How to use neuroscience for breakthrough B2B Marketing

The following "Adzact Podcast" distills insights from a conversation between B2B marketing experts and Dr. Carmen Simon, a cognitive neuroscientist. It explores how neuroscience can enhance B2B marketing strategies by predicting future behaviours and improving engagement. The discussion covers the challenges of capturing attention, effective personalisation, the role of complexity, cultural responses, storytelling, and motivational strategies.

Guests

Dr Carmen Simon, Stanford Professor and Chief Science Officer at Corporate Visions

Scott Stockwell, Senior Brand Strategist at IBM

Liqian Lim, Senior Product Marketing Manager AI/ML at Snyk

Natasha Lockwood, Senior Integrated Marketing Manager at Tealium

Stephanie Mills, Director of Corporate Marketing at Matillon

Edvin Pauza, Demand Marketing Manager at Yapily

Guy Oakley, Marketing Director at ADP

Welcome to today's episode where we will explore how to use neuroscience in B2B marketing. I'm Joaquin Dominguez and today we have an incredible line up of guests. First let me introduce Doctor Carmen Simon a cognitive neuroscientist. Carmen has two doctoral degrees. She is the chief science officer at Corporate Visions, where she conducts research to create practical guidelines for B2B marketers, which is really interesting for us. Of course, she's also the author of the just released book, Made You Look. Carmen is wonderful to have you here.

Thank you for inviting me. It's nice to meet everyone.

Thank you. We have B2B marketing panelists who are ready to share their marketing strategies. So as we discussed before, today, we are aiming for a dynamic discussion. So feel free to jump in, ask questions, and let's make this as interactive as possible. But first, let's start with a quick round of introduction. Steph, maybe would you like to give a sentence on yourself?

Absolutely. My name is Steph Mills. I look after corporate marketing at a software company called Matillion. My job is to achieve reach and advocacy, for the Matillion brand through social PR and customer marketing.

Thank you scott.

Good afternoon everyone. Lovely to be here. I'm Scott Stockwell. I'm a global brand and content strategist for IBM. And I look after our sustainability campaign.

Thanks Scott, Guy.

Afternoon, everyone. My name is Guy Oakley. I am with ADP. I am the marketing director for the small business division in ASI, which is basically everything outside of the US and Canada.

Thank you. Guy. Natasha.

Hi, everybody. My name is Natasha Lockwood. I am working in integrated marketing at Tealium, basically running a lot of our content strategy from social to blog, kind of everything in between.

Thank you. Liqian.

Hello, I'm Liqian Lim. I work on product marketing at Snyk specifically for AI and machine learning and sneakers, a cybersecurity product and lead in a DevSecOps, arena.

Thank you. Meta

Hello everyone. Meta Karagiani I'm in between roles at the moment. I just finished a global role driving go to market alignment at brightcove, and before that I was leading the CMO practice at a company called Series Decisions, which was acquired by Forrester for over 12 years across EMEA and APAC.

Finally, Edwin.

Good afternoon. All.

I am Edwin.

Demand generation manager at Yapli the open banking platform provider. And previously I worked in B2B marketing and such industries as compliance and asset management.

Thank you Now finally. Tom.

My name is Tom Gatton. I'm the chief executive and founder of Adzact , which is a new B2B ad platform.

Carmen, let's start with you. Probably this will be the only direct question that I will ask today. Then I hope you can ask the question. So let's start with a with an easy one. Can neuroscience help us predict the future?

I like the spirit behind that question. First let's define some of the terms, because as neuroscientists and scientists in general, whenever you want to answer a question, you define the terms. So in my case, what we mean by neuroscience is the integration of four signals. I capture an EEG signal. So in my experiments I expose B2B buyers to various stimuli. And I capture an EEG signal on their chest. I place an electrode for an electrocardiogram signal on the wrist and fingers. There is a GSR device, a galvanic skin response, and I capture whether they have a reaction to the stimulation that they see, for instance, a sales presentation. And those sensors capture, by the way, whether their skin changes in reaction to that stimulation, and also, of course, an eye tracker. So it's a combination of those four signals that we mean neuroscience. And then when you're talking about can those predict the future. For if you are conducting enough experiments and you're starting to see patterns, then the answer could be yes. Assuming that the stimulation that you're continuing to produce is similar to the one that you're studying in in real time. What I'm noticing though, by the way. So this is what I want to turn it over to you to see how you're defeating. This is in the neuroscience studies that I conduct. I first have participants. So imagine your typical B2B buyer staring at a beige wall for 30s. And the reason for that is because I want to see what their brains are like in an unstimulated state, and then compare that state to what their brain is like when they view that sales pitch, for instance. And more often than not, I notice no statistically significant difference between stimulus and baseline, meaning that a lot of business content does not beat the beige wall. So I'll turn it over to you to ask, how do you create content assets that beat the beige wall?

That's a very good one. Someone wants to go first and discuss your marketing strategies.

I can give an example of, I think, an email campaign that I ran. And it was during the time of valentine's and we inserted an emoji of a red heart. And in the subject line, the basically professed our love for our customers. And that subject line had an enormous, high open rate. And I think to beat the beige wall, it has to get through the kind of the information beige and get into an emotion. That's what if you can summarize through symbols and emotional language that does have an impact on on the receiver of how they react, as opposed if he would fill it with data and kind of information heavy, subject line, it would fall flat.

