The “Core Narrative,” or corporate pitch, serves an extremely valuable purpose as the central organizing ingredient of your Corporate Identity. A great Core Narrative can dramatically improve training, client access, closing ratios, profitability, and more. The cost of training new personnel or sales staff can take a huge amount of resources and time. Teaching someone all the subtleties of why a prospect should buy their product or service can be a daunting task. A Core Narrative uses data and story telling as a retention assistant and motivator. Suddenly, this manager, employee or client can describe and train an outsider how to REALLY sell this product in one brief conversation while passing through all the necessary strategy and information. It creates the basis for easy sales rapport and consistency throughout many company departments.
The fundamental concepts of the Core Narrative are simple. When you present your Core Narrative to a prospect two things happen:
1. You will favorably alter prospects buying criteria or biases by utilizing research, information, fear and excitement.
2. You will gain unqualified credibility, respect, and trust by demonstrating your depth of knowledge of the marketplace, and your understanding of their business.
Building a Core Narrative isn't easy. Creating greatness never is. If you want to be the ultimate player in your market, you have to take the time to carefully craft a “Core Narrative”, using data as a powerful access vehicle, as well as an urgent motivator for your otherwise slow moving clients to make faster and more urgent decisions. Before you read these steps and become discouraged, there is a group that simply does this for you.
All you have to do is answer 60 to 90 minutes worth of questions about your industry and your products. Four to six weeks later, presto, they come back to you with a KILLER presentation; filled with poignant and significant research about your products, services and markets. This firm will return with not just the research, not just the facts, but visually arresting graphics.
It is critical that this is research your client will find fascinating. Research that is compelling enough to get you more meetings, grab the attention of prospects, and strategically position your company as the leader in your industry. And most critically, research that is highly motivating to get your clients to want to buy from you—and research that, “sets the buying criteria” where YOU are the MOST logical choice. YOU are the ONLY one from whom these prospects want to buy.
Yes, a KILLER presentation has graphics on every panel. Vivid visuals, photo's that quadruple the impact of your words, graphs that visually illustrate your points, pie charts that point out their problems, and dollar signs in all the right places to show them how you help them save, earn or increase some area of their world.
85% of the information in the brain is taken in through the eyes. Studies show that visuals add four times the communication experience. So don't even think about presenting anything to anyone if you're not going to use captivating visual aids.
We began this research process many years ago when we were building master corporate identities for our large clients. Clients would pay $40,000 to build these and we would hire-out the research to an elite team of top researchers. Our group would compile the research data and begin to see where we could piece together the disconnected pieces of raw data to create the “What? Wow!” reaction. Find the horrible news that would activate and motivate, while at the same time juxtapose the information to position our clients as the clear industry leader and expert. This process is important and can be very difficult. If your market is gruelingly competitive, a corporate pitch that educates and motivates buyers is clearly the only path to domination.
Below is information about creating your own Core Narrative, and if this process seems overwhelming you can call our team at Research Maxx who can do a turn key job. Over the years this group has become very efficient at building these Core Narratives and is offered at a very reasonable cost even for the small business. You give them an interview and they turn around and give you an awesome Core Narrative, fully illustrated with your logo on every panel. If you want to know how you might utilize this service or you're not sure, it's free to talk to one of our consultants or contact Research Maxx directly.
They are little known outside of Mentis One IBC clients, because most companies are not wise enough to effectively utilize research data, and this is to your benefit. So what once cost $40,000 to produce, you can now receive for a fraction of that cost, affordable by almost any company or individual looking to super-charge their business.
You can reach Research Maxx at www.researchmaxx.com or by going to our website, www.mentisone.com or call to set an appointment at 800-381-3039 or from overseas 702-286-5994.
Developing Your Own Core Narrative
Building a Core Narrative is a highly engineered art form. This process will create a powerful presentation/document that changes the way you pursue new business, dramatically increase your ability to sell and acquire customers, and create a central story for your whole company to use in unison.
How Your Core Narrative is Built
A Core Narrative is built utilizing a dynamic process with a few key steps.
- 1. Explore and analyze your company, your marketplace, competition, and the issues that are ‘road-blocking' your ability to grow and acquire customers.
- 2. Develop and review story objectives, definitions of current and new buying criteria.
