The Power and Pain of Polling

In North America, we poll on anything we can imagine. From toilet paper preferences to preferred political leaders. We poll and poll and use those results to make a host of decisions.  Most of us either believe that polling results are completely useless or absolutely insightful. Sometimes they are both. After all, an insight into how I feel about something today is not necessarily an indicator of how I will behave tomorrow.  So we poll again tomorrow to see if the answer has changed and if it has, we poll again in an attempt to determine what influenced that change.

The concept of public opinion as we understand it was first coined by French Foreign Affairs Secretary, Jean-Jacques Rousseau in 1774 and American newspapers started using polling techniques in the 1820s.  However, polling in Canada didn’t really take root until the 1960’s.  In 1959 the Quebec Liberal Party first used a poll to determine their election strategy for the 1960 election; by 1965 Canadian newspapers were well engaged in the practice of polling.  Today, newspapers and political parties are strong adherents to the power of polling and most polling companies have an affiliation with either a newspaper or a political party.  There is of course polling related to commercial ventures.  These are lucrative activities and dominate the polling landscape.  If you own a business, sell a product or service you’ve probably conducted polls of your own or reviewed existing polls about your customers, market or sector.

Despite the popularity of polling, there are always questions about the accuracy of polls.   The methodology is often called into question if companies conducting similar polls get significantly different results.  These differences are a reflection of the quality, tone and tenure of the questions asked.  The answers are also influenced by who was asked.  After all, if you were to poll a riding that has strong conservative roots, you are unlikely to obtain results that support Liberals and vice-versa.

In May 2013, folks in British Columbia were surprised to discover that they still had a Liberal government after the votes were counted in their provincial election.  Their surprise and that of the pundits and pollsters came because polls had been clear that the New Democratic party was well in the lead.

 “I haven’t trusted polls since I read that 62% of women had affairs during their lunch hour.

I’ve never met a woman in my life who would give up lunch for sex.”

Erma Bombeck, U.S. Humourist

More recently we saw shock move across the U.S. and the world when Donald Trump became the president of the United States. One pollster had been so certain of Hilary Clinton’s win that he had offered to eat a bug if he was wrong.  One of the most popular approaches or survey techniques is to randomly select individuals and ask them a series of carefully crafted questions.  The questions are generally created to avoid bias in the answer. The responses are then tabulated and reported on. While there are a number of ways of gathering information, the thing to consider when you look at polls is that no amount of data regardless of how accurately gathered will be worthwhile unless you can interpret results accurately.  In effect, if the act of polling is a science, then the analysis of polls is an art.  The ability to not only interpret but achieve insight into how respondents are likely to react is what makes good polling companies worth their weight in gold.

If you are unclear about what I mean, consider the difference between two questions:

  • Do most Canadians want their elected officials to behave in a decorous fashion?
  • Do most Canadians expect their elected officials to behave in a decorous fashion?

Although the questions appear to be almost identical, they will likely elicit completely different responses. What Canadian’s want and what they expect to get can be completely different things.  Do you want your kids to listen to everything you say?  Do you expect them to listen to everything you say?  Understanding these distinctions is what real pollsters bring to the table.

What do you think about polling? Do you pay attention to polls?  Do you participate in them?

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5 Hacks for Decision Making

Not being able to make decisions can create paralysis in your life. Indecision can cost you your business, end relationships and make even the easiest of activities complex. Often, if you can’t make a decision then you are probably afraid of something. Before you can begin to consider your options, you need to lose the fear. Consider the worst case scenario and the possible outcomes. What can you do to mitigate the risk? What can you do to mange and respond if it comes to pass? Then decide what what works best for you.

Despite your best efforts there will be times when even deciding how to decide can feel almost insurmountable. Fortunately, there are methods we can use to hack indecision.

