Break through the Status Quo Barrier - Keynote by Tim Riesterer at Brainshark's Stories that Sell City Tour 2012

1. Breaking the Status Quo Barrier
Convincing your prospects to do
something different

2. Failure to create impact
Only 14% of
“benefits”
14% promoted
create
commercial
impact
86%
Relevant
to Your
Prospect
Unique to You

3. Status
You 60%
Quo
No decision
Yes
Barrier
Ignored ? Invaluable

4. Malcolm Gladwell

5. Scientist for Tipping Point
Morton M. Grodzins

6. What was the difference?

7. What the best are doing different

8. 65 % 35 %
Buying Vision Bake-Off
-3 -2 -1 +1 +2 +3
Status Quo Identify Define Identify Review Make
Threatened New Needs Solution Viable Vendors Approaches Decision
“Why Change?” “Why Us”
• Challenge assumptions • Our promise of what you get
• Define new set of needs • How we do it
• Align w/ Strengths
your • Why we are the best option
SELL A DISTINCT SELL YOUR
POINT OF VIEW VALUE PROPOSITION

9. A decision to change
New Brain
Designed for Analysis
Old Brain
Designed for Survival
Decision-Making Engine

10. Make the Status Quo Unsafe

11. Don’t Call the Baby Ugly

12. Make me Smarter

13. Attention Scarcity
Status
Quo
Barrier

14. “While our access to raw information has
grown exponentially, our time to process this
information has declined rapidly, which has
placed an unprecedented premium
on the act of meaning-making.”
George Dyson (Futurist)

15. • Don’t play 20 questions
• You got 30 seconds to
tell me something I don’t
already know
• You see more people who
look like me than I do
• So act like it!

16. Risk/Loss Aversion
Incumbent Advantage
Status
Attention Scarcity
Quo
Barrier
Change Burden

17. Context Creates Urgency

18. Which would you choose?
A guaranteed gain of $75,000
An 80% chance of gaining $100,000
with a 20% chance of getting nothing

19. Which would you choose?
A certain loss of $75,000
An 80% chance of losing $100,000 with
a 20% chance of not losing anything

20. Change Burden
Status
Quo
Barrier

21. The pains I’m living with…
Are bigger than the pain of change…

22. Incumbent Advantage
Status
Quo
Barrier

23. Find your Contrast

24. Cont
rast
= Va
lue

25. Y Status
YOUR POINT OF VIEW
Quo
Barrier
Y

26. Distinct Point of View

27. The Hero Model
The Hero Model:
based on The Hero with A Thousand Faces
by Joseph Campbell
• The world is normal
• Something changes
• Hero struggles
• Enter: the mentor
• Hero accepts the quest

28. Distinct Point of View

29. Grabbers
• Number Plays
• Metaphors

30. Distinct Point of View
CONTEXT:
Give them enough reason to do
something different

31. Pain and Impact
• Documentation
• Visualization

32. Distinct Point of View

33. Contrast
• Make the
complex,
simple
• Make the
abstract,
concrete

34. Validate your Contrast
Proof Points
• 3rd party testimony
validates story
• External studies

35. Distinct Point of View

36. BRAINSHARK EXAMPLE

37. Who are you going to be?
“People are information-rich and theory-poor.
If you can give them a way of organizing their
experience, then their minds are wide open.”
— Gladwell