Earlier on last week, we did an award ceremony and a B2B ad campaigns that all of you had nominated as some of the best campaigns. And many of the winners used job titles or descriptors of individual types of people really early on in the ad, and I wonder if that worked. Those seem to be really well received, actually won had a job title in the first sentence. And I wonder if that's because I was watching something earlier on today talking about the brain's egocentricity and potentially. Finding talking about an individual person allows them to recognize themselves very early on. Perhaps people like that.

Thinking about themselves? Maybe.

I like what you're saying a lot in, early on, when the virtual became vital during the pandemic, I did a neuroscience study where I was comparing the best type of introductions that could happen in a B2B sales environment, where you have a few people come in on the client side and a few people come in on the vendor side. Now you have a virtual meeting very much like this. This is not a sales presentation, but you can imagine a gathering of about six people, at least in my research. I had four experimental groups. Group one, the vendor, somebody representing the vendor had just simply created a PowerPoint slide. And on that slide, he had put in the six pictures of the attendees, client side, vendor side, their names and job titles, very much like Tom are describing. And that slide had been created in the name of efficiency. So the organizer of the call would have said, this is all we have right now. I know that everybody's busy. You can see their job functions and their names, and off we go with the sales presentation. Group two somebody from the sales side, the vendor side introduced everybody else on his team. And then somebody from the client side introduced everybody else on their team yet again in the name of efficiency but a little bit longer than the PowerPoint slide. Then Group three, everyone went around the virtual room very much like we did this morning, and said that just their name and job titles like Tom is alluding to and Group four. I wanted to see how much I could push it. Everyone went around the virtual room and said not only their names and job titles, but a few of their aspirations. Like if somebody from the VP of IT, for instance, Role angle would have said, and our aspiration is to look for cybersecurity. Somebody mentioned that beginning of this call and solutions and this is what we're after, because they're important to our organizations in ABC for ABC reasons. And my hypothesis was that the most efficient introduction technique would win. What is your hypothesis, by the way, four experimental groups. Which one do you think did best?

The longest introduction that I'm going to say that because I feel like folks love to talk about themselves a bit, and the best way to connect with other people, I feel like, is to, you know, to speak with them. And I almost feel like that would cut the tension a little bit. And sometimes you just, you know, zone out with those really quick introductions, but you're forced to pay attention if somebody is, you know, talking about their role and how it could possibly impact your own I love your perspective in the sense that people enjoy saying details and what I'm humbled by. When I apply neuroscience techniques to studying the buyer and the seller brain, I'm noticing that there are differences between the two. In other words, what the seller's brain wants is not equal to what the buyer's brain wants. So my hypothesis was the most efficient solution would when I'm wrong, about half the time when I conduct these studies, which is good because that's the purpose of of science. It was actually group number three that performed the best. And when I say best, the variables that I study are attention, working memory, meaning how long the brain is able to hold online some elements for a while until completing a cognitive task, fatigue, motivation to keep going with the stimulus that's on the cognitive side. On the affective side, I look at how much people enjoy the experience and how alert and awake they are during that experience. So that's a measure of arousal. And group three, the one where people went around the virtual room and only said their names and job titles. And I'm connecting this in a long way to what Tom said earlier in terms of ego focused, but in a brief kind of way. And it reminded me that at least during the pandemic, people actually did want to know about each other. Not with that many details, but humanity was not dead in a world of efficiency.

So we've talked about how to capture people's interest in a brief moment. But do you think to continue that interest and engagement that this would work? Because I deal with technical audiences previously with lawyers currently with engineers, there's a healthy cynicism behind that. They seem to want to question everything. And if you give them really quick hooks, they might be hooked momentarily, but you can't keep them there, or they might just dismiss you immediately. There's a 50 50 chance. What I'm trying to figure out is, more technical data, data, more interesting deep content and longer articles. Will that draw them in? Will they keep them there and will it translate to buying eventually?

