Marketing any product is a challenge. Non-marketers tend to have a fantasy that creating a terrific product and bringing it to market is enough. Sadly, the “if you build it they will come” approach rarely proves a valid strategy. Nor does any variation of this approach that essentially relies on word of mouth. It’s a romantic notion but at the end of the day, relying on chance (or an influencer for that matter) would be irresponsible and non-scalable.

There is no such thing as an overnight success.

Marketing (with SaaS being no exception) requires a thorough understanding of the ins and outs of your product and landscape. Moreover, ideally, both your product and your landscape should be agile and adaptable based on feedback resulting from any encounter between your plans and real life.

As Mike Tyson wisely said “everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face”.

So what can you grip onto in order to sustain a level of scalable control?

– Best practices

– SaaS marketing tactics

– common sense and

– as much data as you’re able to collect all along the way.

This guide will walk you through the best practices of marketing a SaaS product to success. Everything written here was written in blood, following endless trials and errors, and working with dozens of SaaS startups, helping them scale by converting strangers to MRRs.

Let’s dive in.

Starting with the obvious – understanding your product

This is obvious but it’s also a step that many somehow skip. There are so many legitimate reasons for this, so don’t think you’re above it.

If you’re a SaaS startup founder –

you might find that the value of your product – your pride and joy, isn’t actually as easy to understand as you’d like to believe. We sometimes become so involved with what we do, that we forget to step aside and take a fresh look. If you’ve been through investor pitches, you’ve probably had to hone this and clarify your USP. Yet too many times we meet startups post the seed stage, who conduct a conversation that revolves too much around the FEATURES of the product, not allocating enough attention to crystallising the BENEFITS of the product.

A little exercise we recommend experimenting with is to make a list of all that makes your product valuable to your target audience. Now, see if you can ask “so what” about anything on that list. Anytime you can ask “so what” you’re still in the features zone and not in the benefits zone you need to be at in order to communicate true value.

For example, if one of your core features is a customizable feature, you might say your product is “designed specifically for each customer”.

OK..so what?

So your customers can get access to what they really need without needing to waste money on solutions that won’t affect their bottom line.

Better, right? Try it yourself.

If you’re a marketer joining a team –

Working at a high pace can sometimes distracts you and lead to skipping the step of truly understanding the product. You have goals, time is pressing and you want to get users ASAP. The founders tell you what they want done and somewhere amongst this your forget to STOP, step back, evaluate and strategize before your step onto the playing field.

Don’t do that.

You’re in a long term game and you’ll need to align expectations and set the pace in correlation with what’s realistic to achieve.

Sign up to the product, play around with it, put yourself in the shoes of a potential user and ask the difficult questions. If you have recorded demos at your disposal – watch them. Be sure you completely understand what you’re marketing – advantages and disadvantages – there is no such thing as knowing too much..

Next,

Research and understand the landscape you’re operating in

You’re probably not operating in an unoccupied territory. Even if you don’t have direct competitors, there are companies who are probably competing on correlating services and your prospective customers will need to decide whether to allocate their budget to your solution or opt for theirs.

Make sure you understand who your competitors are. Then evaluate:

• How are you better than them
• How are they better than you
• Where do you stand with respect to them pricing wise (you can check their websites manually research using websites such as G2Crowd.com)
• How many customers do they have (you can easily find out using tools such as SimilarTech)
• What types of companies are their main customers (you can easily find out using tools such as SimilarTech)
• What’s their tech stack comprised of? What are they investing in on the digital front (you can easily find out using tools such as Ghostery)
• What generates traffic to their website
• How many referring domains do you have to their website? (this is an important indication of the strength of their website from a search engine’s perspective) you can use a third party tool such as AHREF, Zefo or Majestic to find this and the previous question out.

Armed with this info you’ll be able to know what you’re up against and always keep that in mind when creating your marketing strategy.

click to download a copy of the above competitor research questions

The next stage of research is to,

Understand your target audience

A good starting point to learning your target audience is to learn all you can about your current customers. If you don’t yet have customers you’ll need to make educated assumptions, which you’ll need to verify against reality with time.

Nonetheless, evaluate the following:

who are those people whose problem you’re solving?

