Scalable Talking Points: What Messaging Strategy Means In Practice
Known For Podcast - Ep. 003
A cleaner way to think about messaging strategy, and why your whole team needs to be in on it.
Three Things You’ll Learn:
What “scalable talking points” means and why it’s a clearer way to think about messaging strategy
Why your team telling different versions of the same story is a growth problem, and what to do about it
When to move from building awareness to building authority, and what you need to get there
When a fellow marketer challenged Erin to describe messaging without the jargon, one phrase came out of it: scalable talking points.
Erin breaks down what that means in practice. Talking points are the core ideas that anchor every sales conversation: who you are, what you do, who you serve, what makes your approach different, and your point of view on the market. Scalable means those ideas live beyond the founder, so new hires and referral partners can all tell the same story.
[00:03:27] “It has to be ways of articulating the work beyond just what the founder says it is, so that when you’re going to market, everyone is really telling the same story.”
She also covers the moment when basic awareness-building stops being enough. Getting to authority requires a clear messaging guide with your strategy and talking points captured in one place. It becomes the document you hand to any agency or new hire so they can get to work fast.
[00:05:58] “It is about messaging being a system that you can rely on to consistently deliver the same talking points to the marketplace.”
Transcription, Episode 003 - Known For - Scalable Talking Points
Host and Speaker: Erin Braford
(0:04) Hi, this is Erin Braford. (0:06) Welcome to Known For. (0:08) We're the show for seasoned boutique consultants who want to get focused, scale your systems, and take control of your pipeline through clear messaging, ownable positioning in the marketplace, and building your authority through content and visibility.
(0:24) Recently, I was talking to a fellow marketer, consultant, mentor, and we were trying to identify ways to make this idea of messaging seem a little more concrete and less jargony. (0:38) Now, in general, I think most of us understand that a message is a communication that comes from us and goes out to other people. (0:46) That part is easy.
(0:47) But when we're talking about messaging from a brand-building or marketing point of view, we really are talking about getting clear first about your strategy. (0:56) How do you want to show up in the marketplace? (0:58) How do you competitively stand out, differentiate?
(1:02) Where do you think you have the best chance of winning? (1:05) Meaning the ways that your story comes together, your background, how your expertise shows up in a way that maybe someone else's doesn't. (1:14) We're all sort of competing with each other, but most importantly, a lot of consultants are competing with somebody just not doing the work that needs to get done or having someone in-house do it to varying degrees of success.
(1:27) But still, it's important to be clear about where you fit in. (1:30) It just makes it easier for potential clients to understand who you are and how you might be able to help them. (1:37) That's all well and good.
(1:38) That's still pretty, you know, high level. (1:42) So what we came up with, or what he suggested, and I'm going to share with you now to get your feedback on, is this idea of, you know, the simplest answer to what do I do, meaning what does Dreamboat do for our clients, is we help you develop scalable talking points. (2:05) Okay, I probably should not be sarcastic about this, but I think there was some really good thinking in there, and so I wanted to share it here and see what resonates, see if it even makes any sense to y'all.
(2:21) The idea of scalable is a word that generally gets used too much in business growth spaces, and also is very important. (2:31) We all have jargon like that in our spaces, words we don't like, but that kind of do the job, right? (2:37) In the case of scalable talking points, I think, well, let's actually just start with talking points.
(2:43) These are the very core ideas that start off any successful messaging engagement. (2:50) What we're trying to do is get to who you are, what you do, who you do it for, what makes you unique, how your approach may work better for the kinds of clients you serve, and then ultimately, what is your point of view on your market? (3:05) All of those things go into creating better marketing and sales conversations.
(3:11) The reason to think about them as talking points is because for consultancies who are growing teams (3:17) and starting to get clear about operations, starting to want to get really focused on the (3:21) kinds of work that they're bringing in, the reason we're thinking about these talking points is (3:27) because we're saying that it has to be ways of articulating the work beyond just what the founder (3:33) says it is, or kind of an individual employee or contractor's interpretation of what the work is, (3:40) so that when you're going to market, everyone is really telling the same story. (3:45) Those core bullet points have to be true or consistently show up. (3:51) And so while there's room (3:54) for everyone to sort of then add commentary or kind of share their experience to make that more (4:00) personalized, meaning maybe your team member shares a slightly different case study to support (4:06) that talking point because of their role inside of your company, then you might, the talking (4:11) points remain the same, the core elements of who you are and what you do and who you serve. (4:16) For a lot of my clients, that is an important inflection point. (4:21) They kind of articulate that we don't love that everyone on our team has a slightly different version of kind of how we go to market or how we introduce ourselves at a networking event.
