In a world full of information, clear communication can be the key to success in B2B marketing.
Steve Woodruff, who has over three decades of experience in sales, marketing and consulting, shares his knowledge and experience on how to cut through the noise and create a meaningful connection with your audience.
Steve is an experienced practitioner who has refined his approach to communication across platforms – from email to presentations. His latest book, The point, is designed as a practical guide to clear communication, packed with actionable tactics that go beyond theory.
Some key takeaways from this episode:
Meaning of the subject line. The battle for attention begins in the email inbox. Steve emphasizes the importance of the email subject line and first sentence, advocating for immediacy and relevance to capture immediate interest.
Simplification. Steve advises against overloading messages with multiple topics. Instead, focus on a single topic per communication to improve response rates and engagement, he recommends.
Universal principles. The principles of clear communication apply not just to marketers, but to everyone. The goal is to engage the human brain by answering the fundamental question: “What’s in it for me?”
Steve’s insights are a call to improve our communications strategies in all aspects of business and beyond.
Check out the video for more details and the full podcast (link below the video) for the entire insightful conversation.
Don’t miss future episodes: Subscribe to the Marketing Smarts Live Show on YouTube. And to catch up on all the previous episodes, check them out full playlist on YouTube.
Episode details, guest information and referenced links
Episode #79
Guest social media profiles:
MarketingProfs resources referenced in the show:
“In B2B News” article referenced in the show:
“From the #mpb2b Community” links referenced in the show:
Transcript: Harnessing the Power of B2B Communication by Getting to the Point, with Steve Woodruff
Hello to all my Marketing Smarts Live viewers today. I’m so excited to bring you another great episode of the Marketing Smarts Live show.
This week’s topic is about harnessing the power of B2B communication by getting to the point.
So if you’re ready to start learning, buckle up and get ready to rock and roll.
Hey, I’m your boy George B. Thomas, speaker, trainer, catalyst and host of this show, the Marketing Smarts Live Show as well as the Marketing Smarts Podcast found on your favorite podcast app.
Our guest clips today are brought to you by none other than Steve Woodruff.
Steve Woodruff is the “King of Clarity.” Steve’s 37 years at the forefront of sales, marketing, consulting and entrepreneurship have uniquely qualified him to guide others in the principles and practices of clear and effective communication.
Steve has extensive experience in corporate training and workshop facilitation for a variety of companies, from startups to top 5 pharmaceutical companies. He is the author of the business book Clarity Wins and his new book The Point.
Remember, Steve Woodruff’s clips today are from the full Marketing Smarts podcast episode. If you would like to listen to the full interview with Steve Woodruff and me, be sure to tune in to the Marketing Smarts podcast. Link to the full broadcast will be included in the description below after the live show ends.
In this episode I speak again with Steve Woodruff about harnessing the power of B2B communication by getting to the point.
Steve: Absolutely. That’s what this book is about. This book is packed with actionable tactics on how to make these things happen. I don’t keep it theoretical or academic, but rather go straight into how to send emails, how to create presentations, how to brand, and how to lead effectively.
You can apply these principles to every single form and modality of communication. In fact, the most radical thing about this book is that it was actually written for eight billion people. We all have competition, the noise and distraction, we all have a customer, the human brain, and we all have a formula, a set of rules and tools to use to win. This is a book for everyone.
The lowest hanging fruit when I run my workshops with my corporate clients is email. We all send emails, we all fight the email inbox battle. The most important visual feature is the subject line and the first sentence. If you don’t include the subject line and the first sentence tells me an important, interesting, immediate, or actionable point, you’re competing with dozens of other emails streaming into my inbox.
What do we do with an inbox? We skim and delete. That’s the point of the opportunity. You can differentiate your message by highlighting the most important thing right in the subject line. That’s the most immediate change someone can make: hitting and layering your messages quickly, getting the distilled essence, the top of the pyramid right in the first visual space, and then you can move on to the details later.
We’ll get back to Steve Woodruff and his thoughts on “Navigating the Power of B2B Communication by Getting to the Point,” but first I have to ask…
Are you part of the MarketingProfs community? If not, become part of the MarketingProfs community by going to mprofs.com/mptoday – that’s mprofs.com/mptoday.
Now it’s time for one of my favorite sections…
In B2B News we talk about current B2B news or really important tips that we find in the Google News tab about you and your B2B company. This week the title is…
Industry jargon is the silent killer of B2B marketing by Jessica Marie
A subtle but pervasive problem is emerging in the B2B marketing space, ironically one of the industry’s own making.
Clarity and meaning have become casualties of an ongoing war of words that often serve little purpose beyond meeting content quotas or meeting superficial engagement metrics.
As marketing professionals, we pride ourselves on our ability to craft compelling narratives and transform the mundane into the extraordinary. But in this endeavor, we have inadvertently created our own Achilles’ heel: an overreliance on jargon and buzzwords that clarify rather than clarify, obscure our vision, and render our messages virtually meaningless.
It costs us our customers and ultimately our bottom line.
To read this article, click the link below when the live show is over.
So let’s get back to Steve Woodruff and his “Marketing Smarts” podcast episode.
Steve: It’s always the default: “I need to say more. I need to add more. I need to provide more details. I need to have an email with three different elements instead of one element.”
