I coach corporate sales positioning, value propositions, and strategic selling in white collar environments. My client companies typically offer differentiated, value-based solutions in increasingly crowded spaces. In many regards, they parallel political campaigns. Success hinges on swaying perception.
Every four years The Big Election rolls around, forcefully plowing its way through the decency of our great nation, creating confusion and chaos throughout a constituency that wasn’t confused or chaotic until the political strategists throw smoke bombs to cloud the facts.
Human behavior stems from emotional reaction. Emotions are shaped by a collection of thoughts. Candidates babble on, then listen to pollsters, who tell them what’s working and what is not. From that, the politicians adapt.
Mitt Romney, who started out well to the conservative right, is now far left of where he was when courting the conservative base. Throughout his campaign, flip-flopping has been common. This may not be an admirable personal trait but it certainly is smart politics: If the people don’t like your stance on an issue, modify it. Say something different with a straight face and sell it hard, with conviction.
Romney is very much in the game despite having no initial reason to be so. His team has run a much smarter sales campaign than that of the president. Team Romney has adhered, with smart discipline, to a couple vital sales principles and now stands to possibly reap the payoff.
To understand the dynamics of what’s happened, let’s contrast the primary election with this one.
During the primaries, the Republican party came across as a disjointed collection of misfits with no party identity and no clear leader. They could not even agree on what the party stood for.
Thanks to the biggest war chest, Romney outlasted his foes and survived the primary. He won; but victory was not inspiring. He seemed to be the best of a flawed and forgettable lot, and looked to be cannon fodder for a personable incumbent who had overseen the nation’s resurrection in a slow but inexorable way. The real Republican president, people said, would surface in 2016.
Then things changed, for two reasons: more money and smart messaging. The rich reopened their wallets and Romney’s campaign message was smart and tightly controlled.
Whenever a candidate avoids TV talk shows, you know he is sticking to a carefully crafted image. Romney has not deviated from the script; and it is this great sales discipline and execution that has propelled him from a longshot to a coin toss.
The Republicans galvanized one, single message — jobs — and stuck to it. This focus on a single issue is vital when selling. Romney listened to his coaches and did not dilute that core plank. In the third debate — ostensibly about foreign policy — he’d ignore the questions and talk about jobs.
From a sales messaging standpoint, it was beautiful.
Over and over we hear Romney say with conviction, “I’ll create 12 million jobs!” He does not explain how, nor does Obama or the American people force him. The message Romney is selling remains smartly undiluted: “I’ll create 12 million jobs!” He’s pounding it home, which is brilliant in both simplicity and effectiveness. He echoes one issue and does not dilute.
Dilution occurs when we cast out many ideas, trusting that the sum total of all means our case is stronger by numbers.
Romney avoided the dilution trap. Obama didn’t. He fell for it — a very poor tactical decision — and now is fighting for his political life. Obama’s messages have been scattered. Romney’s message is focused and repetitive: jobs.
In selling, a simple message is better than a complex one. Create a crucial guideline in the mind of the customer — in this case the voter — and pound home that this is what you do. Do that and you will get the order. If they want what you are perceived to do well, you will get the order.
Obama’s initial campaign plan — that more talking points are better — proved to be a very bad tactic. The reason why is that many of the issues he has raised have diluted the importance of his overall argument.
This lack of focus was obvious in the first debate, where Romney surprised many in America by coming across as the more confident, focused candidate. Romney did a terrific job sticking to the game plan. He did not dilute what his team had decided to stake its chances on.
Obama took a different path. He thought the presidency should be about many more things than one issue. Foreign policy, the military, health care for all, dealing with natural disasters — all of these things are part of every Tuesday morning at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Obama put them in the arena for discussion. They thudded. No one cared.
No matter the topic, Romney kept pounding on the strength of his sales message: jobs. Soon it was the central issue of the campaign. Nothing else mattered.
In other words, Romney’s team orchestrated a great piece of salesmanship. Credit Mitt for sticking to and executing the game plan. It’s worked beautifully.
When I mentioned earlier that behaviors are actions fueled by emotions, two diverse emotions typically drive someone to do something — which in this case will be voting for a specific candidate. These are:
- Fear. (ex. We will avoid something bad happening by voting for this person.)
- The pursuit of a positive reward. (ex. We will be better off by voting for this person.)
This election has been all about fear. Scare messages permeate the TV, Internet, newspapers, and radio. Since people are herd animals, they can be turned. They will follow. Fear will do that. Fear creates followers. Hope creates leaders. Fear has driven all sales messaging in this campaign.
Four years ago the president did what Romney is now doing to him: He picked one central issue — hope — and rode it like Secretariat to win the presidency. Hope was a positive motivator. In behavioral terms, the emotion Obama was selling four years ago was the pursuit of a positive reward.
Obama abandoned that strategy this time around, recognizing late that Romney had established perception terms Mitt preferred.
Obama did not opt to sell us on four more years in pursuit of a positive reward. The pollsters told Obama that what got him elected (from a positioning standpoint) four years ago would not work this time around. The president and his team of advisers were misjudged their strategic positioning and panicked a bit when flipping the switch.
In essence they entered a rigorous sales campaign without a smart and vetted strategy.
Because of interrelated strategic gambits, Romney has made a race out of a situation that wasn’t set up to achieve such a lofty result. Hats off to him for good selling. It is amazing what money, friends, and a smart sales campaign can do for a fellow. Especially when that fellow is smart enough to execute the game plan with discipline.
The president — a popular man who shepherded us away from precipice of our nation’s second Great Depression to what is now at least a “new normal” — now finds himself in an uncomfortable position a week away from a general election splashing around in a great big bucket of mess.
Obama came into office inheriting total chaos. He did the noble thing; without bipartisan support he morphed a hopeless economy teetering on the Great Depression II into some semblance of tightroped order. He oversaw the only option he had: borrowing against the future to save companies, quickly create millions of public jobs to offset the private sector loss of millions of others, and buy all of us — Republicans, Democrats, and Independents — time.
On the whole, Obama seemed to have something to sell at reelection time. For whatever reason, he didn’t seem to see it.
Romney, on the other hand, had far less to work with. Yet he maximized his opportunity by executing a very smart sales campaign. He may very well pull of a very unusual double: get drubbed in his home state but pull off a national victory. If he does it, credit the strategy and its execution.
History says incumbents are typically difficult to defeat, unless a big issue takes them down. Obama had the advantage of the presidency but ran a far less effective campaign and has been outsold.November 6 will tell the tale.
Regardless where you stand on the political views of these two good men, do your duty and vote. If we all do, America will make the right choice.