Author transcript
Sean Nolan: Hello and welcome to CX Today. My name is Sean Nolan. Today we're diving into the psychology of buyers and what makes a truly engaging piece of sales content. I'm delighted to be joined by Deniz Olcay, VP of Marketing at Allego, and he'll walk us through the findings of some recent research on this topic. Hi Deniz, thank you for your time today. Really appreciate it. So to start things off, can you tell us about Allego's overall mission and the objectives behind this new report into the psychology of persuasive messaging?
Deniz Olcay: Sure, Sean. Nice to meet you again. My name is Deniz Olcay. I'm Vice President of Marketing at Allego. Allego is the leading revenue enablement software provider in the market. Our mission really is to help revenue teams be more productive and effective. What do I mean by revenue teams? I mean the partnership between sales, operations, enablement, and marketing. Helping them really know what to know, what to say, and what to do in front of client interactions to accelerate sales cycles and just generate more revenue for their business.
Sean Nolan: Great. And in terms of this report, was there anything that stood out to you? Could you tell us a little bit about the background of this report and what it was really looking to find out?
Deniz Olcay: Sure, absolutely. So, every year we commission some pretty original and thought-provoking research in areas that really try to challenge conventional wisdom. We typically partner with a really exceptional partner who I have to give a shout out to. Her name is Dr. Carmen Simon. She's a cognitive neuroscientist, author of Impossible to Ignore and Made You Look. I really recommend anyone check out her work. So this isn't something where a marketing team put up a Google Form survey or a SurveyMonkey and sent it out. We really wanted to partner with someone who studies these types of original research areas, helps us look at it from a statistical perspective, and really have some credibility to lend to the research. So we partnered with Dr. Carmen. We studied around 102 professionals from sales, marketing, and customer success. And again, 75% of these people had about 16 plus years in the field. So this was not really a student sample or people that are just beginning their careers. We really wanted to make sure we honed in on actual revenue teams who had influence over buying decisions in their respective fields.
Essentially what we did was we had these folks read a marketing email. We simulated a marketing email which basically presented a message or a value proposition for a product, and that product was Allego's AI roleplay capability, with different messaging framing. Right? So what do I mean by that? The word selection and how you frame a value proposition really matters in terms of how interesting it is, how memorable it is, and how it hooks your buyers' attention. So we presented it in four different ways. We segmented that 100 or so audience group into four different control groups. So they each got a version of that email with slightly different wording and messaging. Right?
So one of them would be loss passive framing. In an example phrase it would be "opportunities are being missed." That's one example. Loss active would be "you miss opportunities," in terms of how you phrase that. Then we had gain passive, which would be "opportunities are moved forward," and then gain active, which would be "you move opportunities forward." It's very subtle, but this different phrasing we wanted to study in terms of how memorable it is, how impactful it is, how it hooks the attention of the reader. Because we know that marketing and sales teams are at the forefront of delivering this type of messaging to their buyer to get their attention, to get them to remember them, to get them to secure a meeting, et cetera. And the conventional wisdom here is always lead with pain. You probably know this yourself as well, in your academic studies and writing. That has always been the conventional wisdom: lead with pain, lead with pain, lead with pain. So we wanted to challenge that, take another look at that, and really give some insightful thoughts to the marketing and sales community to help them be more effective in their messaging and how that is presented to the market.
So after we presented that variation of four different ways, we also did a memory retention test two days after. So okay, you got that message. What did you remember, or what did you not remember? We studied that, and actually when people were reading this message on their laptops, we used Dr. Carmen Simon's neuroscience equipment to track their eye movement. We also measured their voice when they were repeating the message back to us, to really measure how confident they were in what they remembered. Where did they pay attention in the email? Did they look at the subject line? Did they look at the body of the copy? So there was a lot of deep neurological components to this study, which we were really thrilled about.
Sean Nolan: Yeah, absolutely. And in terms of some of the outcomes that really stood out to you, are there any in particular? Because I have my own one, but I'll ask you first. Is there anything that stood out to you? Any results that you think are really notable for other CX leaders or people working in the revenue team to keep an eye on?
