How to Build Buy-In – In Just 7 Minutes with Tamsen Webster

Resources/Links:

• FREE download. Get your Buy-In Building Blocks here: https://tamsenwebster.com/starthere/

Summary

Are you struggling to get your audience to buy into your big idea? Many business owners and marketers face the challenge of capturing interest but fall short when it comes to driving action.

Tamsen Webster is a part message designer, part English-to-English translator, and part idea strategist. She helps leaders build buy-in for large-scale change.

Here, Tamsen reveals how to bridge that gap, turning passive interest into commitment by crafting messages that resonate deeply and inspire action.

Check out these episode highlights:

• 05:04 – Tamsen’s ideal client: Someone with a new or novel solution to a complicated problem. So typically I’m working with organizations’ experts that are really trying to challenge the status quo.
• 05:15 – Problem she helps solve: Typically, you’re coming in with something new, which means education is built into what they have to do, but typically also can’t get out of their own way because that expertise that led them to see that new option is just getting in the way of their being able to articulate what the idea actually is.
• 06:08 – The common mistakes her client commits before seeing her: You see all of the detail and all of the nuance of this beautifully complex, wonderful situation, all from the perspective and expert. It’s kind of like expecting people who don’t know how to play the piano to sit down and play one of the most complicated like Tchaikovsky piano sonatas or something along those lines.
• 08:24 – The symptoms of the problem she helps solve: Typically, it’s not getting the traction they’re looking for. Or they’re saying they can’t get to that 40-minute meeting.
• 11:36 – Tamsen’s Valuable Free Action [VFA]: If you’ve only got one sentence worth of time, say what your core approach is and what question it answers.
• 15:02 – Her Valuable Free Resource [VFR]: FREE download. Get your Buy-In Building Blocks here: https://tamsenwebster.com/starthere/
• 16:17 – Q: Why is this so important to me? A: And the reason it’s so important to me is because I think our society or planet needs these big ideas. There are amazing ideas out there. And the fact that the point of failure so often is the first articulation of them when that’s a solvable problem is endlessly frustrating to me.

Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode:

“The best way to build buy-in is to build a story based on what people have already bought into.” -Tamsen Webster Share on X

Transcript
(Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)

Tom Poland 00:10
Greetings, everyone! And welcome to, I think it’s a little bit of a special edition of Marketing The Invisible. I have Tamsen Webster and Tamsen, we just had the Olympics. She gets the gold medal for actually looking like the photos on her website. My photo is like 20 years old, and as compared with Tamsen, it’s not because I’m vain about how I look. Everyone can, it’s obviously I’m not. That’s just to be too lazy, but yours? So the reason this is important is that Tamsen is so on message, and this is what she teaches. By the way, forgive me, but welcome.

Tamsen Webster 00:42
I’m delighted to be here,Tom.

Tom Poland 00:43
Where are you hanging out?

Tamsen Webster 00:45
I’m hanging out in Boston, Massachusetts, on the east coast of the United States.

Tom Poland 00:49
Boston. So does it have a twin city?

Tamsen Webster 00:53
Does it have a twin city? Gosh, it probably does.

Tom Poland 00:56
That’s like a brother or a sister city.

Tamsen Webster 00:59
Probably does, and I’m embarrassed not to know. I don’t think it’s Boston, England. That would make sense.

Tom Poland 01:05
Were you born and bred in Boston?

Tamsen Webster 01:07
I’m not. I was a Navy kid. I was born and buttered all over the place, mostly in Southern Virginia, but I have lived long enough in Boston to have a Bostonian alter ego named Karen O. Sullivan.

Tom Poland 01:20
Wow. I don’t know who that is.

Tamsen Webster 01:21
But, no, I don’t either, but she’s intense.

Tom Poland 01:24
Is this a good thing?

Tamsen Webster 01:26
Well, she loves the red socks. She misses the dog track at Wonderland. She smokes, smokes spots, throws darts, loves a good PM, loves the red socks.

Tom Poland 01:35
That’s the main thing. So folks, the reason I am genuinely really interested in this little interview is it’s about a subject which we all need to get better at. The title is, How to Build Buy-in. I’m going to ask Tamsen to, before I do the buy, I’m doing everything else about face today, but before I do the bio, tell us what you mean by building buy-in.

Tamsen Webster 01:59
Yeah, absolutely. So buy-in, in my thoughts, capitalism, aside, is really about getting someone to believe enough in something, typically something new, to actually act on it and to keep acting on it, which I’m particularly interested in that latter part of it.

Tom Poland 02:15
Did you actually say ‘capitalism aside’?

Tamsen Webster 02:17
Yes.