Buyer personas aren’t just target markets or job titles. They aren’t based on specific products, but they are based on why they use them. And of course, personas are not specific, real people. Real people, individuals, have things about them that make them unique. Personas, on the other hand, are fictional characters you create to represent a subset of your customers.

You can use insights you’ve learned from the competitor research. For example, the types of websites that have your competitors tech installed can shed a lot of light, especially in cases where you don’t have enough relevant customers to learn from.

The best practise is to send out questions to your specific (or if not possible, to your potential) clients. You can use a google form to do so, but really anything goes so long as you get them to collaborate with you and help you get to know them.

Avoid creating a persona you ASSUME you have–not the one you actually have. Asking broad questions, will get you broad answers. Keeping your questions specific will help you better understand your persona and start noticing trends. Attempt to get the most complete, unbiased view of exactly who your persona is.

Questions to ask them:

• How old are they?
• Where in the world are they from?
• What’s their professional background?
• What goals do they need to achieve in their work?
• What challenges are they dealing with?
• What challenges do you help them solve?
• Where do they go for information? This is a questions that sometimes clients get lazy answering. Insist. It’s crucial to find out where your customers and potential customers are hanging out on the internet because it’s where you should be hanging out, too. That way we can fine-tune the focus of our marketing efforts on those specific areas.
• What experience are they looking for when working with you

More ways to further expand your research:

• check out the comments section on key industry blogs
• Review LinkedIn profiles
• Ask questions on social

There’s a lot that goes into a buyer persona, so remember to put in the time and effort to better understand your ideal customers.

Here’s an example of one page out of a full buyer persona research we’ve conducted for a persona who’s a publisher (we use xtensio for the cool visualization):

click to download a copy of the above buyer persona questions

Next,

Understand your target audience’s buyer’s journey

Once you’ve mapped out who your ideal buyers are, it’s time to put yourself in their shoes and understand the journey they go through leading up to a purchase.

First, I’ll tell what their journey isn’t (though wouldn’t everyone’s life be easier if it were) :

a dream buyer’s journey

I’m surprised by the number of SaaS marketers who still think that by interrupting their target audience with ads intended to sell them something they’re not ready to buy, from a company they don’t trust – can actually generate positive ROI.

The brutal reality is that interrupting will not get you far. Selling to people who don’t trust you and aren’t ready to buy is annoying, spammy and a waste of your money. Here’s what a realistic buyer’s journey looks like:

(image credit: HubSpot)

A typical buyer’s journey includes 3 stages:

1. Awareness – the prospect realized and expressed symptoms of a potential problem. For example “how do I drive the right kind of traffic to my website”
2. Consideration – the prospect clearly defined and gave a name to their problem and is now committed to researching and understanding all available approaches to solving their problem. For example, a prospect whose problem is driving the right kind of traffic might decide that inbound marketing is the way to go and will now research “how to do Inbound Marketing” or “what you should look out for when outsourcing Inbound Marketing”
3. Decision – the prospect defined their solution strategy and is now comparing vendors.

Many companies are trying to sell to prospects at early stages of the buyer’s journey when in fact what they should be focusing on is adding value and positioning themselves as experts in their fields.

The secret lies in distributing valuable content, building trust and creating lasting relationships. Turning visitors to users and further on customers will happen on your visitors’ terms. Just as you can’t force a social relationship, you can’t force a business one.

The days of salesmen knocking on doors (both online and offline) asking for a glass of water and then pitching to death (or closed deal) are gone.

We’re in an era of value.

By placing the right content at the right place and the right time, you’ll be amazed at the quality of leads you’ll be generating.

Now that we understand the product, competitive landscape, target audience and what the buyer’s journey is, let’s see how this knowledge can utilize us when trying to map out –

The SaaS marketing funnel

A marketing funnel is a representation of the buyer’s journey, along different stages of a theoretical funnel. By strategizing and mapping out a marketing funnel, we are able to correlate different lifecycle stages of a potential buyer and see how we can take action to help them progress down the funnel.

Here’s a simple marketing funnel visualized:

Congratulations to our client PowerInbox for hitting the Inc. 500 list of fastest growing companies

Inc. Magazine has named our client PowerInbox as the 30th fastest-growing private company in America on its 37th annual Inc. 5000 list.

