Framing is the art of first learning the pain points or desired outcomes of your audience and then showing or framing how a core competency or unique ability you have can deliver the solution. How you frame an issue influences how others see it and focuses their attention on particular aspects of it. Framing is the essence of targeting a communication to a specific audience.
In a meeting a while back, a prospective vendor came by to sell my company on his services. He rambled on about how awesome his company is at what they do. Thirty minutes passed, and he hadn’t let anyone from our team say a word. He never asked one single question about our company, what’s working and what’s not, what pain points we might have. We had a hard stop, so unfortunately for him, the meeting ended there.
This sales guy had it all wrong. If, from the start, he had simply asked a few key questions (or done his homework), he could have framed their core competencies to answer our needs. He did not consider that by fulfilling our company’s needs, he would have fulfilled his own and likely made the sale.
Here are a few pointers for framing any topic to your specific audience:
Step 1: Get curious. Ask questions and listen to the answers. Most often, the information you need to construct the frame can be found by paying attention to the clues your audience gives you.
Step 2: See the situation from the other side of the table. What does that person (company, prospective employer) need that you can provide?
Step 3: Frame your message to fulfill your audience’s needs. Think in terms of what you can do for them and how, together, you can create greatness.
Once you start framing, you will find it becomes second nature. Framing works with kids, spouses, partners, at work, at play, at home. Look at political messages and advertising. Which frames work? Which frames don’t? The more you observe, the better you will be able to construct your own. Then use your frames to highlight the picture you are presenting and you will find more targets coming into range.