I like that question a lot. Some other point of humility that I often experience in the neuroscience studies I conduct. There was a person who challenged me at the end of an event, a few years back, I was talking about complexity. Very much like you're mentioning right now. And this person said, you know, it's people from Germany who really love complexity. Those people just love the details. Like you're saying, technology. People just love details. American people, not so much. And I was saying, wait a second. Are you alluding to the fact that Americans are superficial? And he said, I'm not even alluding to this. So that moment was very potent for me because I started asking the question, is simplicity better for the brain or is there some merit to complexity? And I'm just sharing some details to answer your your very powerful question in terms of maintaining the attention of engineers, of detail oriented people, of people who are cynical and skeptical and question everything. And I was also on the route to seeing if this notion that we hear all the time, which is simplify complexity, was really true. And the finding that I can attest to from a brain science perspective is that it's actually complexity that keeps a brain going. It's not simplicity. The brain synchronizes better with that, which is complex. Of course, not every single moment within a sequence needs to be very intense and complex. At some point you do need to synthesize and come up with the essence. But I studied that question simplicity versus complexity. Which one is better globally. So I went to the US, Canada, England, Ireland, Italy, india, Singapore. And I kept asking the same question and exposing people to two experimental groups, by the way. And you would love this more than anything. The presentation sales presentation I used was a cybersecurity presentation. It was a vendor that was promising a solution between IT and OT, balancing the two operational technology and information technology, and promising a set of steps to counteract cybersecurity attacks. And in one group, we stayed on the surface. In another group, we really punched it. What does IT really mean in terms of cybersecurity attacks? What does OT really mean? So we went down and down and down with the level of details. People remembered more from the complex signal, even not necessarily from what they didn't see, but from the first part that everybody saw. They understood the presentation better and they remembered the things with more precision. That's a luxury, especially in the world of B2B, when you have so much competition. And if you're hearing just from somebody and just from somebody else and just from somebody else, after a while, you won't know who's what. So all of this is to say that if you want to sustain attention, revisit your relationship with simplifying complexity. I want to share one more element before I turn it over to you, which is, if you're familiar with fractals, fractals are these components that maintain their properties at any level of magnification. Like, for instance, if you go to the grocery store and you look at a head of cauliflower, you'll notice that the properties of the entire head is then repeated as the properties of the baby cauliflower that composes the entire head. So you just have the same set of equations that are repeated, all these cauliflower all the way down. So in a sales pitch, for instance, or a context for engineers or tech people, I want to say create a set of properties that are the essence of what you're saying, and then start elaborating around swirly sets of of equations, and they will stay with you for a prolonged amount of time because of the complexity, not the simplicity.

Carmen, did you find any trends? We were just talking a little bit earlier about sort of geography and cultures. So particular cultures respond in a certain way, or job roles respond to a certain way. You know, engineers respond one way compared to marketers that respond in a different Way.

I really like what you're saying. Because I would have thought that I would have seen a lot more differences, especially when it came to simplicity versus complexity across cultures. But if we manage complexity well, and I can share some components as to what that means, you annihilate all of those cultural differences. So whether you're presenting to somebody from California or from somebody from China, you're very likely to have the same impact. I was also surprised that there weren't that many differences between technical versus non technical people. So what do I mean by managing complexity? Well, in that cybersecurity presentation, what we did was have that set of essential elements. That's why I was saying when it comes to fractals, make sure that there is a set of rules or equations. And we did not deviate from that set throughout the entire sequence. So once you pick your core, it's cauliflower all the way down. Then visually, we design the presentation in such a way that we distinguish between IT and OT. We had some sort of icons that were very clear in terms of their meanings. The entire information was, presented gradually. So even though it was complex, it wasn't overwhelmingly complex. We had a good balance between what you were alluding to earlier on in our discussion, which was some elements that were hitting hard on the data and some elements that were hitting hard on emotions, like for instance, we said something like in IT, if you have a cyber attack, people will lose their jobs in OT. If you have a cyber attack, people will lose their lives. And the the screen turned black and white and it became very grave all of a sudden, just briefly, because you don't want to toy too much with people's intense emotions. So those are some techniques that I would, recommend to manage complexity. Well, I'm curious how you are embedding or if you're embedding any of those in any of the communication materials that you're creating.

So what you're saying from your research is that. Regardless of your audience, if we take the Geographical side out of it, if you're looking at trying to portray a message, it's the complexity actually is a benefit.

Yes, exactly. As long as you have a very clear set of rules like the essence and the core, you keep that constant and you just elaborate around that core and add more details. Because if we were to define our terms like we started our conversation, what is complexity really? It's an abundance of a lot of elements. So you have volume. Those elements are diverse. Like we had IT related concept OT related concepts. And those elements are also interdependent such that if you mess up with one in here, even if it's small, it will impact the entire ecosystem. So now knowing that that's what complexity is, you can reinvestigate your your communication and say, are we keeping a core of properties constant? And are we elaborating in the sense of adding more things? But those things are diverse and interdependent. Things get boring when we simply just add more volume onto a sequence, or they get boring if we simply just have diverse and random things. Randomness and complexity are two interesting properties to study together, because randomness does not have any kind of patterns, but complexity does have a set of patterns that you're then elaborating on.

What do you make me think, Carmen, a little bit maybe piggyback on guy's question too, is I wonder if the term complexity is what throws us here a little bit. Yeah. Because what I'm hearing and how I'm interpreting, which I love what you said is the random versus the structured. Yes. And oftentimes as marketers, we have this ode to messaging is a creativity exercise. And I disagree with that. Personally I think yes, there is creativity, but there is a structure you need to be taking through yourself to get to the messaging that will resonate with your audience.

So true. And I would add to that structure that you're mentioning, the word repeated. So it's repeated structure because otherwise what happens with the complex system. If you lose track of what that core is, then the brain doesn't have anything to hold on. So things will start appearing random. Even if they're not, we forget our lives almost as quickly as we live them. Our working memory span is very short. In fact, from a neuroscience perspective, I wish more people would start worrying less about attention span, which is intact. By the way, it's a myth that we have short attention spans and would start worrying more about working memory span. Meaning how long can the brain, the buyer's brain, or your internal teams brains can hold intact for a while? Some items that are necessary in order to complete something a meeting to complete a sale that's a longer a working memory that you have to keep going. But even if you talk to a to a buyer for, let's just say, ten minutes, our working memory starts fading after about 30s a minute. If you talk to super intelligent people, they can hold on about four items for about two minutes, and after that two minute mark elapses, unless you come back and retro cue. So you go back to the past and refresh. It's very unlikely that people still hold on that set of properties that you thought was important, because you've had enough repetition for yourself, but their brain hasn't detected the pattern yet. That's what we're getting into trouble, and it's the randomness that creates that trouble, like you're observing and not the complexity. So repeated structure would be a practical guideline for all of us.

