🔒Business development in the ‘post-truth era’ 

“Post-truth,” the Oxford Dictionary's 2016 international word of the year is defined as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”

Oxford Dictionary's president commented that the highly charged political and social discourse, and the rise of social media as a news source, elevated the concept of post-truth. But, post-truth also has important implications for business development strategy; the facts that underpin your value may not only be less respected, they may be consciously discounted.

Would your competitor use outdated data to bolster their pitch, misstate a few key facts to close a deal or fail to include vital context that would change the meaning? Do some businesses leverage the megaphone of multichannel communication to increase the volume of their pitch, while their value is declining? Inject emotion to cloud reasoning?

In this post-truth era, count on it!

Here are a few thoughts on the symptoms of the post-truth era:

Omnicompetent prospects

In the book “How America Lost Faith in Expertise And Why That's a Giant Problem,” by Tom Nichols, the concept of “omnicompetence” is presented as a cultural characteristic; the belief that without much special preparation, the common man was fundamental and indispensable with the ability to pursue the professions and run the government.

You have likely encountered the omnicompetent prospect; those with a veneer of knowledge supporting an attitude of subject matter self-satisfaction (“I know, I know what I need to know”) if not superiority (“I have been doing this a long time and know all about this area”). Trying to convince such self-appointed experts that they may be missing something or relying on old data is an unproductive strategy. And in the post-truth era, any affront to personal belief, however objective and fact-based, risks being personally offensive.

Availability bias

“Availability bias” means information that was recently and personally observed is often the most memorable. When the mind is stimulated more by one idea (e.g. evokes positive emotion) vs. another (e.g. a logical presentation) the emotional memory is more often recalled. We have all dealt with “smoke and mirrors” competitors, but today's ability to weaponize false claims by escalating the volume of their delivery through multiple communications channels and puffing the apparent authority of their source represents a whole new ball game. 

Backfire effect

According to the Economist (“The post-truth world; Yes, I'd lie to you,” Sept. 10, 2016), research from Dartmouth College and the University of Exeter indicates that in some cases confronting people who have a pre-existing bias with correct facts can actually strengthen their beliefs, even if demonstrably wrong. In the business world, directly attacking competitors has usually been a taboo, but in this post-truth era, it could have even greater consequences.

The intertwining of the explosion of data and opinion often posing as facts, the personalization of experience and a cultural gravitation away from objective debate and reasoning now profoundly affects how we sell. While the business world is often perceived as consciously removed from such subjectivity, the humans who make the buying decisions are not.

As one considers the implications of post-truth for your business development strategy, we can no longer trust, trust. In my next article, I will drill into strategies and tactics to address the impact of the post-truth era: recalibrate, reorient and reinvent.

Chris Coyle is managing director of business development services for CBC GROUP, which helps companies improve differentiation.