Deniz Olcay: Yes. Yes, absolutely. I think the traditional wisdom here, which I said is lead with pain, actually comes from Professor Dr. Daniel Kahneman. He's an Israeli-American psychologist known for his work on the psychology of judgment and decision-making. He was actually awarded the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. So a lot of his work shaped a lot of what we do today as marketing, sales, and CX leaders. But it turns out some of it is not necessarily a silver bullet. There is a time and a place to lead with pain, but it's not necessarily always the best choice. So it's not discrediting Dr. Kahneman's work, but it's complementing his work to say that the "losses loom larger than gains" concept actually holds immediate attention. It was the messaging variant that hooked people the fastest. But it wasn't the one that actually held their attention or recall over the long term.
So when we commissioned the study and we really studied the results, we found that the gain active messaging captured 31% more viewing time of the email versus the gloomiest or pain-related framing, and it also generated 31% better recall or memory retention when we did that memory retention test. So just coincidentally, both numbers are 31%. But we did find that the gain active variant of the messaging had more viewing time and also more retention time. So what do we mean by that framing? It's the "you move opportunities forward" variant of the messaging. It turned out to be the most effective.
Sean Nolan: Yeah, it's really fascinating. As you say, a lot of marketing is around this idea of FOMO and leading with the pain. But actually, one thing I noticed in the report is what you really emphasize is that giving buyers more autonomy and control makes them engage with the content better. And I think that speaks to the modern buyer, who can research and can go and be a lot more active in the buying process than maybe traditional buyers in the past. So do you think that's true? Do you think this kind of messaging relates to how modern buyers operate?
Deniz Olcay: I would say so, Sean. Part of the findings from the study is handing the reader agency, and when we say agency, we mean control. It actually lifted engagement in both the loss framing as well as the gain framing, but it had way more impact in the gain framing. Let me unpack that a little bit, because it's a little dense to understand at surface value. Inside of a loss framing, like "you miss opportunities," readers actually took that almost a little bit defensively and as a blame. Some of them even recognized that as a marketing tactic, because we're all using it. It stood out as marketing speak or marketing copy. So it only helped with the engagement by about 4%. Call that negligible, almost no lift. But inside of a gain frame, it actually lifted engagement by 12%. So this would be "you win opportunities." That made them look like the hero of the story. Just using the word "you" in your copy made a huge impact, especially when paired with a positive gain active framing. So that was pretty insightful, and one of the pieces of the research that we're actually applying to a lot of our own messaging today at Allego as well.
Sean Nolan: Yeah, definitely. I think that's something that's really valuable and could be used by many marketing teams around the world.
Deniz Olcay: For sure.
Sean Nolan: I think, taking a step back now that we've explored the report a little bit, I wanted to get your opinion, based on your day-to-day work and what you've seen. Do you have any practical advice for revenue teams about their strategy moving forward, maybe based on this report and based on what you're seeing as well?
Deniz Olcay: Absolutely. Absolutely. And like I said, this isn't discrediting Dr. Kahneman's work at all. I would say it's very much complementary, to say there's still a time and a place to hook your audience with a loss framing, but kept passive. So if you want someone to stop the scroll and get their fixation, and this really applies for paid media or digital or other areas, loss still works really, really well. So in terms of recommendation for revenue leaders, CX leaders, sales and marketing leaders, leading with that but then quickly pivoting in the body of your copy to gain active framing really helps you maximize how much attention and recall you're going to get with your messaging. And then obviously you want to move to your CTA or your close, and you want some sort of next step with your messaging.
But interestingly enough, out of 10 concepts that we communicated in the messaging, people only remembered two of them. So even if you have, let's say, the best way to frame a value proposition, people are still going to forget the majority of it. So the honest conclusion here is there's no silver bullet. Messaging on its own is not going to get you where you need to be. Actually, what we found is that distinctiveness, and painting a picture and repeating that over the long term, has a lot of great complementary effects to retention and, I would say, effectiveness.
So one example of that was, in our own copy, we wrote something really generic. We said, "in critical moments," with AI roleplay, which was the product that we at Allego were simulating in this copy, "is going to help you be more effective in those critical moments." It's kind of blasé, kind of generic. "Critical moments." What do you mean by critical moment? It's not very memorable. So what we should have written, in hindsight, after looking at the study, the humbling study even for our own copywriting, was potentially "the moment a buyer asks why you're more expensive." So that immediately puts you in a sales and marketing situation. It's memorable, it's more impactful, it's more specific. It's more distinct. So long story short, the way that you phrase your messaging from a gain active perspective only does a little bit of the work. But what really makes the full picture is being distinctive in your phrasing, relating to a common pain point and a common situation that your buyer or audience might be going through, and repeating that. Reinforcement. That's why sustained attention, and I would say paid media or awareness advertising over the long haul, makes a big difference versus a one-shot email or a one-shot campaign. So that was also really compelling as part of the study. So that would be my practical guidance for CX and sales and marketing leaders.