You mentioned, mandelbrot set fractals and how repeated kind of key messages and the fractals, how they make up kind of a structure. How important would it be to tell that complexity in a story? So then people listen to a story, it kind of makes sense. The narrative, it's strong. So it's almost like, you know, interdependent. You have fractals. But as long as those fractals kind of add up in an ecosystem, what is a comparison to telling a kind of you might have a complex product, but telling a story from that complex product. So it's very easy to memorize, whoever is the listener and maybe you have a different slides in different products on the pitch deck. But if you tell those slides in a story and all those slides add up, is there a comparison? Is there like an overlap?

If you wrap something in a story, obviously you can increase the chances of memorability. I'm not saying that it's a certain that memory will still happen because the brain forgets stories, just like it forgets anything else. And I'm noticing that especially in business, people don't really have a clear definition of what a story really is. I like to define terms. So if we come up with practical guidelines, we say, okay, so we look at this product and now wrap it in a story. What is that? And in fact, I'm curious how you all define stories. And I can share a definition that I've had in what I've studied. How do you define a story, especially in a business setting?

The ads that we've been running and some of the messaging that we've been testing on social is actually starting with a pain point and using that as a hook. But I'm curious if that would create a positive perception of the product or somewhat negative, like starting with a negative emotion as the hook to lead into. Here's why we solve your problem.

I'm curious.

To see the the reaction that would, you know, penetrate the beige wall, but would it be, you know, some in somewhat of a negative sense later on down the road?

Coming back to your question a little bit, Carmen is the context. That within which you, share and you create an experience for your buyer. And for example, for me, a context could be. The steps that a buyer goes through to make a decision. And what do they need to know as they start all the way to the finish? That provides a context within which I will tell a story.

I absolutely love that because I too tend to start with pain points. So when I'm extracting a customer story from one of our customer advocates, it's always like, well, what challenges were you looking to solve? In the first place, how did you do that? So what did you do? And then the end, I guess, of the story would be what impact did you have? Or maybe the end might be what next? What are you going to do next? When I'm thinking about success stories, that's how I define my story. I wonder if it's often a bit too binary. And actually you need to repeat it a couple of times. One of my favorite, deck formats is someone I saved years ago, and it's called the Hollywood Movie Format. It's from a blog post I picked up ages ago, and it's a purports to kind of replicate a Hollywood movie, but it's all about it just goes from pain point to to solution to pain point. It kind of flips back and forth multiple times. So it says like, this is a terrible situation you're in. This would be the wonderful dreamland. Wouldn't it be wonderful? This could happen. But actually you can't do this because you've got all these problems. But here are some solutions that and it goes back and forth between that. And maybe that's Carmen reiterating a button again and again in people's heads.

I think there's a few term that one I think is called a sparkline where you have here's a problem, here's a solution, but then you've got another problem. But they get over that with this solution. And it's very much a sort of like a, you know, a wave that goes through. There's the good old Pixar story format, you know, the sort of once upon a time there was a person that had this problem, and then it got worse and it got worse. And then every day this happened until something changed it. And this is the resolution to the story. I've got one example. We ran some storytelling sessions with our supply chain experts. So they're not talking about the most sexy topic. It's supply chain. It's getting things from A to B. And we tested they did a blog post at the beginning of the session. And the first one was literally features and benefits. You know, the strap line I've got it in front of me was see it, sell it, manage your inventory more profitably with IBM inventory visibility. And it got one like I think it was from the guy that posted it's mother who just thought I'd better I'd better like that. Went through some. Here's how to tell a story with that Pixar story format. The second one was titled Why Polar Bears Care About Seaweed, and it was a video rather than an image, and the supply chain leader actually told a story with his daughter about global warming affecting the sea temperature, which affected kelp, which affected fish, which affected penguins, which affected polar bears. And then he used and common to your point about that fractal, he then used exactly the same pattern and said, this is why this is important for supply chain, because something happens here which has an impact, which has an impact, which has an impact. And that one got 2353 views, 66 likes and 25 comments. So the using the analogy, using story, using video, it was exactly the same thing he was explaining. It just gave us enough hooks to kind of latch on to.

It makes me think of the Forrester term or paper that came out, I think it was in 2018, but it basically talks about how as B2B consumers or marketers, we're not that different from a B2C buyer or consumer. If you were scrolling on LinkedIn and just searching for a product, that second ad is a lot better of a story. And we shouldn't keep reinventing the wheel as if it's pain point that it is all about the story. I think we talk too much about solving the problems and not necessarily connecting to the emotion, of a story.

