Convert Buyers by Unleashing their Hidden Enemies
When it comes to explaining what your product or service does in a way that breaks through the sea of sameness and motivates them to buy, few types of messages are as effective as the ones laced with problems.
Problem-based messages are ones where you cast out features, functions, and even benefits, and instead, lead with the customer’s enemy. The thing that’s causing them pain.
The beauty of this approach is if the enemy you identify aligns with the problem your customer is looking to solve, they’ll lean in and want to learn more.
In Sell The Way You Buy, I talk about enemies that fall into four main categories:
- Old, outdated processes and systems
- Wasted time, money, and resources
- Fear and risk
- Lack of visibility
For example, in my training programs I teach a popular tactic called polarizing (or “love/hate”) approach to messaging that might sound something like:
- Men love to dress well, but they hate to shop.
- People love feedback, but they hate performance reviews.
- Busy entrepreneurs love the idea of getting in shape but hate that they can never find time to exercise.
While these messages intentionally avoid referring to the features and functions of the solutions they represent, their purpose is to capture the imagination and interest of the buyer by invoking the specter of the problem and flood emotions that come with them. The secondary and sometimes counterintuitive benefit of this approach is that if your customers don’t see these enemies as being relevant to them, they’ll disengage. In other words, you’ll lose faster which is actually a good thing!
The problem is, sometimes your customer won’t always be aware of who or what their enemies are. Or who and what they should be.
That’s where sales and marketing teams can create a distinct messaging advantage by leading with those hidden enemies.
Revealing Hidden Enemies
I was reminded of this powerful approach when I saw a commercial for a new type of hazelnut spread. Now, just for a moment, close your eyes and picture what a jar of hazelnut spread looks like. Chances are you pictured this:
Classic Nutella, sold and loved around the world.
Now imagine, you’re a food manufacturing giant, Kraft. You’re thinking, “We sell thousands of food products and have huge brand awareness and market share. We don’t currently compete in the hazelnut spread category but why shouldn’t we?!?”
But there’s a problem.
When customers like you close your eyes and picture what a jar of hazelnut spread looks like, you don’t think Kraft. You think Nutella.
So how did Kraft decide to take on the king of hazelnut spreads? They picked an enemy. One they felt would polarize the market. But instead of picking one of the usual suspects and competing on factors like nutrition value, price, or taste, they dug deeper and invoked a hidden enemy that most consumers have likely been overlooking for years.
Take a look at Kraft’s 15-second ad below.
Kraft is invoking the controversial use of palm oil in Nutella as their enemy. Indeed, Palm oil is the second ingredient in Nutella after sugar.
So is palm oil really that bad? Research from Harvard Medical School reveals that consumers shouldn’t be especially concerned with the health implications of consuming it. Rather the controversy around palm oil lies primarily in the environmental impact of its production. Of course, consumers watching this commercial aren’t likely to question the nature or veracity of Kraft’s argument. Rather, they’re more likely to recall the negative connotation associated with this ingredient the next time they walk down the supermarket aisle and make an emotional decision about which product to choose.
Why Hidden Enemies Transcend Regular Pitches
The power of invoking a hidden enemy goes beyond the emotional reaction to the enemy itself. After all, Kraft could have positioned their competitive product touting that it’s available at half the cost, has a richer taste, or that it comes in three different flavors. But one of the key drivers of the emotional response to hidden enemies lies in simply teaching the customer something new!
In the bestselling book Talk Like TED: The 9 Public-Speaking Secrets of the World’s Top Minds, author Carmine Gallo talks about how teaching someone something they didn’t know ignites a spark:
“The human brain loves novelty. An unfamiliar, unusual, or unexpected element in a presentation intrigues the audience, jolts them out of their preconceived notions, and quickly gives them a new way of looking at the world”
While in a TED talk, novelty is used to educate, entertain, and delight, in a sales context, novelty, in the form of a hidden enemy, has three benefits:
- Clarity: it provides your customer with crystal clear clarity around the problem you can help them solve by giving form and substance to the emotional pain the enemy invokes.
- Reciprocity: reciprocity is the practice of responding to a positive gesture, action, or behavior with a similar sentiment. In this case, the incident of micro-learning created by revealing the hidden enemy makes the customer more likely to give you just a little bit more of their attention.
- Credibility: it positions you, your organization, and your product(s) as the de facto solution to solve the problem.
In the hazelnut spread example, Kraft provides clarity by crystalizing your fears around the specific hidden ingredient in Nutella. They’ve also taught you something you’ll likely find valuable, making you feel slightly smarter and generating slightly more affinity to their brand. And while Kraft doesn’t explicitly state what ingredient in their own spread replaces Nutella’s palm oil (it’s sunflower oil by the way) the very fact that they’re calling it out implies that they’ve taken a different, “higher ground” approach.
With so many vendors vying for customers’ attention, many are destined to get lost in a sea-of-sameness. To succeed, sales and marketing organizations need to elevate their message by calling attention to the pain their buyers are experiencing. And pains that are hidden or unknown to the buyer carry extra weight. That begs the question, what hidden or unknown enemies are your ideal customers facing?
PS – Did you find this approach helpful and want to learn more like it? Check out the popular Cerebral Selling Sales Academy training program!
Related video: Mastering the 3 Types of Customer Problems – Part 2
Related video: Engage Your Customers with The Ninja Pitch™️ – The One They Never Saw Coming