Sean Nolan: Yeah, absolutely. I think it's really important to have that kind of brand recognition as well as the messaging. I think it's a combination of so many different factors that can make a buyer click on something or take something on further. But it's really interesting to find out about the combination of the wording but also that distinctiveness that I think so many marketing teams are looking to be creating in their own products now. So yeah, thank you. I think that's really, really insightful. You mentioned there about AI roleplay and about technology. I wanted to get your perspective on AI and technology when it comes to the revenue team and the workflow of a sales rep, for example. Do you have any insight on that? Can you tell us a little bit about where you see that from Allego's perspective?
Deniz Olcay: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's no question, and I think we're all beaten over the head with this at this point, that AI is going to transform how revenue teams operate and work, and obviously technology is at the foundation of that with AI. So in our belief at Allego, all future revenue teams are going to be hybrid. What do I mean by hybrid? I don't mean working from home or working from the office, but obviously there's a part of that as well. I mean hybrid between human and AI. So there's going to be a sub-segment of your team that's going to be agent-driven, and those agents are going to take over some of those, I would say, redundant, maybe tactical, simple and scalable activities that your people used to do. So it's going to save them a whole lot of time. We actually believe, with the advent of AI, revenue teams have the potential to get 2x in terms of productivity gains and time back. That doesn't mean they get to take more vacation with that time, unfortunately. It means that they're going to have to do more work, but more strategic work. And the judgment of those sales leaders, of those marketing leaders, is going to be a much more prominent and important skill set, since they're not bogged down with a lot of tactical work. Not only strategic, I would say, high-level C-level, VP-level executives, but even down to individual contributors are going to have to make much more strategic calls and judgment-making, because we still believe humans need to be at the center of decision-making, especially in B2B, business-to-business buyer-seller interactions. These decisions are multiple months, sometimes years. It involves six, 10, 20 people in the buying committee. A lot of people are staking their reputation on the line to make a purchase decision, and people still want to buy from people. Some of this research is even reinforced by respected analyst names like Gartner and Forrester, who say people still want to buy from people. It's just not as early in the process as it used to be. They want to do their own research, but when they get to a certain point, they're not going to add a million-dollar software or a million-dollar product to their cart and check out. They still need to talk to a human. So that's where we believe the space is heading.
And for that reason, we believe enablement technology like Allego is going to be really, really critical for organizations to train that AI in a trusted body of knowledge as your system of record. So typically when we talk about system of record, we talk about your contact data, your company data, your deal data. That's all important, but where do you store what good looks like? What is the established body of knowledge on what your product does and what your value proposition is and how that is evolving over time? We believe enablement technology is going to be that system of record to train the AI with that knowledge, just like we've been training people this whole time. Enabling people with the right knowledge. Now we need to train and enable our AI counterparts, because guess what? Junk in, junk out. And AI is very good at being confident at what it says. So we really need to be careful to control that body of knowledge, make sure that we're enabling not just humans but also enabling AI with that body of knowledge, so that when our teams are depending on that AI in their sales and marketing conversations, they can be confident that they're getting the right source of knowledge from that AI, that that's governed by enablement technology, if that makes sense.
Sean Nolan: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. You mentioned there how AI and salespeople are going to come together and be like a hybrid, and I think that's really, really interesting, because a lot of salespeople might hear about AI or start to implement AI and they might be kind of anxious about it or feel hesitant to really adopt AI, because obviously, as you say, sales is such a human-centric, human-focused process. But I think actually once AI is able to take on some of these more manual, scalable tasks, you'll see salespeople actually coming into their own and being able to tackle those high-value, human-led tasks and letting AI agents handle the day-to-day manual stuff that salespeople don't really want to be spending their time doing. So I think, as you say, I definitely agree that there's definitely that opportunity for the hybrid salesperson to really come into their own, looking ahead.