Like a parable in the Bible. It's like a microcosm of the pattern that is told in the whole Bible or whatever, in a little story that's perhaps more relatable. Going back to the sort of the brain study, obviously stories we hope get the sort of the hormones going. So, you know, the oxytocin, the endorphin, the cortisol, the dopamine, the things that are the here's the scary thing, a little bit like you show people the black and white and it's like this thing has real ominous impact if you get it wrong, starts to get us anxious. And then when you take it forward and you start to solve it, we're like, ooh, a bit more relaxed. And that's the hormone response to story. And I wonder how that factors into your study of the brain.

If we were to combine all of the wonderful things that this entire team shared. The definition, I think matches that I've used in my studies. When I looked at storytelling and stories in general. So I defined stories as a series of events that happen on the way to finding a solution to a problem. And the reason I'm fond of that definition is because that's what science really is, is a series of events that happen in finding a solution to a problem. And as long as you define the problem and you define the solution well, and you go back there repeatedly very much like you've been noticing you're already on your way. What I'm noticing in business content, however, when people claim they share stories, they're really just fragments of that definition. Because, for instance, notice how the definition said it's a series of events that happened. And if you analyze many business content assets, including that ad that only got the one like is nothing really happens. Like you have to have action across time. You cannot claim a story unless you have action across time. And unfortunately, in business we're not very disciplined about the showing action across time. So to have a memorable story and make sure that people actually we calculate memory in terms of long term recall after 48 hours. So in one study I gave people a presentation of just 20 slides. And after 48 hours, I noticed that, they remembered, very little of the 20 slides. Many people remembered zero of the 20 slides, which is pretty scary. So then we said, okay with stories, then take that memory a little bit further. And, the answer is no. The brain is capable of forgetting stories. The memorable stories, however, had some patterns. Since we're talking about patterns, they had to have some perceptive elements, and context definitely belongs in there. When you paint a vivid context in buyers minds and people's minds in your children's minds spouse's minds, then things become a bit more vivid and the brain needs visuals in order to be able to understand the environment and predict. You're talking about predicting the future. Predict what happens next. So you need a very clear context. We need as many perceptive elements as we can. So that's in the perceptive, pillar. We need some cognitive elements. So facts are still part of stories. For a while, I was hooked on at least a popular show here in the US. It's called The Golden Girls. I don't know if you have heard of the Golden Girl. Sophia is one of the most delightful person on that show. And, she's portrayed as an older person. And all Sophia's stories start with picture it, it's Sicily, it's 1942, and the poor peasant girl is going down the street to the context is very clear now. Things are starting to be happening. We have some visuals, but also there are some facts like it's Sicily, it's 1942. So we can't just say that stories are different from facts. Facts are part of stories. But when we only insist on the facts, that means we are only offering zoomed in stories. And of course, the affective part is important as well. So that's a third pillar. And what I'm noticing in time is that it takes for the modern business brain a much stronger emotional stimulus to get it to react. This is a very humbling moment for us in neuroscience, and you're very rightfully so questioning in the beginning. Is it okay to punch a little bit with a negative emotion? Ultimately, it doesn't matter if it's positive or negative. What matters is the intensity, because these days the brain in general has been so habituated and in many senses even desensitized to emotion and to stimulation, that now it takes a stronger stimulus. Our threshold has changed. Our threshold for stimulation and emotion is becoming different because we're surrounded by so much in our personal lives. So one practical guideline I have for all of us is, as you're considering stories and of course emotions is wonder how courageous you are to amp that emotion.

They're kind of like the one of the things that one of my old bosses used to say, what's in it for me is, you know, you've got to be able to appeal to the person you're speaking to, whether it's B2B or B2C. Why is it any good for me and actually being able to make it? Sticky in the head. You know, I look at some of my kids scrolling through endless TikTok videos and all that other dreadful stuff that just monopolizes their faces these days. And it's mad the things that they remember and recognize. But when you actually just ask them to go put the shoes away because it's not in, there's nothing in it for them. They're not interested.

Well, the brain does take bribes. But you're remarking on a very interesting thing, which is how many more context changes the modern brain experiences compared to a brain that would have lived decades ago, a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago. If you were here in the 1700s, your context that you would have been exposed to would not have changed that much. You would have been in your house, you would have exited your house, you would have looked in your surroundings. Those would have been just a few context changes. Now, if you're scrolling on the YouTube shorts or on TikTok, imagine how many context changes you're giving to your brain again and again and again and again. So of course, our threshold for stimulation is becoming so different. And business content is not beating that beige wall because not only nothing really ever happens in terms of action, but the stimulation in itself is not all that interesting and or important, which is what you're alluding to. So our jobs in many ways have gotten harder if we are, after what you're mentioning earlier, not only capturing but sustaining attention across time. The good news is that the brain is capable of staying focused. We want to debunk those myths that say we have the attention span of a goldfish. There is no such thing. Ask yourselves or anybody that you know how many hours they've binge watched on a favorite show, and you know that we are capable. Your kids are capable of staying there. The question is, can we learn from some of those techniques, then put them in some business content and get the buyer's brain to have the same inclination to stay as they would on an Ozark show, or whatever you guys see popular these days? Based on that. So when you watch something like Netflix, it's very passive, so it's very easy to just keep on going when we have our audience engage with our with our material, with our content, they can read as much as they want. I'm going to ask this question next because I have always worked in cutting edge things blockchain, AI and the problem in this area is that people are really interested, but they're not translating that to action to actually buying. They're waiting the appropriate period. They're waiting for somebody else to jump into the water and see how cold it is before they try it. So we kind of want to move them faster towards the buying part. But I see the evaluation process being very long. And have you seen anything to sort of speed that up rather than people sort of not entirely passively, but engaging with the material, reading it, taking interest, but not really buying.