(4:33) We don't love that it's hard to explain or come up with the right altitude of message off the top of our heads when we're just meeting someone that we don't really know if they have any context, and or if we're in a room where we know everyone has context and so everyone sounds exactly the same. (4:55) So how do we all have the right consistent message that also lets us differentiate ourselves in those situations? (5:07) So that's the idea behind these talking points.
(5:10) It's really just those core elements of your positioning strategy and then how you're going to, what you're going to say when you go to market. (5:18) This idea of scalable, jumping back to that, is about creating a system really. (5:25) And so yes, now that we all know the same things, we have the same bullet points, (5:30) what are the tools or methods, what is the approach that we use to make sure that (5:36) one, we stay consistent with that message, two, it doesn't drift too far without intention, (5:42) three, it's easy to bring new people in to those bullet points and onboard new contractors, (5:49) new referral partners and new clients to who we are and how we work. (5:55) That is the scalable part of this idea. (5:58) It is about messaging being a system that you can rely on to consistently deliver the same talking points to the marketplace.
(6:08) One of the ways that a lot of firms start with marketing is hiring a contractor at kind of a low to reasonable price who will go out and do copywriting or graphic design work a la carte. (6:23) Often it's somebody you know or who's been referred to you. (6:26) And that's great.
(6:28) An important step at the earlier stages of just building awareness for the firm, making sure that you have a presence, a website, a business card, that kind of thing. (6:37) But at some point, at a particular growth inflection point, you're going to want to do more than that. (6:44) It's moving beyond just building straight awareness that you exist to starting to build authority in the marketplace for the expertise that you and your team have.
(6:55) So it's at that point that you might want to bring in more sophisticated marketing resources as well to help support the work. (7:02) And something like scalable talking points, something like a very clear messaging guide that may or may not include or should probably include things as far as tone of voice, examples of the kinds of things that sound like us, as well as capture your current strategy. (7:21) That is the equipping tool you're going to use to hand off to those more mature marketing support resources.
(7:28) So whether that means bringing someone in-house who has experience and knows how to do (7:31) the work, but needs to know who you are, or hiring a branding agency or a marketing firm, (7:38) PR firm, any of these kind of auxiliary support folks that are meant to get to know you and your (7:44) business very quickly, and then be able to start producing results, will rely on or would will be (7:51) thrilled to have this existing document that captures your talking points, your core identity, (7:59) and can help them get up to speed really, really quickly while they start helping to further (8:05) increase your visibility among the people that you are most trying to reach. (8:11) So that's it. (8:12) Just really the question I have for you all is, does this idea of scalable talking points make sense?
(8:20) Does it make more sense or sound more clear than messaging strategy? (8:26) My guess is probably yes. (8:27) And, you know, I hope it would still be clear that that is the first step, meaning we have to still discover your strategy and understand who you are and listen to your customers in order to really know what kinds of talking points are going to be compelling, easy to understand, reflect the language of your clients, etc.
(8:51) But as a key first foundational step to getting focused (8:54) as a firm, that having these kinds of scalable talking points where everyone on your team is (9:00) aligned, is a big amplifier to make sure that anyone who's talking about your business is doing (9:07) so with a level of authority that makes it clear that you all know what you're doing and how you (9:15) help and they have a really firm or strong point of view that can help differentiate you from (9:22) other firms making very similar promises.
(9:26) All right, well, let me know what you all think. (9:28) I hope this was a helpful breakdown of maybe just very basic, what are we even talking about when we say messaging strategy? (9:35) Let me know if you have thoughts or questions about your own scalable talking points.
(9:42) Would love to get into that with you. (9:43) You can find me at Erin at HeyDreamboat.com. (9:48) I'm Erin Braford, and this is Known For. Bon Voyage. (9:54) Allons-y! (9:55) Let's go!