In fact, one of the other major changes I’ve made in my own life is that I used to tend to be more verbose in my emails and think that you have to tell people everything. Well, the more topics or points you have in an email, the harder it is for someone to respond to it.
Now almost all of my emails are very topic-related, in short: here’s what I want, here’s what I’m looking for, please give me this answer. The responsiveness is very different than someone having to work through and try to figure out what are the three points that Steve gives me and which one is important and I have to find that one. Do you know what’s easier? Just wait, wait. That’s what’s killing us, too much information, people shut themselves out. I don’t want to exclude people.
When I give a presentation, when I write a book, when I write a blog post, when we do a podcast, I want someone to feel immediately engaged. I have this one sweet spot, this one moment of truth where I have to make sure I have you and that means I have to give what’s in it for me right away. You know from sales that for me it depends on what’s in it. Explain to people the benefits, not the function. In fact, it’s not just about sales, but about communication.
The brain asks a question, the brain’s operating system has a front-end question: “What’s in it for me?” That’s why we need to lead with relevance. What the human brain wants, particularly the reticular activating system, which is the main filter that takes us from 11,000,000 to 60 bits, the RAS is the focus engine, and what it wants is what’s in it for me right now. So you need to lead your communication with something that grabs people.
We’ll get back to Steve Woodruff in a few minutes, but first it’s time for something…
Dope B2B learnings from the Vault of MarketingProfs articles
That’s right, it’s time to dig into the treasure trove of valuable information and pull out two golden nuggets that will help you become a better B2B marketer.
This week’s first article is: Five Components of Effective Sales and Marketing Communications by Mark Organ
Communication is just as important in business relationships as it is in personal relationships. Most marketers are aware of this, but many do not know how and when to properly convey their message to potential customers.
In today’s demanding market, overcoming communication barriers is critical – especially early in the sales process. It is becoming increasingly obvious that the competition for customers is won or lost at the top of the sales funnel.
How does a company stand out from the rest? Check out the article and find out.
This week’s second article is: Five Tips for Effective Communication with Distributed Teams by Hellene Yelda-Garcia
Flexible working was normal for Hellene long before the pandemic. In fact, most of her career in the video collaboration industry has been hybrid.
Hellene’s first experience working from home came in 2007 when Codian, the company she was part of, was acquired by another company, Tandberg. At that time, she was given the choice of moving closer to the new headquarters or doing my work remotely.
She chose the latter, and so began a steep learning curve as she experimented with ways to connect with her office teammates from my home office.
To help her, she had video conferencing equipment that was state of the art for her time. And yet she often felt like a fly on the wall, just one step away from the action.
Would you like to continue learning? If so, check out the links in the description below after the live show to get access to both great MarketingProfs articles.
OK, back to Steve Woodruff… Let’s dive back into this conversation about harnessing the power of B2B communications by getting to the point
Steve: Measuring success begins with defining your cause. You have to start with the end in mind. The reason we start by having a point is because if you want to go from A to B, you have to know what B is. This is the result, this is what we are looking for.
Whether it’s the opening rates of an email, whether it’s about people passing exams after training, whether it’s about children obeying their parents – it affects every single level: we have to know what we’re aiming for, and then see if we can achieve a result. But there is no way to measure an outcome that is vague. You can’t measure fog. Often we just throw smoke out there and have no idea if we succeeded because there is no way to even know what we were trying to do.
I’ve never said that before, you can’t measure fog. I like it. How do you measure fog?
We’ll hear some words of wisdom from Steve Woodruff here in a few minutes, but now it’s time to shine the spotlight on you, the MarketingProfs community. Yes, time for…
From the #MPB2B community
We’ve searched far and wide in the #MPB2B universe to find amazing information and conversations to bring to the masses.
So firstly, make sure you use the hashtag and secondly, make sure you are having fun and adding value to the community.
We will then put you or your crew in the spotlight on the show. This week it is…
But you have to look at the description and click the link to view the post and read or learn more!
Marketing Smarts viewers, I have to ask: will you be next in the spotlight?
Remember, community, use the hashtag #mpb2b on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter and let your awesomeness be spotlighted on the next or future episode of the Marketing Smarts Live show!
Pro tip: It wouldn’t hurt if you tag me in your post too. I’m @georgebthomas on LinkedIn and Twitter.
Okay, let’s go back to Steve Woodruff and say a few words of wisdom on this topic “Navigating the Power of B2B Communication by Getting to the Point”.
Here’s what Steve Woodruff wanted to leave us with…
Steve: I’ll give you one. This will probably make your head spin a little, but I’ve heard this quoted by more than one person. Dave Ramsey, the financial guru, uses it all the time. He says to be unclear is to be unkind. When we are unclear about our intentions, our expectations, and our words, we are actually being unkind. Clarity is a form of love. Being able to tell the truth or whatever with clear words and intentions is love.
I believe that the way to be considerate of people is to actually speak in a way that people understand and know where you are going and what is going on, whether they are teachers, preachers, business leaders or politicians.
A lot of politicians practice obfuscation, that is, they obfuscate because they don’t really want to be clear, but man, I’d like to have more and more leaders who know exactly what they’re saying and say it right, just say it. Say it briefly so we actually know where we’re going.
Did you enjoy today’s trip? Let us know and use the hashtag #mpb2b on the platform you join us on.