Media Musing #6
by Steve Bennett
The three entrepreneurs sitting across the table looked exhausted and dejected. And with good reason. They were exhausted from jet lag and dejected because they'd been seriously rejected by two important analysts.
Wisely, the founders of this fledgling company postponed their next analyst meeting until they could get help troubleshooting the problem. And the trouble, a postmortem revealed, was that they were shooting themselves in the foot — all six of them. Of the many mistakes they made, four are particularly noteworthy.
First, early in the meeting, the founders inadvertently portrayed their product as a "monkey-see-monkey-do" imitator in a competitive jungle dominated by an 800-pound gorilla. They failed to position their technology on the basis of its innovative features and functionality. No bananas for these guys.
Second, the founders hadn't identified and articulated key messages. At most, they had a vague idea that they wanted to get a "positive response" to their product.
Third, the founders didn't have the necessary data and supporting evidence at their fingertips to make a compelling case for their technology. Analysts need hard numbers to do their job.
Fourth, they relied too heavily on their canned PowerPoint presentation. When the analyst asked them to cut to the chase and skip the presentation, they were like the proverbial deer in the headlights.
While these folks represent an extreme, their counterparts across the country repeat their transgressions every day to one degree or another. Here are solutions to the four problems they created:
Differentiate yourself now! Analysts are human beings, and human beings typically make sense of the world by first pigeonholing new experiences into known categories, then looking for exceptions later. If, at first blush, your offering looks like a variant of an existing product or service, you'll spend precious meeting time convincing analysts that you're not just entering the marketplace as a "me too" or wannabe. So instead of taking the interview from zero to 10, you'll be struggling to go from minus 10 to zero (it's VERY difficult to go from minus 10 to plus 10). Differentiate early, and you'll have the best chance of earning high marks.
Develop clear messaging. While you can't breeze in and out of an analyst meeting with a few standalone sound bites, you nevertheless need to develop concise message points that you can convey during the session. Don't confuse your messages with marketing slogans; the messages must have substance that you can support with facts, statistics, and examples. Which leads us to the next piece of advice....
Know everything...and then some. Analysts have little patience with entrepreneurs who lack in-depth knowledge about their playing field. You need to know about industry trends. And you need to know how your market space is expected to morph and evolve. It's hard work pulling it all together, but you need to do it if you're serious about convincing analysts that you've got the goods and that you have what it takes to be a player in your space.
Be able to present without a presentation. You'll inevitably find yourself in situations where you have half the time you expected or the analyst doesn't want to see your PowerPoint presentation. So be prepared to convey your messages with good old-fashioned talk and perhaps a few visuals.
Finally, use the experience to add to your knowledge base by asking questions like "what have you observed?" or "can you provide some feedback?" That way, every analyst meeting — regardless of the outcome — can be a winning situation for you.
Steve Bennett is a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based media trainer who specializes in helping spokespeople of technology and science companies deliver effective strategic messages to: the trade, business, and consumer media; analysts; stakeholders; and the public. You can reach him at steve@mediamentor.com or by calling 617-492-0442.
Copyright © 1998-2005 Steve Bennett. Permission is granted to reprint this article in whole or in part, provided that you attribute the material to Steve Bennett, Media Mentor (steve@mediamentor.com).
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