Tom Poland 02:18
I mean, that just opens up this Pandora box of potential companies.

Tamsen Webster 02:22
Yes. I mean, it’s a very capitalist thing to say, like, well, we buy into something. But really what I’m deeply fascinated in is how we accelerate the understanding and adoption of new ideas.

Tom Poland 02:36
Right. And this is what we talked about before we started, we click the record button, is that we’ve all done this thing where we go, okay, I need to put something out to the marketplace, which gets cut through and it motivates people to want to know more and it really draws people in and you write this blog or you write this article, you do this webinar and you think, ‘My God, I’m a genius.’ And you sprinkle it around the internet like confetti at a wedding and it’s crickets. That’s all you’re hearing. So folks, this is the foundation of all successful marketing, of all successful lead generation. And I’m fortunate to be talking to someone who actually walks the talk because Tamsen, if you just go to a website, I’ll give a URL in a moment. But if you got to a website, it’s like, boom, there’s so much cut through, there’s so much there that stands out. It’s so easy to read and the message flows. So that’s why I’m excited about this. So now we get to the bio, part message designer, part English to English translator. If only you could do women to men translators.

Tamsen Webster 03:37
What? That’s one version of English to English. So sometimes I can help.

Tom Poland 03:41
Yeah. Miracles we can do, but the impossible takes a little longer.

Tamsen Webster 03:44
Well, that’s true. Yeah. One can always hope.

Tom Poland 03:46
So part message designer, part English to English translator, part idea strategist, and that theme of strategy is let’s go to the helicopter view first comes through as well on your website. So Tamsen helps leaders build, buy-in for large scale change. And this folks, this is a whole science in itself. If you look at the medical world and you think, ‘Oh, are you a doctor?’ ‘Yes, I’m a doctor.’ ‘Okay, I have a problem in my brain.’ ‘Sorry, I’m a heart specialist. You don’t want me operating your brain.’ And marketing is like that. There are so many specialties and this one is one that virtually no one talks about. And yet, ironically, it’s so freaking vital. So let’s rock and roll.

Tamsen Webster 04:26
All right. You’re already my favorite person, Tom, because yes, I’m deeply passionate about that very point. And you’re right, I don’t think there’s nearly enough information out there about it.

Tom Poland 04:35
Well, the reason I get hot and sweaty about it is that it’s the whole thing. We don’t know what we don’t know. And we’re still the Mark Twain thing, which is, it’s not the things we don’t know that actually hurt us. It’s the things we think we know that just don’t. So, we think we know about messaging. We think we know about the importance of getting the strategic message right before we drill down to the specific message. But, very often those things that we think we know come back to bite us in the bun or that soon we’re going to kick off. Question number one, seven minute starts now. Who’s your ideal client?

Tamsen Webster 05:04
My ideal client is typically someone with a new or novel solution to a complicated problem. So, typically I’m working with organizations’ experts that are really trying to challenge the status quo. Typically, you’re coming in with something new, which means education is built into what they have to do, but typically also can’t get out of their own way because that expertise that led them to see that new option is just getting in the way of their being able to articulate what the idea actually is.

Tom Poland 05:32
Folks, if you’re listening to this later, we’re in the middle of a presidential election right now in the US. I’m not in the US, I’m in Australia, by the way. But I heard a Republican strategist Trump gets up and this Republican strategist is pulling his hair out because Trump’s all over the place with the message right now. I won’t go into the messages because that would take an hour itself, but, this guy said, ‘One bad message repeated often is better than 10 good messages.’ And this must be part of the challenge you have with clients. They’ve got this amazing product, but it’s complex and yeah, I’m skipping ahead, but one of the mistakes, that they try to communicate too much.

Tamsen Webster 06:08
Absolutely. That’s one of the most common mistakes because you see all of the detail and all of the nuance of this beautifully complex, wonderful situation, all from the perspective and expert, by the way. It’s kind of like expecting people who don’t know how to play the piano to sit down and play one of the most complicated like Tchaikovsky piano sonatas or something along those lines. Who even knows if you wrote one? But that’s the whole thing before you can ask people to even process that kind of information, they have to understand just what are the basic concepts.

Tom Poland 06:42
So, simplify it. Big picture chunks maybe. So here’s what I’ve seen my clients do a lot. They tell me they do it. So, particularly new clients, the website’s kind of often not on message, it’s talking too much about themselves as well. But what they say to me is, Tom, if I get in front of a good quality prospect, I convert them nine out of 10 times. And very often what they’re referring to is they have a cup of coffee with someone or they have a Zoom meeting these days with someone and they just kind of chew the fat. So it’s like a 40, 45 minute meeting and slowly but surely the prospect teases out of them the stuff they need to know.