It's a very powerful question, because now you're tapping into a phenomenon that is enticing to study, but not the easiest to implement, which is motivation. So what keeps the brain going there is, you're mentioning hormones earlier and molecules in general. There's one molecule, one neurotransmitter that is one of the most powerful we can ever have in our brains that impacts our drive. And the way that you go from point A to point B, and I'm sure that every single person on this call knows that, that neurotransmitter, which is dopamine, dopamine has been mistreated because we used to believe that it's only connected to things that you crave. And and you like, like, for instance, tell me something that you crave and you like all the time. That, of course, we can share publicly.

An ice cream. Yeah, I like sugar. And social media. Yes. And Netflix.

cycling, sports and caffeine, perhaps.

I like that nobody is saying alcohol. Chocolate is an answer that I hear. But the newer finding that we have in neuroscience is that you don't have to have dopamine in your brain to like and crave ice cream. You have to have dopamine in your brain to go get it, because in most circumstances, ice cream doesn't just materialize itself out of thin air. You actually have to perform some action, not all the time, but somebody might might give it to you every so often. But you're typically in charge of going to get something. And from an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense to create a brain that way. Meaning that if you go and hunt and gather, you can't just come back and rest on your laurels. You have to be ready again and again and again. The brain is constantly in pursuit of things. So to answer your question about how do we get people to move a little bit closer to to action, the good news is that they have what it takes. There are internal, pharmacy is there and it needs that molecule. It needs that dopamine in order to fuel that drive. Now, how do you create that molecule, especially for somebody else or bad enough, creating it for ourselves? And it's not so much that we're bad creating it. We're very, not so cautious about protecting it. And not over exerting the modern brain overindulges like you're mentioning Netflix or you're mentioning some other pleasures that we have the layer and all these pressures and our dopamine receptors do wear out for a while. And there's only one pool that we have of those we have multiple pathways for dopamine, but the ones that are responsible for the motivation and the drive, there is a pool. And that pool can be depleted. And that's why it's good to stay disciplined and say, you know, sometimes if I go for a run, I don't have to listen to music all the time. It's, it's it's nice to just, refrain every so often, but if you want to create it in someone else, wonder, are there some behaviors that are already there and people have a natural inclination toward? Sometimes we try to superimpose some behaviors that we think will be good for them, but that's actually only good for our brain. So that would be one technique I recommend to to study your bio a little bit more and see where they naturally go in terms of motivation. And of course, I mentioned that the brain does take bribes, at least in the beginning. So if you're noticing that people are not taking action and they need that extra warmth, wonder if you can offer what we call in neuroscience intermittent schedules of rewards, meaning that sometimes you might meet with your buyers, you might have the most exquisite presentation. It has a lot of stimulation, there's a lot happening, and the reward is just also, so strong. And the next time that you meet with them, there's only something small that happens. And the next time that you meet with them, maybe you don't meet with them at all for a while. And there is silence. And the more that the brain cannot predict the next reward, the longer it will stay with the action that will apply to your kids. By the way, it will apply to your spouses also, I've been training a puppy, and one of the the advice they give is to sometimes give a reward and sometimes don't. And they seem to the way people like gambling. They that's how they explained it.

That's where you kind of end up with, you know, like the content marketing strategies where you're you're pushing out content. You're giving that bit. You're, you know, I mean, payroll, it's not the most exciting topic in the world, that's for sure. It's a it's a necessity. But if someone's out there researching payroll in our industry, someone's downloading a 37 page report on payroll. They're not doing it for fun because unless they're mad, that's not the kind of thing you're going to sit down and read of an evening, you know, whilst you're sitting in the sunshine having a nice glass of wine. There's a reason they're giving an indication and that then feeding them through, a decent content marketing strategy, lead scoring, feeding them, feeding them stuff and watching how they consume it allows you to be able to obviously judge your buyer journey in a fairly good and predictable way. I think lead scoring has helped a lot in that with with marketing automation and and being able to then use all of the other tools to get that LinkedIn message in, or that bit of marketing, paid search marketing or whatever, you know, it's all those signals that are coming in now that we can start to use to contribute towards moving someone from. I'm interested to. They're a customer. But it requires a lot of. Investment and time. I would say, if you are thinking about the phrase that I'm sure you've heard a million times, know your audience, I would say know your audience's intrinsic motivations. And if you start to know a little bit of those, what would it take for somebody to read that 30 page report for HR? Is there some people who still go through those? Some motivations that they already have. See if you can tap into those. If you know nothing about those then you can start with some extrinsic rewards. But just know that those will only be short lived and potent in the beginning of a process. To at least try to get people into what it is that you have to offer. And for those is what I mean by the intermittent schedule. Sometimes you give them something that's a strong reward. Perhaps you're organizing an event in order to push them, because the question was, how do we get them faster to that action? You're organizing something that's a bit, more, more intense, but then they only get one PDF file and later on and sometimes they get, a small email and sometimes they get nothing for a while. Silence can be a powerful motivator. Otherwise, we're doing what you were just saying. Just say we start pushing and pushing and pushing extrinsically. And if we don't link to something that already is in there, it's going to be a little bit harder for the brain to have that chemical that we're talking about and keep going.