- Begin to draft several outlines of your possible Core Narrative. (many times if you write multiple drafts, you will be able to take parts of a few great ideas and create the ultimate narrative for you)
- 3. Create a research and investigation plan to search and gather the information that will alter current buying criteria and your position in the marketplace. (This research should be done over a long period of time. The best research is usually found over a 20-30 year period.)
- 4. Do extensive research that provides data, statistics, investigative studies, and conclusive information to support the key Core Narrative topics, and to set up new buying criteria.
- 5. Analyze, construction and manipulate the research and information to define, prove, and demonstrate the key topics of your narrative.
- 6. Composition of the Core Narrative. Remember this story should result in a logical, emphatic and decisive discussion of the key topics.
- 7. Create graphic designs bring the story to life. These graphics must be self-explanatory and tell the story you want. They must grab the viewer and demand their attention.
- Build a Power Point document with dramatic copy, graphics and photography.
- 8. Final review and polishing of the story to insure a “read friendly”, coherent, and compelling presentation.
Manipulation of that data is the most difficult part of it. It is an art form onto itself. Stack the info, cross reference the info, blend it with other info, etc. Begin all original panels on 3X5 index cards in pencil. This way you can erase info, and keep shifting the order of how you want to present the info, all in a delicate balance of insight that eventually leads to that prospect wanting YOUR product or service over all of your competitors.
Do NOT pitch your product until the very end. You want the material in the front and 3/4 through to all be a “set up.” Then somewhere toward the end, you want a section that says: “What to look for in X type of provider.” At this point you would present all this data about yourself without really saying it's you. In the telephone company example, they presented: “What to look for in your telephone system provider” and they had five things and every one of them set them up to be the most logical provider.
A great title is critical. Here's a great title for everyone: “The Five Most Dangerous Trends Facing all (your prospect's type of company or issue here) XYZ Type Companies/consumers.”
The second panel is always “Areas Covered,” and is used as a teaser and pre-sell opportunity. It should make their mouth water with anticipation. The rest of the layout and ideas on graphics and how to utilize them is
As we said earlier this is a daunting process for first timers and for a reasonable cost we want to introduce you to Research Maxx.
Research Maxx
Research Maxx is a unique company that has broken through the barriers of information, time, technology, cost, and research methodology. Research Maxx produces the incredible business tool known as the CORPORATE IDENTITY. The Core Narrative is a fresh, new approach to your company's positioning and leadership in the marketplace.
Research Maxx combines two key elements: world-class strategic expertise and front-running information technology.
The senior core team at Research Maxx has over “6 careers” worth of senior management, marketing, and strategic accomplishments. We are former CEO's, Senior Management Marketing, and Sales Officers who have performed in a wide variety of primary industries, from fast food to big oil.
Research Maxx runs at the frontiers of the information age, with capabilities to access most of the information in the world on any given topic.
The group goes to work organizing, interpreting and working the information. When clarity and purpose have been developed from the information bank, we then create and present compelling concepts and conclusions.
These concepts and conclusions are then applied to the client, redefining their markets' buying criteria, and uniquely positioning them as the clear, stand-alone, superior choice.
The commitment is a team dedicated to masterful research and data manipulation with an energetic approach to a creating compelling story. The Research Maxx's process is complex, hyper-strategic, elegant and creative. It works. Research Maxx has no peers.
Deployment Package –
Production and delivery of your Core Narrative. Your Core Narrative will be ‘packaged' in a Master version. From this Master story, you can create an e-mail, slide show, printed and web versions, along with other formats. With these functions you can immediately reproduce and deploy your story in virtually every possible method.
Research Maxx will provide you with a 20 page tactical planning and instruction booklet to assist you in deploying your Core Narrative.
Timing--Research Maxx will deliver, start-to-finish, in 4-6 weeks.
Cost--There is a fixed, economical, all-inclusive price of a Core Narrative. This price includes all of the steps and tasks to create and delivery your Core Narrative.
To explore the dramatic results that a Core Narrative will produce, and have a personal consultation to determine what package is right for you, contact our CEO, Christopher Montgomery, to set up a phone a free consultation.
Now, that said, if you cannot afford a four figure investment to simply have someone do this for you, read over this section again and press forward.
In summary, your core narrative can accelerate:
Sales
Marketing
Hiring
Training
Client access
Decision making process
Appointment setting
Closing%
Rapport opportunities
Increased credibility
And so much more. If you build it, they will buy!
To your success!
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