Deniz Olcay: Absolutely. Absolutely. Like I said, I think there's a lot of anxiety in this space, and really every space, right? Not just technology or B2B selling. Is AI going to replace us? And I think our position at Allego is that AI is going to complement us, just like with any other technological breakthrough, whether it was the Industrial Revolution or the internet or computers. There was always this initial panic: "Oh my gosh, is it going to replace us?" But it ended up actually making everybody more productive. It certainly changed the job market and how humans do work. And AI is definitely going to be one of those big moments in the market where that happens, but it's going to elevate the role of the human, like I said, in terms of really being able to make those critical judgment calls at the right moments in the buyer-seller journey. That's where they need to be spending their time anyway. You look at research from Salesforce or other well-respected software companies, sellers are only spending 30% of their time selling. So what are they doing with the other 70% of their time? They're doing internal meetings or maybe, I would say, very non-value work like filling in data into the CRM or preparing for those meetings. Now with AI, they're going to get, like we said, up to 2x more time back to spend more time with the customer, to understand their needs, to build rapport, to uncover their problems and their challenges and their aspirations. That's really where they should be spending their time anyway. But like I said, it's really important that these revenue teams can truly outsource some of that work and trust the judgment and results that AI gives to them, and revenue enablement technology needs to be at the center of that in order to make sure the body of knowledge, or the system of record, is governed and maintained over time. Otherwise, there's a risk that AI could be saying things that aren't true or are just obsolete.
Sean Nolan: Yeah, definitely. And building on that, I want to ask a forward-looking question about, looking ahead, what do you think will separate the revenue teams that manage to get the most value out of sales technology versus those who aren't able to optimize it as much?
Deniz Olcay: I think it's really about a couple of things. First of all, technology is great, but if your teams aren't adopting it, it's a little bit of noise. And we see that really commonly in some of the customers and prospects we work with. They brought on a bunch of different tools that had a lot of promise, but their teams aren't using them. And there's a couple of reasons for that. Number one is the siloed nature of how you build your tech stack. If you're going to a best-in-class approach, traditionally speaking, and building a really specific tool for every component of the buyer journey, it's going to be increasingly difficult for you to expect your sales and marketing teams to pivot and log in and go to all these different tools to perform their tasks. So we see winning revenue teams really simplify their stacks, both for economic reasons, because it's actually much more cost-effective to streamline your technology stack, but also adoption reasons. Then we see much more usage or utilization of the tools that are in the tech stack. So I would say that's number one: adoption and simplification of the technology stack is paramount.
I would say second is technology amplifies good strategy. And you'll hear this from a lot of analyst firms like Forrester and Gartner as well. If you don't have a good strategy, you're just amplifying something that was destined to fail in the first place. And what we mean by that is really having top-down leadership support, an accountable team with the right expertise, first formulate what is your go-to-market strategy, and then how does technology fit in to amplify that strategy, not the other way around. Not bringing in technology for technology's sake. And even we at Allego, as a technology company, are saying this: please make sure that you've got the right team, the right strategy in place, then make sure you find a vendor that fits that strategy. I think that's going to be one of the most important things, and what separates winning revenue teams from those that are kind of spinning their wheels a little bit. And also making sure you've got a technology partner that's going to stick around and help you, and have your back in the moments where things are going bad or you've got a business change or your priorities shift. You need a technology vendor that doesn't just give you a login and walk away, but actually has your back in those critical moments and is adaptable and flexible enough to adapt to your business needs. And that's what we pride ourselves on at Allego.
Sean Nolan: Yeah, definitely. I think, as you say, as this race for technology grows, and as you mentioned before about the buying committee, people are sticking their necks out to get this new technology. It's so important to have that self-reflection of where are we, where are our strategies at, and then being able to choose the right vendor from there and finding the right product for you. So I think, yeah, it's really, really solid advice. Thank you so much for your time today, Deniz. It's been great speaking with you.
Deniz Olcay: No, the pleasure is mine. Thank you for having me on. I'd welcome an opportunity to continue the discussion, or if there's anyone that wants to learn more about the study and the science behind the report, that is available at allego.com and we'd be happy to provide it to your audience and readers as well. So don't be shy.
Sean Nolan: Perfect. Thank you so much.
Deniz Olcay: Thank you.
Sean Nolan: Thank you for watching. For more insights into the world of sales and marketing technology, create your account on CX Today now.
