“Messaging” to audience vs. letting audience draw conclusions

I liked the differentiation between messages and conclusions by Leo Bottary here.  Once I got over the blog’s name — relentlessPR, which evokes a visceral reaction from the project/operations guy in me — I found some interesting posts.

Last year, I met with a leadership team…who were interested in fine-tuning their key messages. Specifically, the key messages that would help separate themselves from their competitors … Sound familiar?

Yes indeed, project managers are often very keen on crafting messages: what they want to say about themselves or their projects.  However, these end up being a series of assertions coming from the “inside -> out.”  To get around this, Leo challenged this group to:

tell [him] the three things they’d like a prospect to conclude about their company and to consider what it would take to accomplish this….  They immediately grasped the difference between key messages (what they would say about themselves) and [helping the prospect] reach the desired conclusions about the company.  For example, if you want your prospect to conclude that you’re creative, saying so isn’t going to cut it…

We try to get folks to focus story-telling in presentations, for getting a client to “let me tell him/her a story” is the foundation for gaining credibility. The “moral(s)” of the story are the conclusions we want the client to convince him/herself of.  Because…

The fact is, when you tell them you’re good, the audience (more often than not) is likely to conclude that you’re not as good as you think you are.