Pictured to the left is the Capital Tower in Singapore where I completed the Value Proposition workshop on Day 10.  In the class we have people from all over the APAC region including local Singaporean, people from Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, and others.  As you can see, the city if very modern much like my home city, Charlotte, North Carolina.

Some of the key points on messaging covered today:

1. The message must lead with predictably urgent issues.  Policy work is rarely urgent where as data theft in progress in highly motivating.

2. The presentation you use to introduce your company must be different!  It must interrupt the thinking of those in attendance, providing some controversial issues to show your unique position.

3. By using testimonies, you build emotion and confidence in your listeners.  You can’t argue with a testimony…

4. It must be concrete – people must be able to picture what you are talking about.  Quoting statistics regarding amounts of data, speed, threat numbers, etc. all use giant numbers – millions, billions, and trillions.  The brain cannot process these large numbers, so you must relate them to tangible things we can see and understand.

5. The message must be simple and short – to the point, yet interesting and unique.

6. All of this takes some work.  You can’t make it up when you get to the meeting.

© 2010, David Stelzl