Accentuate the Positive

I have to admit I was surprised to find a positive and upbeat focus.

Leaders in PC's, a tough industry, are positive. HP is helping kids to 'Study Hard and Learn Big'. 'Designed with You in Mind' is a core theme of Dell's enterprise business - that carries over to kids and other users as well. Positive customer upside, no fear in sight. There IS hope out there!

I took a look at IBM. More positive and uplifting promos! 'Dolphins. Tiny Babies, Rocket Scientists. All Are Benefiting from the Power of Stream Computing.' What a happy headline - with a beautiful flash picture of dolphins swimming. The article discusses the great results offered by Stream Computing - featuring real world stories. No SuperFUD here. Just an uplifting and positive promise of opportunity for customers. Now that's a new IBM!

These leaders seem to believe that a positive sales approach will win.

So what keeps some of us stuck in the FUD? I think we get carried along by the current of fear that surrounds us. Read a newspaper, magazine or watch tv news and you'll be transported to the negative zone. Chances are competitors are promoting FUD in our market. We tend to go with the flow, follow suit and follow the crowd.

How do we move past a status quo of fear and negativity? The first step is to transform our thinking. We have to consciously choose to focus on the positive. We must commit to seeking out positive stories and metrics that demonstrate positive value. And then we must act on that commitment.

What if we can't find a compelling value-based approach for our solutions? Then we'd better step back and rethink our solution, our focus, our market and the whole premise of our business. If fear is the only way we can successfully compel a customer to pay attention to us - that doesn't say much for our sustainability. Somebody with a bigger fear message can come along, take the customer and leave us in the dust.

When we offer value, we can leverage real-world cases to sell and market positively. We just have to commit to the search. Here are some of my favorite places to look for positive stories.

• Customers. My bet is that most of your customers bought from you for a positive reason - not because they were afraid of not buying from you. Go beyond the economic buyer to the users. Talk to them, ask them what upside they've enjoyed thanks to working with you. What new opportunity did they uncover, what better way of doing something did they find? What did you do to improve their business lives?

• Partners. Ask your partners the same questions - about their own business and about the customers they've sold your solutions. Get with their own PS and Cs teams, the ones who work with customers day-to-day. Chances are they can offer lots of stories about opportunity and upside.

• Customer Service and Professional Services. If you want to know the real impact you've had on customers - go talk to your service and support team. These folks work with customers to put your solution into action and keep it running. I often find they have the best positive anecdotes of all.

Its just takes a focus on the positive to find the positive. It's as easy to promote the upside of hope as it is to fuel the downside of fear. We just have to choose and commit.

We each make the choice - do we focus on fear or hope?

We can choose to follow the pack and lead with fear - follow the Shock and Awe approach and scare our customers spitless. It's certainly the 'in' thing to do.

Or, we can choose to break free of fear. We can seek out new approaches that power innovation and opportunity. We can focus on helping our customers find new opportunities, improve current practices and solve the problems they already recognize and care about. We can trust that our innovation and expertise will shine through the FUD.

We can take a risk, choose to be different, choose to be positive and hopeful in a market flooded with fear, trapped in FUD. Wow - how sad is it that choosing to move beyond fear may be viewed as risky in our current business environment?

We can be the fuel to help our audiences reach beyond their own fear to find their next opportunity. Or we can be the ones to scare them spitless.

Think about that.