Tamsen Webster 07:19
Exactly, yeah.

Tom Poland 07:21
A 40, 45 minute block of real estate to do the job. Very different if you have to put that on a billboard.

Tamsen Webster 07:27
Correct. And that’s the challenge, right? Like most of the time, yeah, most of the time if we’ve got an hour we can fill it. And by that point, as you point out, by that point we usually manage, usually accidentally, to get all the information out that somebody else needs.

Tom Poland 07:43
But folks, so if you’re a business coach, a trainer, or you’re wanting to scale with something special, bigger production, you can’t get to that 40-minute meeting until you have what Tamsen offers, which is the soundbite that gets cut through and motivates people. They give buy-in. And what I mean by that, and, I should shut up talk, going to stop soon, but, what I mean by that is that they are prepared to put some skin in the game and that’s when your 40-minute meeting comes in. That’s when the inquiry comes in. That’s when they’re prepared to take the risk of offending you by saying, actually it’s not what I want. So, what we’re talking about here is the pointiest end of marketing. How do people know that they need what you’ve got?

Tamsen Webster 08:25
Because whatever they are doing right now isn’t working. Typically it’s not getting the traction they’re looking for. Or they’re saying they can’t get to that 40-minute meeting or people get to it. And they say, ‘Okay, but I don’t understand,’ typically when they need me, often it is very much at that point of needing to raise capital in one way or another. In other words, they literally have to make the case so that someone will put in that financial skin in the game.

Tom Poland 08:53
The message might be slightly different, but really it’s the same objective as you’ve got to articulate the marketplace benefit of what you’re doing. So that the investors go over this thing is going to fly, or the end user client is going to want to buy-in. And one of the reasons that the person that I described before ends up with a 40-minute meeting converts so many, is that the marketing is so crap that anyone that meets for them has to be seriously motivated.

Tamsen Webster 09:18
They already, like, they’ve found something in there that they’re willing to engage with.

Tom Poland 09:21
Yeah, exactly right. Yeah, they can smell there’s something in there. So, we’ve covered your ideal client, the problem you solve, the symptoms. So they’re doing marketing, don’t be doing advertising, maybe looking for investors, but they’re just not getting that, they’re not getting the eyes open, they’re not getting people leaning foot leaning into it. They’re not people going, ‘Oh, let’s go to the next meeting.’ We’ve touched on one of the common mistakes already, which is yes, trying to communicate too much everything

Tamsen Webster 09:45
All at once,

Tom Poland 09:47
Only benefit, let’s just list them all. And what happens is people plays over and it is blah, blah, blah. And they go, ‘Yeah, I’ll get back to that.’ And then gone, what other mistakes are people making before they get to you?

Tamsen Webster 09:59
Yeah. So really three big categories. One is they only articulate the problem saying, we solve this problem, but they don’t say how. The second big thing is they offer a solution, but nobody understands what that is. So we have this thing. Great. And so, it’s not making that connection between the two.

Tom Poland 10:18
So you’re saying, so, we have the solution, but they don’t explain how, is that just a sequence thing?

Tamsen Webster 10:24
No, it isn’t just a sequence thing because going back to what you’re talking about or listing out the features and benefits, I like to call that benefit-bombing. I mean, if you think about it, fundamentally, what I think that a true core message, in fact a true position that you’re asking to have in the marketplace is a position that you take, You’re taking a position that this action, this core approach with our idea with our company is the answer to this question that the market actively and knowingly has right now. So not some secret question, right? And so when you have both of those things, then people are able to make that connection. But when you just give benefits, right? It’s just in a lot of ways those are just additional outcomes that you provide and features are just additional aspects of your approach. Neither one explains why it is that your approach delivers on that outcome. And this is a real missing piece of most messaging that’s out there.

Tom Poland 11:27
So, the how, when asked about sequencing, what I’m thinking is that if I start with the how, I haven’t got them hooked on the benefits yet.

Tamsen Webster 11:36
Right? So at a very high level, so this might get to the kind of free action people can take. The sequence that I recommend is actually, if you’ve only got one sentence worth of time, say what your core approach is and what question it answers. In other words, the best way to build buy-in is to build a story based on what people have already bought into. That’s the position I take. But if you have like, say 30 seconds, then actually what I would say is the sequence starts with, because I believe, or we believe that every decision has a story and the stories we agree with and act on are based on beliefs that we already have. That’s why I believe the best way to build buy-in is to build a story based on what people have already bought into. So, it is a sequencing thing, but what I’ve done there is explain not only the why behind what I do, right? Build a story why, so that I can build buy-in. But I’ve also explained the ‘Why’ behind how I do it, right? So I’ve explained, I do that, build a story based on what people are bought into. Because I believe the ‘Why’ there is because every decision has a story because people are already bought into things. They don’t argue with those things.

