Less than 1010 tips for executing the message box exercise. Tip number one messaging is a team sport. The message box should not be developed in isolation. It is meant to be a team exercise. If you develop your messaging alone, you will politicize the message. It will encourage internal fighting, you need to invite other stakeholders in marketing and sales to participate.

Consider this, you do not own the message. Instead, you own the process for creating the message. Tip number two, establish a small core team. In practical terms, I found that a small team of three to four people are far more effective in creating messaging than large groups, it's less political, and there will be less time wasted. smaller groups invite everyone to participate equally and you'll be able to complete the exercise more quickly. Tip number three know your persona because who Ever understands the customer best wins.

And when it comes to developing the best, most meaningful and relevant messaging, you must know who you're speaking to be focused and specific. If you try to be all things to all people, your messaging will fail. Before you start crafting messages, make sure your team is aligned with your target audience. Share the persona you created in the online course create high impact b2b personas in four easy steps. Tip number four, clarify your positioning statement. Do you have a carefully crafted positioning statement?

If not rally your troops to create one. Building the message box is a whole lot easier if you have the foundation of a solid product positioning statement. Use the template and techniques described in the online course mastering product positioning. Tip number five, ask a sales rep when teams are not sure Where to start? Ask a sales rep to walk through a recent sale. How did she engage the prospect?

What was the prospect concerned about? What problem was he or she trying to solve? How did this conversation unfold? Ask the sales rep to describe why he or she won the sale. These data points will help you ground the message in reality. Tip number six, build the engagement message first.

The hardest thing about the message box is getting the engagement message right. Once the engagement message is clear and concise, the other messages will almost write themselves. If the engagement messages wrong. The none of the following messages will make any sense. This is the most important message. Tip number seven.

Don't confuse the reinforcement and engagement messages. There are three telltale signs to be aware of. First, the focus of the engagement message is 100% on the customer. The focus of the retention forcement message is 100% on your product. Second engagement message emphasizes the customer problem. This is how you establish relevance by being able to express the problem the customer is trying to solve.

On the other hand, the reinforcement message highlights your product differentiators. This is where you show how and why your product is the best alternative. And third, and most importantly, your company name and product name do not show up in the engagement message. This is because the engagement message is about the customer, not you. Only when you get to the reinforcement message do you introduce your company and product name. If product information bubbles up into the engagement message, then it's assigned the team has actually jumped to the reinforcement message.

All is not lost. This is natural because the team is most familiar with the product, but it represents a problem area. Set that message aside refocus on the customer and the words they use to describe their problem. The facilitator needs to be alert to catch this and properly redirect the team back to the problem that persona is trying to solve. In summary, engagement message is not about you. It's about the persona and the problem they're trying to solve.

But the reinforcement message is indeed all about you. Tip number eight, use flip charts. It may seem old school in this era of modern technology. But flip charts work best when facilitating this exercise. flip charts provide a visible way to engage your team. You can capture ideas, and everyone can see and have the opportunity to edit.

It's a perfect tool to encourage collaboration. Tip number nine, don't criticize. When working the exercise you will hear many points of view. It's important you do not block any of this discussion. Don't criticize, if you do you We'll politicize the outcome. Instead, find out where they're coming from seek to understand their perspectives, facilitate the discussion, but don't dictate the outcome.

You must be politically astute to facilitate this exercise, and you can be a good facilitator and a good leader by taking time to listen to your team. Even if you already know the outcome you want. Your job is to help the team arrive at the best possible outcome. Do this by guiding and facilitating, but not criticizing or judging. And finally, tip number 10 socialize the output. Once a Working Draft is developed, you are not done.

The draft needs to be tested and shared with your colleagues and other stakeholders. If you are really bold, the best way to know if your story works is to try it on real prospects. Reach out to friendly customers and run it by them get their feedback, have the sales rep start using the message box as an elevator pitch. See how it works. Also socialize your draft message box. With the marketing and sales and customer support teams allow them time to reflect on it and offer edits and even additional evidence to support your messages.