The recognition is based on the company’s 7500% growth over the last three years with a revenue run-rate over $30 million. PowerInbox was also ranked by Inc. 5000 as number 2 in the category of top software companies, number 4 in the category of top New York City companies and number 4 in the category of top New York companies.

Over the past year alone, the company has seen a 51% increase in new customers, including the addition of marquee publishers like Bonnier, Crains, HarperCollins, Hearst, New York Magazine, Palm Beach Gazette, ReachMobi and Seattle Times, driven by surging demand for its unique email-based content personalization platform.

“It’s an incredible honor to be recognized among such an elite group for our success, which is a direct result of our team’s relentless dedication to serving our customers,” said PowerInbox CEO Jeff Kupietzky. “I’m extremely proud of the fact that we’re also profitable, which is unique among venture-backed companies that often focus on revenue growth at the expense of profitability. This gives us a much more stable foundation and positions us for aggressive growth and innovation.”

PowerInbox’s advertising and content optimization system helps publishers and brands deliver highly relevant, precisely targeted native and display ads and sponsored content to subscribers across email, web and push notifications, as well as other emerging channels. By using email as a unique identifier to target individual subscribers, the company’s personalization solution is more precise and reliable than browser-based cookies or device targeting, which can be thrown off by device sharing among multiple users.

The PowerInbox monetization platform works at any scale, currently delivering content to 95 million unique monthly subscribers across 600+ publishers, using artificial intelligence technology to learn users’ likes and dislikes and continuously refine targeting. It also boasts its own Advertising Network, enabling brands to reach new audiences and eliminating the hassle and expense of direct sales for publishers.

“If your company is on the Inc. 5000, it’s unparalleled recognition of your years of hard work and sacrifice,” says Inc. editor in chief James Ledbetter. “The lines of business may come and go, or come and stay. What doesn’t change is the way entrepreneurs create and accelerate the forces that shape our lives.”

The Inc. 5000 awards will be presented at the 37th Annual Inc. 5000 Conference and Gala October 17-19, 2018 in San Antonio, Texas.

We see our client’s success as our – HUGE WIN!

In this post I uncover transparent, actionable insights on what worked (and is working) for us as a lead generation and lead nurturing technique that we use to generate customers for our marketing agency. Gary Vaynerchuk once said that there’s no reason to not share work methods and info. Eighty percent of the people won’t do anything with the information, and the 20% that will are winners that are going to win with or without your help. So might as well add value to all 100% of the bunch, position yourself as an expert and join forces with the readers who will crush it with or without you.

So on that note, here goes

First things first – the high level thinking behind the strategy –

Know the person, to get the customer. If I ever needed a mantra to go by, I’d go with something along these lines. The best way to make sure you sell whatever you’re offering is to really get to know the person you’re trying to sell to – what their goals are, what their pain points are, what they consider challenging and what they’re lacking in tools, infrastructure, ideas, brains…

That way you will be able to custom-tailor your own offering to what the potential customer is looking for. You’ll be targeting their pain points with laserlike precision and you can be damn sure your prospects will love you for it.

But how?

Technically we use HubSpot, we find it works best. There are of course other solutions out there.

Strategically – Hook them with value – keep them with more value

Our agency’s main buyer persona is a marketing manager at a b2b startup. Other buyer personas of ours are startup founders, and general c-levels at startups. We’ve researched all of their goals, challenges and dilemmas and created a series of blog posts that helps each of them and educates them on how to reach their goals and overcome their challenges.

The idea is to touch upon the topics that are of interest to your potential customers. That can be anything from raising awareness of a specific problem they may be having, to drawing attention to various solutions that may work for those problems. Whatever helps draw these people to the blog and hopefully solves (or raises?) a few questions along the way.

For first time visitors to our blog our goal is to turn them into subscribers. They can turn into subscribers by filling out a form with a direct call to action. Once they turn into subscribers they’re in fact a lead. Now our goal is to learn more about them in order to send them content relevant to them and in the process position ourselves as authorities in their eyes. How do we do that? By creating a subscriber workflow.

What’s a subscriber workflow?

