The Power of Three

(April 2006) Everyone has a story — if you’re in sales, you need to be able to tell yours with clarity, passion and brevity.

Can you?

We live in a world saturated by communications, yet the majority of advisors today speak and write less effectively than ever. Overwhelmed with information, they try and cut through the clutter to deliver relevant content to their clients and prospects within increasingly short windows of time.

Much of the time, they fail.

Too often, their essential narrative — their story — isn’t well told and thus isn’t well understood. As a result, sales opportunities are lost. But help is at hand. It comes in the form of a remarkably simple technique, a template if you will, that’s been used to organize great communication for hundreds of years. Abraham Lincoln used it in the Gettysburg Address. The best speakers in the world still do.

It’s called The Power of Three.

Effective story telling is all about intelligent decision-making. What information does your client or prospect require to fully understand your offering? What can your story do without?

The Power of Three helps you make the right decisions about what goes in your story, and what needs to stay out. It facilitates the arrangement of information, however complex, within three main categories — context, action and vision.

The number three wields amazing power in communication — we organize, explain and retain information most efficiently when it’s arranged in ‘threes’, even from an early age. Indeed, children are often better communicators than adults because they think and speak in threes. Free of the complexities of grown-up lives, they haven’t matured to the point where they fear simplicity — they embrace it.

And simplicity is at the core of The Power of Three. Let’s examine the categories within the template system to understand how each plays a vital role in the formulation of an elementary yet effective story.

Context

Context, or background, is the most valuable and under-utilized ingredient of modern day communication. Just as a building needs a solid foundation, your story requires the underpinning that context provides.

Your clients and prospects won’t fully comprehend or appreciate your offering until they’re informed of your expertise and experience. So tell them here. However, they also need to know why they should care about the interaction in the first place. Sales presentations often go off the rails right out of the gate because advisors never let their listeners know what’s in it for them.

At the outset, an advisor needs to state: "This is who I am. This is my expertise and experience. And this is why what I’m about to tell you is important to you."

Action

Action has to do with specific benefits you can provide, and it’s at the heart of The Power of Three. You can disseminate a great deal of information in the action category, but it needs to be clearly organized. Remember that you’re telling a story, and that your clients and prospects need to be with you every step of the way.

Focus on their needs. To keep them compelled, limit your action or benefit points to the power number — three. For example, you might say: "By working together, we’ll achieve your financial goals for retirement, succession and philanthropy." Then you can expand upon each point.

Speak within the time allotted. That will demonstrate organization, discipline and courtesy.

Vision

You need to close with impact. Articulating an exciting vision will help — for example, of a prospect’s greatly enhanced situation five or 10 years from now, working with you. By abdicating vision, you can sap the energy right out of The Power of Three.

Of course, you always need to include a definitive call to action. What do you want the client or prospect to do? Consent to another meeting? Study your plan? Sign on the dotted line? Unless you ask, it won’t happen.

The Power of Three provides you with the blueprint for telling your story. Now, it’s up to you to bring it to vibrant life.

Jim Gray, a Toronto-based communication skills coach, prepares senior executives to deliver business-building speeches, presentations and pitches. jgray@mediastrategy.ca; Tel. (416) 603-9994.

(04/03/06)