  1. Make Habits Not Decisions: Make habits out of some decisions and remove the whole decision-making process. For example, Friday night is date night for my husband and I and consequently, neither of us is interested in making dinner. So Friday’s is for leftovers or ordering in. No arguing over who has to cook. No decisions about what to cook.
  2. If/Then Decisions: If/Then decision-making basically means that you make decisions based on external actions. If this happens, then I will do this. For instance, if I’m not sure whether to walk the dog or work in the yard, then I see if it’s going to rain and if yes, then I go for a walk.
  3. Avoid Information Overload: Sometimes having an excess of information can result in going in circles. To avoid “analysis paralysis” determine what information is really important or relevant in order for you to reach your decision. Make sure you know why the information is relevant. Create a schedule that includes getting all the data you need and stick to your deadline for making a decision.
  4. Assess the Risks: Determine what risks are associated with different decisions. Weigh whether or not those risks are worth taking. If a decision comes with risks not worth taking, then perhaps that is the wrong decision.
  5. No Decision is a Decision: Remember that by not making a decision you are making a decision. Generally, the result is that you lose the element of choice.

Related Articles:

How to decide

Resources

If you’re looking for additional tips, check out the Harvard Business Review’s Deciding How to Decide, found here: https://hbr.org/2013/11/deciding-how-to-decide

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Marketing Attitude

Marketing Attitude, what story is your brand telling?

It was my third day of business travel and I was tired but looking forward to a seminar on motivation. About halfway through the presentation, I realized that the longer I stayed the more demotivated I felt. The speaker was engaging,  she was actually quite funny, but her material was dated. My table-mates were a bigger problem. They were unhappy co-workers. Their underlying unpleasantness towards each other and their missing colleagues was tangible. It was disrespectful at best and openly hostile at other times. Made me glad I didn’t work with them and wonder if their boss understood the brand they created.

I left the session after an hour and ended up in a conflict resolution lecture. I’ve rarely laughed so hard. It was clever, insightful and I can say without a doubt, conflict has never felt so good. The rest of my day unfolded in a pleasant fashion, but as I was reflecting on the morning’s adventures I couldn’t help wondering about how attitudes, our own, those of service providers and even other customers influence and affect how we perceive brands.

While I was waiting for the conflict resolution lecture to start the woman ahead of me in line gave me a big smile, she turned out to be the lecturer. Her smile was an accurate indicator of the attitude she conveyed throughout her lecture. It reminded me of a study I read on the effects of greetings on shoppers, no not the typical Wal-Mart greeting, but a real greeting, like, “Hi, is it still raining out?” for mall shoppers. The study indicated that shoppers are more likely to report a positive experience if they are greeted and told goodbye. So although they may have a neutral journey through a store, the emotion they experience on coming and going will dictate their impressions.

Of course, the customer’s attitude before they enter a store or a website will also influence their experience. Had I been in a cranky mood when I started the first lecture, I doubt I would have lasted 15 minutes. I also wondered about the experience of customers going into the store of my original tablemates. I couldn’t help but think that their office dynamics would make for an unpleasant environment. Their dislike of each other would dominate the atmosphere, not exactly conducive to a positive retail experience.

So many elements are at play when a brand is being experienced that we constantly have to ask ourselves, what am I’m doing contribute to my brand? Even when we are being vigilant we can get into trouble. On my way home I was standing at airport security waiting to be scanned when one of the security personnel walked up to her colleague and reprimanded him for complaining about something in front of passengers. I wonder what she thought her reprimand in front of me was doing for customer relations? Marketing attitude is something we have to be thinking about all the time. Marketing the wrong attitude can have such a lasting impression, that no matter how good the product, people will be reluctant to engage. The same can be said about marketing the right attitude; it can carry you through even the most unforgiving lapses.

Tips on Managing Brand

  • Your attitude is your brand, make sure that you are conveying the right messages.
  • Employees are your brand ambassadors.  Their attitudes, likes and dislikes will play into your brand and how your services or products are perceived. Make sure you are properly aligned.
  • You cannot control your customer’s attitudes, but you can ensure that you are not contributing to a negative experience. Manage the atmosphere you are responsible for and the rest will follow.

Have you had an unpleasant experience work out because the attitude was right or perhaps the reverse is true? Have you had any great experiences that came as a result of great attitude?

