the brain has to think too hard or you’re trying to make it jump through too many hoops, then what’s going to happen? Confusion.
It boils down to how easily and quickly you can convey your product’s value proposition, how you help the customer solve problems. The faster that you can communicate that, the more your customer is going to be drawn into that clarity.
BombBomb’s been revamping our website. We tried to get so fancy with it, but people just want to know what the heck you do.
You need to change your mindset and just be straight and direct and forward, and that’s what people enjoy because you’re helping them conserve calories and survive and thrive.
This is applicable through every interaction that your company has. If someone phones in with a problem, they don’t want complications. They want a quick answer that solves their problem.
Look at it the same way when you’re trying to sell your product online. Customers don’t want a fancy long answer.
You want to distill your message down to the absolute bare necessity that conveys the value and the problem that you overcome for your customers as quickly and easily as possible.
Click here to learn more about the StoryBrand framework that informs this perspective.
Making Yourself Valuable to Your Audience
To give a great experience to a live audience, you need to truly understand who they are, why they’re there, and what they would like to learn. This will help you craft clearer and better messaging that will help them. Steve explains …
Most of the time he’s selling a product when he gets on the stage or gets online to give a talk. But he doesn’t start with the premise of “how can I sell the most products?”
The question Steve asks himself is, “how can I be of value to the audience that I’m speaking to?”
Once you identify the different points, you can be of value. Then you can figure out where you can intertwine a product because it is helping them in some way.
Understand your audience, solve a problem for them, and make that your goal for the presentation (even though what you really want to do is sell a bunch of products).
Keep Your Audience Interested
When you start your presentation, it’s okay to be a bit unclear. Being unclear opens up a story loop, it catches them off guard.
You might want to start with a story that doesn’t seem like it relates to the topic. I hop on stage and get right into a story about my dad’s signature, and I have my dad’s signature on the screen behind me.
And people think, “I came to a class about video, why are we looking at his father’s signature?” There is a tie-in there, but it keeps people engaged. It opens up a story loop for them and you’re already different in the first few minutes than all of the other presenters.
But after you do something like that you need to tell them exactly what the presentation is going to be about and what they’re going walk away from the presentation with. “I’m going to give you the four best ways that you can get people to open your email. Or I’m going to give you the five best ways to get people to play your video.”
That also keeps them engaged throughout – going back to clarity.
“Here’s why these topics are going to benefit you and here’s what you’re going to be able to do after this presentation.” That draws them in because they know the benefit right out of the gate.
Then at the end you say, “Okay, here’s what I promised that we would do. Did we do this?” And you loop it back around.
Another nice tip is to get some type of interaction within the first several minutes. Because if you wait a half hour and try to get the audience to participate with you, it’s going to be hard.
But if you hit them with something provocative right off the bat, you told them a story or you started your presentation differently and then you got them to agree with you, right out of the gate you got them to verbalize some responses for you.
And that will continue throughout the entire presentation. Every time that they do something different, or they laugh, every time you switch topics, their brain hits restart and starts paying attention again.
And so after you get one of those moments, what you say directly after is the thing that people are going to remember. So you strategically place those throughout.
Little Things That Make a Big Difference
We always close The Customer Experience Podcast with the opportunity for the guest to mention a company that’s delivering an excellent experience to its customers.
It’s a little embarrassing to him to share it, but Steve like boots. Steve like shoes, too, but boots specifically for some reason. Taft is an online direct to consumer company that provides an amazing experience.
Sometimes when he buys a pair of boots or shoes, he receives a nice handwritten note. It’s an awesome feeling when you know that someone sat down and wrote, “I hope you enjoy your new shoes. Let us know if you have any questions.” That’s amazing.
But the reason Steve’s so fanatical about the brand and the company is their social media. The founder comes on all the time. He shares his family, his daughter comes in and they do these Instagram posts about how they choose the shoes and how they make the boots, and it’s all about the people at the company.
It’s so awesome for Steve to feel be invited into the story and have that shared experience with them because he’s got a family too, and they’re building something special over here as well.
Taft‘s doing customer experience right.
This post is based on an interview with Steve Pacinelli, Chief Marketing Officer of BombBomb and co-author of Amazon’s #1 new release in Business Sales, Sales and Selling, Business Communication, Communication Skills, and other related categories, Rehumanize Your Business.
To hear more episodes, please subscribe to The Customer Experience Podcast by clicking here.
Not an Apple Podcasts person? No problem! Find The Customer Experience Podcast here:
Don’t Miss These Upcoming Guests on The Customer Experience Podcast
- Sales leaders like Jeremy Donovan (SalesLoft) and Charles Green (Trusted Advisor)
- Customer Success professionals like Nick Hart (Outreach.io) and Rachel Ostrander (Brooks Running)
- Branding experts like Kurt Bartolich and David Brier
- Marketing leader Samantha Stone (Unleash Possible)
- Customer experience expert Joey Coleman (Never Lose a Customer Again)
Questions or guest recommendations? Email: Ethan at BombBomb dot com
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Learn More about the Book Steve Co-Authored.
If you got face to face with more people, you’d create and close more opportunities. This is true whether you’re in a direct sales role with a quota or an indirect sales role in which you need to influence, persuade, and convince people. In short: we win through better communication and stronger relationships.
And simple, personal video can help.
