The Executive Voice

This is the Sixth and final week of a series called ‘Communicate like a …‘, where we look at how professionals outside of tech communicate and what we can learn from their approach.

Communicate like a POLITICAL STRATEGIST

Political strategists are trained to communicate in hostile conditions. They operate amid noise, scrutiny, competing narratives, limited attention, emotional audiences, and aggressive opposition. Every word can be lifted, shortened, attacked, repeated or turned into a headline.

The tech industry (particularly big tech) is also under the microscope and/or the target of attacks on social platforms (sometimes even physical - e.g., Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI). Tech is also subject to misinformation risks, deepfakes, community mobilisation (e.g., resistance to data centres), and real-time public reaction.

 Role Requirement: Shape The Message

The political strategists’ job isn’t simply to “get the message out.” It’s about deciding what people need to believe, feel, remember, and do.

This isn’t about smoke and mirrors. It’s about controlling the narrative. Because if you don’t, then someone else or the market will do it for you.

Shaping the message is a useful discipline for tech leaders, especially now when technology is increasingly entangled with politics, regulation, AI risk, crypto, misinformation, national security, privacy and public trust.

The Strategy Beneath the Slogan

The best political strategists are ruthless in their pursuit of the central argument. They know a campaign can’t be about everything. It has to be about the thing people will actually remember. So they reduce complexity without making the issue sound stupid.

Political strategists are:

A Framework to Think Like a Political Strategist

Another way to think like a political strategist is to ask yourself this question:

“The real argument I need to win is…”

If you can’t find a satisfactory answer, more thinking is required.

A Trust-Building Tactic Sales Keeps Ignoring

“I want all your time but you weren’t worth much of mine,” was the subheader at the beginning of a marketing newsletter I recently read. It referenced being invited to speak on a podcast or to give an in-person speech. It mentioned that speakers “miss the real value of being on stage by attempting to sell. Instead, they should embrace the audience”. Rule behind the podium: never mention your product.

Your Buyer’s Time is Sacred

This gave me pause, reflecting on how hard we work to get in front of our intended buyer audiences, but once we do, we often revert to ‘hogging the limelight’ by just talking about ourselves and rushing into sell mode. We want their time, but we don’t think enough about how we might be wasting theirs.

I’m currently supporting a client with lead generation to ultimately lock in a meeting with their AI consultancy and another campaign that focuses on inviting prospects to demo their new AI product. I also use Leadgen to grow this newsletter, so I have recent experience in this area - and I say recent because right now, it’s harder than ever to get people’s attention and time.

The Buyer Only Cares About Themselves

In business-to-consumer marketing there’s a famous quote, “make it 90% about them and 10% about us” when selling a product. It’s a challenge in B2B tech not to talk mostly about ‘Us’ - your tech company, or in my case, my tech newsletters. But that’s the trust-building tactic: find ways to talk more about ‘them’ (the buyer) and when in front of them, get them to open up and talk about themselves. Then, at the very end, pitch our product and solution.

There are sales messaging techniques and frameworks I’ll share in the coming weeks - some I’m testing, others I’m gathering. (See also below in the ‘Something Extra’ section).

Because right now, I can bet 80% of tech companies are losing sales because they talk too much about themselves and not enough about the prospective customer’s challenges, environment and business objectives.

The tech companies that work hard to be intentional about respecting their buyers' time and attention will ultimately prevail over the 80% that don’t.

Final Analysis on Musk V Altman

I’ve stayed with this story in the last three weeks, not just because it reveals that AI companies don’t care about protecting humanity, but because this case is also a study in reputation management and how words are used to undermine the credibility of a competitor or someone you wish to exact revenge upon because they didn’t put you in charge, something Musk and his team worked hard to do by undermining the credibility of Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO. But mostly, as this article reports, the legal case further diminished both parties' reputations, as revealed in private messages, like Musk “threatening to make [Altman and Brockman] the most hated men in America.”

The communication lesson? Text messages on WhatsApp, Telegram or whatever messaging app you use could become public fodder. Professional restraint is a good idea.

Phrase of the Week

Strategic Narrative Advantage: The ability to frame an issue or decision before someone does it for you, usually to your disadvantage.

A Simple Buyer-First Outreach Framework

As a rule of thumb, persuasive emails should be between 70 and 100 words. I’ve written some even shorter using only 65 words. Structure:

For lead-gen emails, use a spam-word checker like Mailmeteor. And check out HubSpot’s spam trigger words guide.

If this helped you think differently about communication, forward this newsletter to someone who leads, sells or explains complex ideas in tech.