Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die is the best business book I’ve read in quite some time. Chip and Dan Heath teach you how to make the ideas you are trying to convey to others memorable and actionable. In other words, “sticky” so your listener can’t help but remember what you talked about.

This book is broken down into several sections, with each section elaborating on a different letter of their “sticky” formula: SUCCESs (Simplicity, Unexpectedness, Concreteness, Credibility, Emotional, Stories). When you use the SUCCESs steps, people will remember your ideas, internalize them, and take steps towards what you want them to do.

Simple

You need to boil your ideas down to their basic, simple core. This often means avoiding the “curse of knowledge,” frequently mentioned by the authors, which is: when you know something, it is hard to remember that other people don’t also have that knowledge.

Simple messages are easy to remember, easy to convey to others, and easy to understand.

Unexpected

People are used to finding patterns in life. You have to break this cycle if you want your idea to be effectively communicated. Breaking patterns by sharing the unexpected grabs the listener’s attention. For example, newspaper headlines (starting with the end result and working backward).

Concrete

Tangible ideas are easy to remember. Abstract, vague, or jargon-filled ideas are difficult to remember and hard to internalize. Think of Aesop’s timeless fables like “The Tortoise and the Hare” or “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.” These ideas are so solid, you can almost touch them and thus they are extremely easy to remember.

Credible

No one will believe your idea if you aren’t credible. If you are already an expert in the field, great. If not, you may need others to add the missing credibility.

Emotional

Does your idea engage the emotions of others? If you can help the listener view themselves enjoying the benefits of your idea, you’ll have them hooked.

Stories

Since the beginning of time, we’ve loved to hear stories. You can better convey your idea when it is the moral of a story. Keep your eyes open for compelling stories from which you can extract your own idea.

Joe’s Recommendation

Buy a copy – Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die is a great read that keeps you entertained and delivers actionable steps you can use to improve your communication, ideas, and messaging.

The Heath brothers essentially eat their own dog food by applying the SUCCESs steps as they present countless stories and examples throughout the book.

This book is a classic and worthy of your attention and a place on your reference shelf.

Your company’s reliance on technology to process customer orders and requests can lead you to some trouble unless you are prepared.

My wife and I recently got a TxTag (a toll road sticker) for our car to use on the local toll roads. In theory, as we simply drive under a scanner along the highway, we are identified and charged the toll automatically.

After we installed the TxTag, we had our expectations set that we wouldn’t have to worry about stopping to pay tolls and life would be carefree.

So imagine our surprise when we got a bill from the Texas Department of Transportation for usage of the toll roads.

I was a little upset when I called their customer service number. However, the TxTag folks came through with a great customer service experience that you should mimic when your technology fails.

Tell Me Why

The first thing I was told was that sometimes the scanners don’t “see” the toll tag and thus our account couldn’t be charged. If that happens the toll cameras take a picture of the license plate and identify the owner. Since we hadn’t registered our TxTag, they couldn’t match up our account with our car.

Sometimes your technology isn’t perfect. The customer may be the unknowing victim of a shortcoming in your process or equipment. Take the time to explain why something happened. This will help people have confidence that their negative experience shouldn’t be repeated again.

Change History

Once the problem was identified with my TxTag account, the agent essentially rolled back the clock and corrected my account to reflect charges as if everything had worked properly. I got the prepaid discount and my balance was squared away.

If your process or technology has a glitch, your customers shouldn’t have to live with the consequences. Make things right. Or better yet, make things like there was never a problem to begin with.

Prevent a Relapse

In my case, the agent helped me register my tag and linked up my account with my information. Even if there is a glitch again in the future, TxTag’s fallback systems should catch it and process everything smoothly.

Once the problem is identified and the consequences reversed, you need to make sure they don’t happen again.

I saw a billboard on the way home from work the other day that made me think. It was for a custom home builder and had a slogan like: “Homes designed as thoughtfully as they are built.”

At first glance this looks like a warm-fuzzy statement. However, it is actually a fragile house of cards.

Comparisons are Tricky

Let’s take a look at this slogan and see why it could lead to trouble. There are two pieces to the puzzle: the house design and the house construction.

The slogan tries to convince us that the new homes are designed and constructed thoughtfully. After all, our homes are very personal to us and we’d hope that great thought was put into their building.

Unfortunately, where the slogan takes a misstep is that the thoughtfulness of the design relies on how they are built. This seems a little backwards.

What does the customer see?

Customers may never know, care, or think about how a home is designed. The process an architect goes through in designing a house is probably completely foreign to most people.

However, many of us have seen a house being built. We’ve probably driven down a street with some construction going on.

Beware of Visual Imagery

Typically, home construction sites are a mess. Debris and trash, raw materials, and dusty workers are scattered all over a site. “Thoughtfully” isn’t the first word that comes to mind when I see a construction site.

This custom home builder has hinged their quality statement on an image that doesn’t quite resonate with customers. “Thoughtfully” does not equal the chaos of a construction site.

Use with Caution

Are you trying to communicate the quality of your product or service by comparing it to something else? If so, try to ensure that the object of comparison has positive feelings and emotions in the hearts of your customers.