The Essential Mind Map, artfully created by Courtney Neray

If you are in charge of putting together a conference or training program for your organization or business, chances are you’re looking for content and programs that have an immediate impact on business results, as well as lasting change.

And, chances are, you’re looking at topics such as sales & marketing, client attraction, employee resilience or motivation, teambuilding, leadership or positive culture. According to Jeanne-Marie Robillard, Senior Account Manager with the Global Speakers Agency, these are some of the most requested keynotes and presentations she hears from clients. At the same time, it’s understood that what clients definitely do not want is content that’s simply re-packaged from previous presentations and training material.

Search stats bear her out. Maor Daniel of Eden Advertising & Interactive, told me that search words such as ‘sales,’, ‘marketing’, ‘leadership’, ‘teamwork’, ‘peak performance’, and ‘employee motivation’ score highest while many other search terms that describe underlying business variables are noticeably absent from the SEO suggestion list.<

The company’s insightful researcher, Stan Oppenheimer, noted that; “Ultimately your traffic is as only as good as your ability to engage the searcher. If anything, time should be sent crafting your Unique Selling Proposition. People tend to get hung up on traffic and as a result have a crappy sales message.”

This leads me to an interesting hypothesis; if organizations (and their employees) think they’ve seen it all, perhaps that’s because they have – yet they continue to look for new solutions to old challenges in the same old places.

In order to find truly fresh solutions to age-old challenges, I suggest we look at those challenges from a different perspective – a deeper one.

Sales & Marketing and Client Attraction: At the core of every successful business, big or small, in any industry and in any geographical area, is the ability to answer two essential questions:

1. What is your unique position in your market?
2. What is your sustainable, authentic competitive advantage?

Adding salespeople or increasing your marketing budget is one strategy to improve sales results, but unless the organization is clear about these two questions, it’s a strategy that’s bound to be inefficient.

The link between The Essential Message and sales & marketing results, and to client attraction is a direct one. The Essential Message helps strategic teams discover this fundamental focus for the organization, and we work with sales and marketing teams to ensure consistency across every customer touchpoint.

This is how we helped Guardium, a start-up, achieve 60% year-over-year sales increases and position the company for a successful acquisition by IBM. It’s also how we helped a local financial services company achieve sales results four times better than the industry benchmark.

Positioning, Unique Selling Proposition, Competitive Advantage and Brand Differentiation: These words are most closely affiliated with The Essential Message. However, the key difference is that traditional marketing approaches place an almost exclusive focus on the external variables such as market need. That certainly seems reasonable enough, but that is also why so many companies go down a path of superficial marketing ‘spin’. It is neither sustainable nor credible to either customers or employees. In contrast, The Essential Message begins with an inward focus to identify genuine strengths and core purpose. With a platform of authenticity of identity, you can develop messaging that achieves the ripple effect of benefits across the organization.

Teambuilding, Teamwork and Collaboration: The benefits of absolute clarity about your organization’s competitive advantage and core purpose extends beyond sales and marketing results. Only when the members of the team understand the true mission of the team can they all pull towards the same goal. And just as the organization has an Essential Message, so does each member of the team. True collaboration happens when each member is valued for his or her unique contribution.

Employee Motivation and Employee Resilience: Dr. Seligman, considered the father of the Positive Psychology movement, describes a meaningful life as one that consists of ‘knowing what your highest strengths and talents are and using them in the service of something that you believe is bigger than you are.’

Indeed, more than just higher sales, (as if that weren’t enough), our coaching clients and event participants tell us that The Essential Message gives them the confidence, resilience and momentum that can only come from knowing who you are, what you really bring to the table and the true value you offer — as a business and as an individual. That’s the emotional bottom line that motivates and sustains you to improve the financial bottom line.

Peak Performance: You are at your peak state when you are in alignment with your purpose and authenticity. Many people think they know what their purpose is and where their authenticity lies, but are at a loss to clearly articulate it. The truth is that if you can’t articulate it, you don’t really know it. That’s why the process of discovering and communicating your Essential Message is so powerful – and empowering. Drawing on your Essential Message, either as an organization or as an individual, is critical to achieving peak performance on a consistent basis.

Leadership: There are many styles of leadership and many aspects of leadership — including decisiveness, ability to engage and enrol others, display of confidence… but these are mostly outward displays of leadership, are they not? What is personal leadership if not, at its core, an understanding and internal conviction of who you are and what you bring to the table – just as market leadership begins with your organization’s unique differentiation and competitive advantage. This is what I refer to in my keynote, titled, ‘Differentiation-Based Leadership‘.

We have come full circle to fundamental focus of the Essential Message. This is the common denominator that connects leadership in sales and branding to personal leadership.

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Whether it’s teambuilding, peak performance or leadership – or networking, customer service, personal branding, or sales communications – in order to have an immediate impact on business results, as well as lasting change, you must have keynotes, presentations and training programs that address the fundamental issues that drive the issues that drive the business results.

That’s one reason why The Essential Message is an essential part of so many different disciplines. (In fact, the community of people certified as Essential Message ‘Consoachants’ already includes brand and marketing consultants, copywriters, strategy consultants, life coaches, relationship coaches, and career consultants.) It’s also why The Essential Message keynotes and breakout sessions fit well with the theme and purpose of different conventions and sales meetings.

If you or your people can’t articulate the organization’s true, authentic competitive advantage in a way that’s clear, compelling and confident, then maybe it’s time to look deeper… to your Essential Message.

Essentially yours,

Michel Neray
Chief Differentiation Officer
The Essential Message