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Greetings, Inbox Hackers. I’m about to be on Today’s Feature Story like a chicken on a Junebug. After that, you can feast on:
- The Knowledge Base
SelfHelp (time swaps)- Facts & Stats
- Get Hacking (cross-selling blind spots)
Ok, the Feature Story gives you all you need to know about improving your communication skills in five seconds. For real. That’s all it took me after reading the first two pages of Supercommunicators. Let’s get into it and save yourself reading the other 297 pages of a great book.
Better Communication in 5 Seconds
Charles Duhigg starts this book with a story. Tells of an FBI negotiator who gets a roomful of cold, calculating researchers to share intimate details about their lives. How’s he do it?
Two simple steps. He asks them questions. Any answers that reveal emotion or vulnerability, he reciprocates with a vulnerable personal story of his own. This builds trust, opening lines of communication.
That’s it. Better communication isn’t magic. It’s created by specific skills, which anybody can build and sharpen.
That’s how the FBI dude put it, and he isn’t selling anything — he didn’t write this book and has no reason to make improving communication skills sound easy or simple.
So, if you want to get better at communicating to improve your business (or personal life), all you gotta do is ask questions (easy) and be willing to be vulnerable (the harder part).
I’ll list more insights from the book below. But first…
Why Marketers Need Better Communication
- Increases customer engagement and feedback
- Strengthens brand-to-customer relationship
- Clear messaging
- Differentiates your company from competitors
- Boosts brand reputation and customer loyalty
- Only way to form emotional connections
- Easier to know when your offers don’t match customer needs/wants
- Increases conversion rates
- Enables consistent messaging
- Higher customer retention rates
Plus, better communication can’t hurt when building or trying to improve a marketing team.
Back to the Harder Part of Better Communication
Being vulnerable ain’t easy for a lotta folks and there’s power in keeping some things close to the vest.
But not giving a flip is powerful too. At a wedding last weekend, a lady named Katie we just met fifteen minutes prior asked me and the GF if we were religious. I didn’t hesitate and told her the truth.
“I am. But I don’t know if God thinks I’m very good at it.”
Funny and facts mix well, BTW.
The GF later said she didn’t know what to say to such a personal question from a stranger. I told her it’s easy to think on your feet when you always respond with the truth. And if the person doesn’t like the answer, they’ll reconsider asking too many questions next time around😅.
Thing is, we had good conversations with Katie the rest of the evening. She wasn’t scared to ask or answer about personal stuff. Better communication with complete strangers — all due to no fear of being vulnerable. And credit to her for starting the ball rolling.
Now for those extra insights from…
Supercommunicators: Tips for Better Communication
The book categorizes three types of conversations:
#1 Practical Conversations: These focus on decision-making and essential facts of a situation.
#2 Emotional Conversations: Involve feelings and emotional responses of the participants.
#3 Social Conversations: All about identity and how individuals perceive themselves and others in social contexts.
Key Skill: Matching emotional and social cues of the other party or parties.
For Tough Topics: Focus on sharing personal experiences instead of trying to change someone’s mind. Approach conversations with curiosity without expecting a specific outcome.
Two separate lessons from this book on better communication?
One, short book summaries are not the same as reading the entire book but can provide big-time insights. As seen here, I got a ton of value from two short pages of this library book (yep, library nerd). The author loses nothing by giving the FBI negotiator story right off the bat — I kept reading the entire book.
Two, storytelling makes all the difference. The negotiator story isn’t filled with high-drama or amazing events. It’s simply relatable. All those lab-coated researchers had children, ex-lovers, or maddening relatives. FBI Guy asked questions based on those human elements and he talked about real humans in his life.
Now for The Knowledge Base – including a slick tool coming to Canva after you get rid of…
❌What email marketers don’t need
Email sign-up forms. They don’t work on today’s distracted web surfers.
Collect email addresses the new way via Smart Recognition’s identity resolution. Major corporations use identity resolution for faster email list growth. Household brands use it, so it is CAN-SPAM compliant and effective.
Time to give up on ineffective sign-up forms and 10x your email list growth with a free demo of Smart Recognition.
Add these addresses to your list and network audiences. *Need 15k in monthly US-based traffic. Book your free demo.
The Knowledge Base
🎨Leonardo.ai (coming to Canva)
Are these 5 experts right about affiliate trends?
Determining your email quality score
❓Using these customer segmentation techniques?
LinkedIn “may’ve overreported,”shells out $6.6M settlement
🪓Opinions of 3rd-party cookies’ stay of execution
5 lessons from a booming vending machine biz
🧠Long read on sad, faceless businesses
ICYMI HubSpot 2024 State of Marketing
🚩Wise CEO: spotting employee red flags
Affiliate marketing SEO (13 Tips)
Self Help
Be careful saving time.
I stopped watching football about four years ago. Felt good knowing I’d never again waste 10-14 hours on a Sunday staring at a TV.
However, some of my TV viewing time swapped to YouTube and the gridiron of nasty politics. These slobber knockers have levels of vitriol that woulda made Deacon Jones flinch! I don’t waste entire Sundays watching political YT clips, but whatever amount of time weekly I do watch… is a 100% waste of my time.
Facts and Stats
- 44% of sales reps complain about lead quality, 39% about readiness to buy, & 37% about inability to contact (Verse)
- 86% of consumers recall podcast ads more than any other channel (Basis Technologies 2023)
- 82% of consumers still use print ads when deciding what to buy (SocialShepherd)
Bonus: B2B companies that ______ generate 67% more leads than those that don’t. Answer is blog. (Sender)
Get Hacking
I wrote about cross-selling and upselling a while back. To add to that, it’s not always obvious what might entice customers/clients to spend more.
Even when you know your audience well, blind spots remain.
Examples — most people assume no one still writes paper checks, only oddballs buy vinyl records, and digital calendars put printed planners out of business. Those assumptions are wrong (proof below) and many more are too. Perhaps that opens up extra opportunities to upsell and cross-sell items/services you’ve not considered?
- In 2022 and 2023, vinyl records outsold CDs
- Many businesses and organizations (e.g., contractors, charities, churches) take a quarter of their payments/donations via check
- Appointment books and paper planners sales are roughly $342.7 million (Statista)
Please forward Inbox Hacking to your friends in the marketing arena. We appreciate it.
Shane McLendon, Copy Kingpin – Inbox Hacking