We're discussing this the other day about we're going to an event soon and there's different types of of buyer that's going to be there for a start. Then we have all these this different presence at the event. So how do you score someone who comes to your booth and picks up a hat versus someone who comes to your customer speaking session versus someone who might come and do a demo, but all those different things that they're doing. So clearly there at the event, their potential buyer, you know, you're going to the event, but what are the different things that they do and how much intent does that really show and how much of like a serious buyer are they? And we were scratching our heads and we're like, oh, you know, it's a really interesting question.

I like how you're already identifying very specific behaviors. And now keep asking exactly those questions that you're asking from the angle of what's their intrinsic motivation. Because the motivation for the person who does a demo or follows up already on their own, that's a lot higher compared to the person who just simply picks up a hat.

There is a new feature. I don't know if anybody has seen it yet on LinkedIn that just rolled out for ads. Beneath the ad itself is 150 of your friends have downloaded this asset or, sort of like a metric scoring around like minded individuals who are interested in the same thing. We've tested, messaging for a event that's coming up for us saying, like, these competitors of yours in your industry are attending this event. You should come to this event kind of like a FOMO of missing out or like you're not going to get a competitive edge if you do not attend this session or, download this content. So, kind of to your point earlier about waiting for somebody to jump into the water to see if it's cold or not, like, telling folks, you know, people have already jumped in and you're going to miss the boat if you don't, start now.

And did you see.

Good reaction to that, Natasha?

It's very early in testing that, but I'm going to hesitantly say the engagement is much higher. With the small test that we have run so far.

I wonder how long it's going to last, because I think we all, in the early days were, you know, you'd go and book a ticket and it would say, you know, buy it quick. There's only three tickets left at this price. And then you kind of go, no, they're always going to tell me that even if there are 100 tickets, how long before we get desensitized or we think we're being played? It must be quite hard coming to study, motivations and, kind of brain science in this area because as, as Scott says, I think there's a constant, war between, you know, coming up with new techniques and then people getting hardened to them, an arms race constantly to come up with innovative ways of marketing. And then people especially like when you were talking about, technical buyers in particular, have become extremely resistant, actively reject marketing targeted to them. So you must change all the time.

One way to to handle that is to at least one way that I've handled that kind of complexity since we've been talking about complexity is to look for universals. What are some things that, despite an ever changing world and despite things competing for our attention, will still capture it, even for people who say, oh, I'm immune to this, this will never work on me. What are some universals that go beyond beyond that? And one theme that I'm remarking on, especially in light of our most recent discussion about what gets the person to move a little faster, or how do we know if this person is more interested than this other person? One dimension to work with, which is always going to be a classic, is the presence of movement. We can connect that to that chemical that we just mentioned, meaning, dopamine, because dopamine is the molecule of motivation and movement to have that drive to go toward that which you're pursuing. In fact, Parkinson's disease happens because of a deficiency in dopamine. So that's actually a motor condition. And any time you're seeing your customers move, like physically move towards something like you're mentioning in your event you're noticing that some customers will actually physically go to that space versus not go to this other space. Movement is a critical indication of what's going on. So start observing for that. For us in neuroscience, this notion of movement has become a lot more pertinent lately because we're recognizing more and more than it's very difficult to disentangle what's cognition and what's physical movement in the way that we come to learn things and we come to perceive and we come to remember and make decisions, those the way that the body interacts with the with the brain and then with the environment are all so interconnected. This is why the hottest trend in neuroscience right now is called embodied cognition. We recognize that your buyers, your, sellers, your children, your spouses, they don't just know things because they build mental representations and abstract in their brains. They know things because the brain and body interact to the environment. So look for movement. Or if you don't see it, organize it. We've started lately to ask customers to like, physically take notes during, sales meetings, because the moment I've seen a few of you, capture some notes, handwritten notes, not typed notes, those imply movement. Because the moment that I'm listening to someone and now I'm starting to jot things down, my fingers are moving. My entire hand is involved. My entire arm is involved. My neck is involved. My shoulders are in there. The more movement you have, the stronger the cognition.

Just a question on sort of your testing, is it always individuals on their own or particularly thinking about this movement? You know, some of that is people will follow other people. And to Liqian's comment about can you get people to move faster? It's almost like if people can see that there is a group of people moving to something they have that I don't want to be left out. So is the test. Do people's brain responses change if they're tested on their own or tested with others?