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The Truth About Elevator Pitches

What no one really tells you about elevator pitches is that they aren’t actually pitches. They are not even soft sales lobs. That’s right, no elevator pitch has ever sold a product, got someone hired, garnered angel funding or earned a new client. Is that surprising? Think about it, would you hire someone or spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars on the basis of thirty-seconds of speech? It’s an elevator pitch, not a magic spell.

Your talents as a witch aside, elevator pitches do serve several useful purposes. First and foremost, they make you think about what you do. An elevator pitch makes you dig in and really understand what your unique offering is. More often than not, in addition to giving you more insight into what makes you unique in the marketplace, it also makes you appreciate that you have multiple unique offerings.

An elevator pitch also lets you do something that has become increasingly difficult since the introduction of social media. It teaches you how to deliver a proper introduction. An elevator pitch delivers information about you, or your product or your company neatly and succinctly. It tells your audience the things that you really want them to know in a way that is not weird or time-consuming.

That’s the third thing the elevator pitch does. It teaches you to boil down your message to the essentials. Your pitch answers the question, what exactly do I need this person to know? It gives them nothing more and nothing less. If you can capture their interest with an effective introduction you will earn the right to deliver your real pitch. That’s where the sale happens or the job offering shows up but first, you have to start with the elevator pitch or perhaps if we want to accurately describe what you are doing, the elevator introduction.

Tips for building great elevator pitches:

  • An elevator pitch is the briefest pitch you can give. It’s a quality introduction that takes about 20 seconds. You can take longer but the longer you keep talking without interaction with your audience, the more opportunity there is for things to go wrong.
  • An elevator pitch is generally a two or three sentence description. What goes into your pitch is a reflection of what you are trying to achieve.
    • New job or client: If you are looking for a job or a client your pitch will cover what you do, what you want to do and why you do it.
    • Product or service sales: If it’s a product you’re trying to share information on, your pitch will share the benefits, how people use it and what makes it unique.
  • Share what makes you unique in the market, what do you offer that others do not?
  • Describe what you do or what your product does well. Does it save money? If so, then be specific, who saved money and how much. Use explicit statistics that demonstrate that you know your stuff and have a clear understanding of how your product works.
  • There is no one pitch that fits all audiences. Create custom pitches to serve different purposes.
  • All pitches should have elements of the following:
    • Information: There’s little value to a pitch that is so abbreviated or clever that it becomes obtuse. You want to share something about yourself. The idea is to inform and relate to the person you are talking to.
    • Confidence: You should be comfortable delivering your pitch and while you should always be self-assured, you should never be arrogant or boastful. When you brag you’re a bore. No one wants to talk to a bore much less do business with one.
  • Pitches should be interesting enough to capture attention and make you memorable. Consider what makes you unique. What distinctive features, qualities or facts are part of your original idea or offering?

Once you’ve delivered your pitch, follow through.

  • Don’t forget that this is an exchange intended to build a relationship. Get to know the person you are speaking to better. The best way to do that is to get them talking. Hook them with questions about themselves. Ask them about their work. How did they get started? What do they like best?
  • Share your business card. Once you have engaged in an exchange, offer your business card. It’s a great way to create an opportunity for future communications. Generally speaking, don’t ask for their card. Once you offer yours, if they are interested, they will offer you their card.
  • Follow through, reach out through LinkedIn and get connected. Look for opportunities to provide assistance. Do you know of a book, blog or article that might help that person or that they might find interesting? Do you know someone they would like to meet?

Sample Elevator Pitch

I run a small communications shop called CommStorm that helps entrepreneurs and associations tell their stories. I use my years of political, corporate and association experience to build thoughtful communications strategies. And while I love developing strategies, the best part of what I do is getting in there and turning great ideas into reality.

If you understand what you have to offer, know how to introduce yourself effectively and can do it all succinctly and clearly, then you’ve accomplished more than most and that’s often the edge you need to succeed where others fail. So build your elevator pitch, work on it indefinitely, change it to reflect evolving needs and understand the value of a great pitch.

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Build A Pitch – 3 Online Elevator Pitch Builders

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