Tom Poland 12:55
But you’ve still got both in there, which is the ‘Why’ or the benefit and the mechanism.

Tamsen Webster 13:01
Yes. And what I think that does, and the reason why I think it’s so important, I’m so passionate about it, is that ultimately it’s that underneath, it’s those principles that to determine really whether or not you align with how a person, how a business if, whether or not an approach is going to work for you. Quick example of that. A lot of times people are like, well the ends justify the means. And the thing is, there’s probably been a time when you’re like, not those ends or not those means. And that’s fundamentally what we’re trying to articulate quickly, concisely, and right up front. Because I’m a big fan of getting to ‘yes’ faster, but also getting to ‘no’ faster. Because think about it, if somebody doesn’t want to build buy-in, they’re not my client. If they don’t believe that every decision has a story. And if they don’t believe that, we don’t have to argue with things they’re already bought into. Also not my client. And if I deeply believe those things, then it’s really clear who is or isn’t for me. And I am for them.

Tom Poland 14:01
I mean, you said something earlier on, you’re answering a question of the market. The market is asking or you’re providing a solution, something like this that the market is already seeking. And that folks, that’s kind of the fundamental of all successful marketing is we’re not going out to the market and trying to convince people they need what we’ve got. We are looking for the people who are already aware that they need a solution. So there’s the most unpack on this interview, and I’d like to invite you out for a beer on Friday night, so we can talk more about this. Any problem, I’m not where you are.

Tamsen Webster 14:29
You’re in Australia.

Tom Poland 14:30
And I don’t drink alcohol apart from that support plan.

Tamsen Webster 14:33
So, double problem. But there we go.

Tom Poland 14:35
So folks, I really encourage you to first of all reach out to Tamsen. We’re going to give you a URL in a moment. Secondly, to replay this and to listen very carefully and take notes and to summarize those notes and kind of use that as a spotlight on your marketing right now and just check do you have these points checked off? More resource coming your way. Now, Tamsen, where can people go to start?

Tamsen Webster 15:02
Well, the best place to start right now is tamsenwebster.com/starthere. So the word start and here as an H-E-R-E. And there is a worksheet and a guide, video and written on how to come up with those elements that I just articulated.

Tom Poland 15:19
Folks, if you are broke, do that. And if you aren’t broke, do that and then inquire about working with Tamsen. And I say that, and I know it sounds a little humorous, but I’ve been broke and I’ve had to get free stuff in trying to figure it out and, fortunately I haven’t had to do that for a few years, but if you’ve got money and you’re smart enough, you’ll reach out and connect with Tamsen and see and if she can’t help you, probably someone else can. But, okay, so we’ve got that sort of tamsen, T-A-M for Mary, S-E-N, for Nigel, webster.com/start here. Are you related?

Tamsen Webster 15:56
No.

Tom Poland 15:57
Webster’s dictionary.

Tamsen Webster 15:58
No. But I do like to say that therefore I get to make the words, but I married into the word-making family, right? Not born that way.

Tom Poland 16:07
Maybe Webster’s back there somewhere in the genealogy.

Tamsen Webster 16:09
Maybe. Yes.

Tom Poland 16:11
Yeah. So let’s finish with the last question, which is, what’s the question I should’ve asked you but didn’t?

Tamsen Webster 16:17
Yeah, I would say, why is this so important to me? And the reason it’s so important to me is because I think A, our society or planet needs these big ideas. There are amazing ideas out there. And the fact that the point of failure so often is the first articulation of them when that’s a solvable problem is endlessly frustrating to me. So, to your point about, no matter where you are financially or whatever, if you’ve got a big idea, that’s really what I want to help solve. That’s why I founded the Message Design Institute. It’s for there to be a place for people to do this kind of message design on their own, but not alone so that they can have access to these resources and be able to invest in them at the level that makes the most sense for them.

Tom Poland 17:03
Fantastic. Tamsen Webster, thank you so much for the time. And if I’m in your city, I will invite you out for a beer.

Tamsen Webster 17:12
A team perhaps. My pleasure. Yeah.

Tom Poland 17:15
Thanks for checking out our Marketing The Invisible podcast. If you like what we’re doing here please head over to iTunes to subscribe, rate us, and leave us a review. It’s very much appreciated. And if you want to generate five fresh leads in just five hours then check out www.fivehourchallenge.com.