Answer The Need (ATN)

I meet so many people who have great ideas, but they are not able to sell them. So I decided to write a text for them.

This piece is inspired by a conversation with Glenn van Zutphen (Founder, CEO) . Few people know more about impactful human communication than Glenn van Zutphen. He has worked in the media industry for over 30 years. Just two snapshots from his long career: He lived in Hong Kong in 1997 and reported on Hong Kong’s handover. He was working in the CNN International newsroom in Atlanta when September 11 happened, reporting live on the ensuing War Against Terror; arguably the biggest-ever news event in America. For the last 20 years, he has been based in Singapore, where he hosts a weekly national radio show and coaches executives, educators, and government officials across the region on how to be impactful communicators.

I sat down with him on a recent visit to Singapore because I wanted to capture his insights about the relationship between communication and creativity.

People who have difficulty selling their ideas often do not realize that others may not be interested in the ideas themselves. There is a common misconception that the best way to sell an idea is to discuss the idea directly.

This is often not true.

You should not sell your idea.

Instead, you should answer the need.

The need of your potential customer (or stakeholder), that is.

To address that, it is important to understand the question they have regarding their need. In other words, it is not enough to understand the need itself; one must also understand how the customer perceives that need.

Whether or not you align with the politics of Donald Trump, in building his campaign around “Make America Great Again,” he answered the question that many Americans had about their need, which can be described as: “What happened to my American dream?” And, “I will bring back your American dream.”

Whether you are selling a presidency or selling ice cream, you have to understand that underlying question around the need. And this is especially important when selling an idea—since ideas, by their very definition, are new. People often need convincing to try something new.

Glenn shared with me how he and his team worked as public speaking coaches on a project organized by the Prime Minister’s Office of Science and Technology Policy and Plans (S&TPPO) in Singapore. Some 30 Singaporean scientists and inventors were tasked to present their amazing ideas to their colleagues and government officials at a formal event.

The ideas presented were brilliant. (I especially liked a technique to rebuild coral reefs effectively and a new way of using LIDAR lasers to quickly scan trees; finding dead branches before they fall and possibly hit someone.)

As Glenn explained, the challenge is that while many scientific or engineering-minded people are brilliant, they don’t always present their ideas in a clear and compelling way to the layperson. Their explanation may include text and diagram-heavy PowerPoint slides about the technology that may be hard to understand.

Glenn worked with them over a couple of months to rethink the presentation from an idea to a solution. He helped get them to the core premise: “Why is this interesting for the audience?”

For example, no government official in Singapore’s National Parks Board will likely care about LIDAR radar technology in and of itself. But they will very likely care about the ability to identify dead branches before they hit a citizen on the head or fall and create a road hazard.

In Glenn’s words: “The strategic communicator must distill and self-edit their knowledge, packaging it appropriately for a specific audience on a specific day at a specific time. It’s not just what they want to talk about… but should be what the audience needs or wants to hear.”

You might now say, “Well, this is obvious. Of course, one should Answer The Need of the customer.” But the sad fact is that the vast majority of people trying to sell an idea still miss the mark on this one. Glenn’s weekly radio show gets dozens of press releases and guest pitches every day wanting to be on the show to discuss their company/product/service. He estimates that over 90% of those press releases and pitches talk about why they are so great—instead of talking about how they will answer the question that the people in need of the product or service might be asking.)

It is like we have a bug in our brains that makes us talk too much about ourselves. Helping executives and companies in Asia understand this and de-bug themselves is what Glenn has been doing for 18 years.

So the message is: Get the bug out of your system.

And the next time you prepare to sell your idea, stop thinking about your idea and how to sell it.

Instead, pull out a piece of paper and write—in big, bold letters on top: “Answer The Need.”

Then build your presentation based on the answer that you write on that piece of paper.