Definitely. So. And I like that question more than you can ever imagine. So this is why in neuroscience we have this technique that's called hyper scanning. Hyper scanning means that you're scanning not just one person. So imagine that people are wearing the gear. They're wearing the EEG cap. They're wearing the things on their chest, around their wrist. And now the moment that you invite somebody else in the experiment and you know that there is somebody else in the room attending to the same sales pitch, for example, that induces a brain activity in your own brain. So this inter subject correlation is what we call it, has been a metric that we have been including in our studies in the past three years since the technology has advanced. Because you're absolutely right to make that remark the moment that somebody is near, this is why you laugh a little louder when you're watching a comedy with somebody else versus by yourself, somebody else's presence will induce neural changes in your own brain. And, any time that we can at least allude to the possibility that there's somebody else in the room, something is appearing to be different. And the reason you want to study for that is because especially in organizations, decisions are hardly ever individuals. Individual decisions are social processes. So you want to include that the is that inter-subject correlation and see not only how somebody's brain perceives one stimulus, but how a group's brain and how they, well, they synchronize with each other and then how they react to the stimulus as a social unit, not as an individual one. Love that, that question.

A thing that's super important for us in B2B because we're unique compared to B2C, because we generally have a group of people that are buying something. There's not one buyer. There's a little huddle that we need to influence.

Buying group, from what we learn is, getting larger. We hear that these days you have as many as 11, 12. I've heard even 18 people be part of the buying group. So one practical guideline, as you imagine, we reach the end of the session, I want to to share is that decisions are rooted in memories. Your customers will make decisions based on what they remember, not on what they forget. And what you're aiming for is, not only a memory that people take away individually, you're aiming for a unified memory. Typically, people forget 90%, sometimes even more after 48 hours. So I would say make sure that you're in control of the 10% that they tend to take away, and that 10% is unified across the group is not, individual and definitely not random like we were talking about.

Carmen do we all have to be physically present in a room to have this unified memory, or could it work in a in a digital space?

It can definitely work in a digital space. I did a study where I was comparing four modalities. I wanted to see what sales presentation would work best if you were at the same site with your client. So face to face sales presentation virtual like we have this medium right now hybrid, which is what was starting to appear as a result of the pandemic coming to an end. So you would now have a few people with a seller on site and some people would call in. Have you ever had that experience? Also over the phone, because just in the face of technology the phone is not dead. You can still call up your customers and say hey I have this to offer out of the four, which one do you think performed the best.

Say hybrid.

I want to say face to face. Everyone together.

You're so right. We had such high hopes for that face to face setting. And by the way, that was a hyper scanning study because I wanted to see if in the hybrid situation, one person wearing the gear was at the same side of the cellar, and the other person wearing the gear was remote calling in via zoom, very much like we're doing right now. I needed pairs in order to see what was happening and how well people's brains synchronized. The best modality was virtual for an introductory sales solution. It was a tech solution that we were studying in that sales presentation. And the worst modality was the hybrid one. People's brains were the least synchronized when one part of the pair was remote, and the other one was the same side of the cellar. It makes sense, right? Because if you are not in the room, you feel you have a different experience, right? You feel excluded from what's happening in the room. I've done a lot of hybrid presentations. It's hard, really hard yeah, I agree with that because I always feel the one that's like when I'm dialing into the US and I think, oh, nobody can hear me, I can't say anything. And then you just switch off, you know?

A question on the hybrid and come and going back to your embodied cognition. Have you done any testing with second screening. So people in the room are doing something on a device. People remote are doing the same thing on a device. And does that get a better response?

Only study I can think of that I've done in terms of having an interaction in a sales context, and then something else is happening on the side, is I wanted to see the impact of the chat box in a B2B sales conversation that was happening virtually. Right now, we do have only one comment here in the chat box, that's the only thing that happened this, this entire call. So imagine how much focus we have benefited from. And I was noticing the detriment of the chat box during a sales conversation, because people might start typing up some random comments. I studied the impact of a random comment that somebody made totally unrelated to what was happening. Somebody thought they were being helpful, and they posted a link. Let's just say that we're talking about embodied cognition. And somebody just thought, oh, look, I found this article and posted it in there. Somebody asked a presenter a question. So there are some typical things that you might see in a B2B sales context that might appear in the the chat box. None of them had any kind of strong merit. And in fact, when somebody asked a question, the only time that worked is if the presenter was on it immediately to answer it. Otherwise, it impacted the people's attention and the motivation that we're talking about and the emotion for the rest of the session. So as a result of that study, we're saying treat the chat box very carefully because of that second screen that you're talking about. In a sense, very kind to the virtual presenters. I was thinking of it actually making people have a second device. So not trying to look at a chat box in a zoom meeting. So like this, but saying to people, we're going to poll or we're going to send you something, you need to look at something in your hand that's separate. So you've got the tangible and everyone is on the same level, whether or not you're in the room or you're virtual.

The only example I've seen of that is a company that literally sent someone a physical button that did something. And the digital world, I can't remember exactly what it was. It was some sort of payment company. Those dialing things. Yes. I'm really sorry because the conversation is so interesting. I. I would love to run an experiment if we can. But if anyone could tell. What do you remember from today's conversation? In one phrase or one word is super hard. But I will start and I will say the the cauliflower effect and the complexity that. Really easy to remember. I don't know if you want to say something.

Patterns. And the repetitive patterns just makes so much sense to me. The humbling moment of having just one like and sometimes the negative emotion pushes me. So I will take on forever that image and then consider what else can we do, even as a team. And I hope we stay in touch to go beyond the one like.

Thank you everyone so much. Thank you so much, Carmen, for sharing your knowledge with us.