It’s simple. People who sign up to the blog receive a sequence of emails inviting them to read blog posts from the series of blog posts we’ve created based on what we know their challenges are. Here’s an example of an email a new blog subscriber receives:

We try to uncover what buyer persona they are by including calls to action inside the blog posts inviting them to download a content offer. Here’s an example of such a call to action:

In order to download the eBook the lead is requested to fill out a form and to provide info about themselves – in this case to let us know what buyer persona they are. Pro tip: we’re using smart call to action so that once a lead downloads a content offer, the next time they enter the blog they’ll see a different call to action, inviting them to take further action and tell us more about themselves. More on that very soon.

Nurturing and progressing the leads

At this stage our email sequence branches out a bit. On one side, we have subscribers that have opted to download the content offer and those that haven’t done it yet. For the latter, the email sequence continues, sharing more valuable information with them and inviting them to download the content offer.

For the other branch, those who have downloaded an offer, the game continues. They’ve now progressed to a more advanced email sequence, inviting them to take a free marketing assessment (we’ve used a tool called Typeform to set up the assessment). When entering our blog these leads will see a smart CTA, which will invite them to take the assessment (those who didn’t download the content offer will still see a CTA inviting them to do so).

The goal of the assessment is to ask questions that cover things we provide services on. It grants us a much clearer picture of what our buyer persona is actually looking for and what kind of problem they’re trying to solve.

An example of a question from the assessment:

I know this post is going to upset some people – we all want to feel we’re doing the right thing and it’s super offensive to hear that despite this being the norm, if you’re basing your initial startup’s funding on your friends and family – you’re being very unfair and selfish.

If you’ve already done it – I wish you and everyone involved the best of luck. I really do. If you haven’t, I hope this will make you reconsider.

I know it seems like a valid road to go down, I know so many people around you in the startup ecosystem do it, but believe me, what you’re doing is robbing your nearest and dearest of their hard earned savings.

I hope one day you’ll think back to the day you’ve read this and thank god (or whoever) you stopped before it was too late.

Small exception – If you’re Bill Gates’s son or friend – you can disregard this post. He can afford to handle your loss and would probably see it as a better investment than to pay your college fees.

Now, here’s why I feel so strongly about this topic:

Statistics – it’s a game of numbers and the numbers are against you. And that’s a fact.

About 90% of new startups fail. Ninety percent. What a depressing stat. And please, in no means let that deter you from pursuing your dreams. I think if you are passionate about something you should do it. I believe that with all my heart. Even at the probable chance that you’ll fail – as Henry Ford famously said “failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time intelligently”. You can learn what went wrong, regroup and try again. BUT – your friends and family shouldn’t be the ones funding your real life tuition. I think there’s only one condition where that would be fair – when they’re aware of the chances and are entering this with their eyes wide open.

Now this is tricky, as a startup founder you have to have tunnel vision, you have to believe you’ve got a winner on your hands, You have to be the crazy one that believes in your idea when no one else does. And that passion is also your drive to raise money from whoever is willing to listen. Still, the closest people to you shouldn’t be a part of that equation, keep them there as your biggest cheerleaders, not as your financial backers. You’ll need their moral support more than ever if and when the shit hits the fan.

You’re just putting them in a spot

When you go to your friends and family and ask for money for your idea, you’re making it personal. If they say no, it’s as if they’re saying they don’t believe in you. And they’re uncomfortable. Even “worst” – they do believe in you. But what will happen in the case your startup fails? Are they prepared to lose that money? What percentage of their capital are you risking? Are they expecting to get it back? Even if it’s not an investment but a donation – how will they feel if it goes to waste? What would they otherwise have used the money for? How will you live with yourself knowing you’re preventing them of that?

They’re your friends and family so they won’t negotiate with you and won’t ask you the tough questions an unbiased angel or a VC would

Figuring out your business and validating it is a ruthless journey. You need professional people by your side whom will be brutally honest with you and question every single aspect of your business model. Raising money from unbiased people will dramatically increase the accuracy level of which you’ll enter your startup adventure.

Ideally, go for an MVP approach, create a valid proof of concept and then go to get an investment. Now you might be thinking that in order to create a POC you need money from your friends and family. NO! Go to the bank, go wait tables, get a day job and work on your project at night. Figure it out, and leave them out of it.

