I’ve been thinking a lot about the saying: you can’t read the label from inside the jar.
For one, it’s a little funny to imagine a person inside a peanut butter jar. (I always picture a peanut butter jar. Don’t ask me why. I don’t know!)
But more importantly, it’s a succinct reminder about how often we lack objectivity about ourselves, and by extension, our work.
This lack of objectivity is why practically anyone consults with an external party who is typically (but not always) an expert in their field.
It’s why my friend works with a personal trainer to update her fitness and nutritional plans.
It’s why I work with editors and collaborators on client work, rather than working solo.
And it’s also why you might consider bringing in a consultant to develop your messaging strategy and brand voice.
Still, I’ve heard “we think developing our messaging strategy and brand voice is better handled internally” more times than I can count.
It’s a reasonable belief to hold, especially if you have strong marketers in-house.
But there’s one big tradeoff when you develop messaging strategy and brand voice internally:
You lose objectivity.
Your internal team’s closeness is a double-edged sword. Closeness can make you overlook important ideas and misinterpret research inputs because you already know “all the things.” And you can’t unknow what you know. As a result, it’s challenging for you to anticipate how specific choices in either your positioning or messaging or brand voice will land with a prospect or buyer who doesn’t know what you know. (This is also why messaging validation is really important.)
On the other hand, external specialists (like me) bring more objectivity to your messaging strategy. We aren’t burdened by the curse of knowledge. Specialists do more reps per year than most internal teams will do. Those additional reps let us pattern-match against similar clients and projects, so you get recommendations based on what we’ve seen work.
Still, let’s say you can’t bring in an external partner. Then what?
Assuming your research protocols are already locked in, you can structure your project (and process) so that you intentionally increase objectivity. Here are my three favorite ways to increase objectivity without bringing in external partners.
1) Lengthen your project timeline.
I know, I know. You needed your messaging strategy nailed down yesterday. Slowing down your strategy development cycle has obvious tradeoffs, but it’s one of the simplest ways to increase objectivity. Use the additional time to let your ideas rest. This is my greatest revision and editing tip. Time cures fuzzy ideas.
(This is also why I regularly work with an editor and collaborators. The luxury of extra time isn’t always possible.)
2) Build a cross-functional, mixed-tenure feedback panel.
This approach ensures you get feedback from people with a mix of knowledge levels and experience.
To build your panel, include at least 2 people from Sales, Customer Success and Product (in addition to some folks from Marketing):
Someone who’s been at the company for over a year. This person’s time at the company gives them access to a broader range of experiences to pattern match against. (This is not an alternative to buyer research, but it can be a helpful way to cross-examine ideas you may think are novel, when in fact they’ve already been tried.)
Someone who’s newer to the company (ideally 3-6 months max). This person still remembers what it was like to know nothing about the product, what surprised them about it, what they were confused about, etc.
Together, you get a team that’s less burdened by the curse of knowledge AND has enough experience to pattern-match (at least when it comes to internal approaches, product development, and the buyers you’re selling to).
3) Involve C-Suite later in the strategy development process.
C-Suite will likely want to be involved at some point. Delay this moment as long as possible.
Reason being that C-Suite typically pulls rank. This may cause you to miss otherwise important ideas and feedback from your cross-functional, mixed-tenure panel, which puts overall objectivity at risk all over again.
The caveat to this is if you’re working with a strong founder-led brand where the founder holds mission-critical customer knowledge you can’t get anywhere else (e.g., sales recordings, onboarding recordings, etc.).
Ideally, you do all three (add time, build a strong feedback panel and involve C-Suite later in the process).
But if you can’t add time, then building a solid feedback panel and delaying C-Suite involvement becomes even more important. Because you will lack the objectivity you would otherwise gain from extra time.
Again, this isn’t necessarily one-for-one with what an external specialist brings to the table, but it does increase your overall objectivity (so you can finally read that dang label).
‘Til next week,
Carolyn
P.S. Later this month, I’ll be releasing a messaging trends and opportunities report for sales-led healthcare SaaS, co-authored with Andrew Yedlin (Tested). The study synthesizes the analysis of 121 homepage heroes to flag the industry patterns nearly everyone is using and the opportunities we see to stand out.
Join the waitlist and get the report the moment it's live.
Before you go…
My firm (Boxcar) helps sales-led B2B software companies translate their proven sales motion into a clear positioning and messaging strategy.
Interested in working together? Reach out via this form.