You’re not doing THEM a favor

You think you’re taking care of them by giving them an opportunity to get a piece of the pie. So that when you exit your startup they’d enjoy the fruit of their investment. I say – if you’re so close to each other and you want to help them so much, when you exit – give your friends and family a cut because they’ve always been there for you and supported you. They were there for you on all those tough moments when you were about to give up. They encouraged you and helped you get through and break through. Uncomfortable with that notion? Hell that’s all the more reason you shouldn’t be taking money from them.

Mixing business and family/friendships isn’t worth the risk to your relationships

In business the business needs to come first. You make decisions based on what’s best for the business, whilst with friends and family you typically put them before you. So for example, if a family member is invested in your business and you give them voting rights – they might not be qualified to make calls. In a healthy business environment you wouldn’t tolerate that, but with a family member, you’ll now start feeling uncomfortable and not want to offend them. Especially if they’ve given you money. And yes, there are mechanisms to prevent such instances. And yes, you can align expectations, but at the end of the day, you’ll end up seeing sides of your friends and family that you could have spent a lifetime not seeing and a happy one at that. Sometimes interests simply collide and it’s not in the best interest of anyone involved.

Final words,

I admire anyone going after their dreams and taking the unstable entrepreneurial path. I work with startups daily, I’ve founded a few companies (including this agency you’re currently visiting online) and I’ve had my share of failures. It’s incredible. My point is that we all need to take responsibility for ourselves and not drag other people into our journey. Not unless it’s 100% clear to them (and you) what happens if things don’t work out the way you hope. GOOD LUCK!

A while ago I stumbled upon a guide of 56 growth hacking resources to follow by Roy Povarchik. Prior to encountering that guide I had been following several resources and subscribed to quite a few newsletters but I didn’t have a system in place for staying on top of my game. I was playing defence rather than offence with respect to my online knowledge consumption. I’m a huge believer in routines and this guide was a missing piece in my puzzle as it helped me set one up.

I added those 56 resources to a feedly account and started visiting it daily, saving stuff I’d like to read and allocating an average of 2 hours weekly to doing so (actually reading). Recently, I’ve also added zest to my established ritual, which provides me a daily dosage of carefully curated community and AI personalized reading recommendations (the latter sentence sounds like a “message from our sponsor” but it’s not. Though I am bias in the sense that I think very highly of zest’s founder Yam Regev, even more so after interviewing him to my podcast).

In this post I’ve decided to share the top blog posts I’ve read in July that have helped me grow my knowledge and I think would be valuable to my readers. If I get feedback that this is indeed helpful, I’ll do this more often. Here goes.

How to write a welcome email and welcome new subscribers to your email list

I’m always experimenting with new welcome emails and automated subscriber workflows that help progress and qualify subscribers to marketing qualified leads. Anyone who’s subscribed to the Bold newsletter has experienced receiving an automated sequence from us. It’s proving a superb way to tap into the opportunity of people raising their hands asking to hear from you (for some of our SaaS clients we’ve taken this to very elaborate levels of personalization but I’ll leave that for an entire blog post). This article by leadpages provides great tips on how to craft that initial welcome emails, what to pay attention to and pitfalls to avoid. I learned a few new things and I think it’s a good read.

How we leverage out of the office responses to generate 42% more meetings

This post by amplemarket is actually a great example of inbound marketing done right. The guys at amplemarket provide great tips on how to turn lemons to lemonades when it comes to out of office auto responders (let’s admit that at most, sales teams typically add a task to follow up when the person they’re trying to reach returns). The post opens up your mind with actionable tips on how to take action on the spot. They explain by using their own tools (the great inbound marketing part) but it’s of course possible to also apply with other tools. At the very least, it’ll give you food for thought.

Crafting a sales deck that sells

In a brilliantly written and structured article, Gilles DC shares golden gems for one of the most important resources of any company – the sales deck. So much has been written on the subject and this article truly stood out for me (and I’m no stranger to the topic – I’ve taken several sales courses both online and offline. As well as several HubSpot trainings and bootcamps). For the impatient readers (who isn’t) Gilles also adds a TLDR to every section of the post. I admit I initially planned on skimming and only reading those but ended up settling to read the full version. You welcome.

Is staying above the fold still relevant in website design

This one was an eye opener for me. I’ve been religious about stuffing all messaging above the fold and in this post Liz Murphy made me rethink this. She says “We may live in a world where buyers are doing their damnedest to avoid talking to someone in sales…” The major takeaway here is that people are more focused on engaging with a brand and educating themselves. They’re ready and expecting to spend time scrolling and absorbing information on your website to help them evaluate if you’re the right match for them.

Tapping into the daily habits of your readers with audio content

Ok this last one isn’t a feedly/zest discovery. Trinity Audio are a client and working tightly with them I’ve become a huge advocate of the audio revolution going on these days. In this post you’ll learn why it’s crucial to at least consider providing your readers with an audio experience.

That just about wraps it up. I hope you’ll find these content pieces as valuable as I did. If there are blogs you recommend following, remember that sharing is caring.

E-A-T rating is one significant aspect of Google’s continuing attempts to “make” businesses, brands, and content creators of all kinds create useful content by focusing on quality. Because quality can be subjective, the search engine company uses Quality Rater Guidelines to make the content better for actual human users, instead of search engines (those guidelines are super underrated if you ask me – I’m willing to guess most people don’t know they’re public domain).

So, the emphasis is on:

• Expertise
• Authority
• Trustworthiness

Why is this important?

Basically, Google’s mantra goes like this:

Highest quality sites and pages have a very high level of expertise OR are highly authoritative OR highly trustworthy 

In other words, if you’re looking to score a quick win, you’re outta’ luck. Going by E-A-T’s framework means taking time to build and nurture as it implies a gradual growth of a positive/relevant online presence in the most natural way. So, focusing on these three pillars is the smart thing to do if you want your pages to rank high for the most relevant search queries in your industry.

How do you create E-A-T content?

When it comes to page quality rating, the main thing is to understand the true purpose of the page. Hence, having a beneficial purpose for any type of website means providing valuable information on a specific topic. In turn, it means your hypothetical E-A-T rating will boost your chances of ranking well.

Now we come to the interesting stuff: what makes you an expert and authority on a particular subject, and trustworthy at that?

Expertise refers to being knowledgeable AND communicating effectively – knowing what’s what while engaging your audience through optimal delivery. To create expert content, you need to perform keyword research to figure out what your audience is looking for, and then try to understand their intent. It’s crucial to find that sweet spot: not too simple and not overly comprehensive. As always, make your content easily digestible through the magic of formatting and visual/aural aids.

Authority relates to being a source of information for relevant topics in your industry. Naturally, that largely includes linking or more precisely, building domain authority through links from equally high-ranking E-A-T websites. Besides that, simple mentions and consistent social shares are also signs of increasing authority.

Trustworthiness is a bit trickier as it includes a number of things. Some, like having positive reviews for your business or lack of any form of negativity attached are fairly obvious. Others, like having a clear privacy policy and ToS or proper implementation of HTTPS, are not. Everything matters, from a physical location attached to the business to linking out to other authority sites.

Quick tips on how to improve your E-A-T ranking

If you’re in the habit of sharing information, here’s what you can do to incrementally grow in the eyes of Google:

• Have an author and bio included – Google wants to know who is behind the wall of text so it can “check” it has the necessary expertise and grade content accordingly.
• Build your personal brand – while it won’t hurt you per se, it will place other authors with a positive reputation ahead of you. Use storytelling to connect with your audience, interact with it on social media, and always post on trusted platforms to earn third-party endorsements.
• Trim or tweak low E-A-T content – now this can actually hurt you in terms of your website’s overall score. In cases where you can’t attribute your page(s) to an expert/authority, it’s best to just cut them

Pro tip: add your personal touch (experience, events, stories, etc) to show you’re an expert on yourself (and it works like a charm).

That would be a quick rundown of the E-A-T ranking. It’s a holistic approach, an ongoing process of fine-tuning your content so that the right pages rank well. Do it right and others will have a tough time taking you down from the top search results.

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No, it’s not stocking up on toilet paper, masks, or alcogel. It’s not even to get ready for the worst situation possible. It’s not buying zoom stocks or BioMed stocks. It’s not about our relationship with China and not about public safety. It’s about us and how we communicate. Applying this one lesson will make everything we do easier. We can improve the way we communicate, we can influence better and easier,  we can create new relationships faster and in a more meaningful way.

As a leadership coach at Intel, I work with many managers. In conversations with managers some have told me how much they miss people around them and it is weird to communicate through the skype all day long. There is an unseen magic the two people communicate face to face. We haven’t noticed the need for connection until it was taken from us.

Usually marketers are experienced communicators. Covid-19 created an opportunity to communicate in a better way, not just because we have changed but because our audiences have changed. Let’s examine how.

When we first were forced to stay at home, our regular life routines were interrupted, the fear of the unknown took over many. How else can you explain people howling toilet paper? For a week we were ok, maybe two. Then, when the understanding that the quarantine can take months took place, we started to feel uncomfortable. It’s not just the fear for our job, the fear of the unknown. It was also the need to communicate and be around people.

Two months ago, If I asked all of the leaders I ever coached how they feel in front of a camera, I’m pretty sure 90% of them would feel highly uncomfortable.  Yesterday, I spoke with my partner on skype using only audio. After ten minutes into the call, we reflected on how weird it is to have only a “phone call” and not using video after we have used video in so many meetings and zoom events in the past month. Just a “phone call” felt weird and disconnected. We have all changed!

The required quarantine helped us discover our need for human connection, out need to be heard to feel that we belong. Feeling alone, people re-created their businesses using online tools, attended late night parties, exercised and attended lectures, birthdays and weddings, all virtual. Human interaction and our need to share experiences together is stronger than anything else in our life. This is in line with the Adlerian theory that all of our actions are driven from the need to feel that we belong. It is the same need that makes us run home and tell our loved ones when something good has happened or call our best friend when bad things happen. We need to share our world, be heard and accepted.

When the need to connect is amplified, we have an opportunity as communicators to tune into this need in a deeper and more meaningful way. Here are some practical ways to practice our relationship building and improving our communications:

Listen to reflect

When we listen to reflect, as opposed to listen to respond, or listen to solve, we give the other person a feeling that they are heard and that we understand what they say. To practice that, begin your sentence with “It sounds like” or “It looks like”.   For example, if your client tells you “I’m so busy, I don’t have a lot of time” reflect and say “It sounds like you’re under a lot of pressure. I’ll make it short so you can go and take care of the most important things to you. Maybe I can even help you with it if they are relevant to our conversation”

Listening with the purpose of reflecting trains us to listen in a much deeper way. With time, you will hear what is said between the lines. It quiets our inner conversation and bias and opens us to a new level of listening.

People judge based on actions not intent.

There are many stories of deals that were signed with a handshake. Those are based on mutual trust.

The fastest way to build trust is to declare your intent. If you don’t declare it up front, the person in front of you will fill that space with their own interpretation of your intent. For example: “I wanted to speak with you because I left our last call with a strange feeling that something was not right. I care about our relationship and I wanted to learn if I have done something wrong”

Communicate with a person, not with a role

Remember that people are more than their role. They have experiences, opinions, stories of hardships, joy and pain. They can tell you stories about the challenges they experienced. Just like you can. When communicating with others, share as much as you can about yourself and let them an opportunity to get to know you beyond your role, they will in return share with you about themselves if they feel safe. In one of my management roles, our main customer was a tough person to work with. He run his group and technical domain without anyone to challenge him. When I came on board, I scheduled some time with him and was curious about his role and about who he was. I soon discovered he served in the Israeli army reserve duties in roles I was familiar with. We very fast turned to share our stories from our army service and found many shared experiences. Very fast we became good friends and our business relationships was very efficient. It doesn’t mean he didn’t give me and my team a hard time. He did, but it was always in a friendly way and focused on the technical details and requirements. Finding what we share together created a bond that supported the business.

Final thoughts,

We all want to belong, to communicate with others and share our experiences. Understanding that we all share the same basic needs and that especially today, more than ever, we’re looking for human connection, creates an opportunity to strengthen our relationships, to communicate in a deeper way. Improving our communication skills can create better opportunities for everyone, both in business and in life.

What have you learned about human connection in the last month?

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