What I want you to tell me
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You’ve finally landed five minutes on the calendar of the prospect who’s long been atop your list of targets. They’re looking across their desk, waiting for you to share whatever was so important they agreed to make time for it. A deep breath, and then you launch into your pitch.
“It’s clear your industry is increasingly competitive and margins are shrinking, leading many of your competitors to bypass the traditional supply chain options for streamlined channels. That puts you in an unfavorable pricing environment, which is causing you to lose market share at an alarming rate.”
Their expression hasn’t changed. They heard the same thing at Monday’s manager’s meeting. And the week before that. And at the national sales meeting. And from three blog posts their boss forwarded them this morning.
Instead of listening to your brilliant solution, they’re mentally revising their resume. You just wasted your golden opportunity telling them what they already knew, none of which put them in a receptive mood.
You say you’d never do that? Let’s look at your company’s websites, your blogs, your social media, and your other communications channels. How many of them begin by sharing the obvious and the familiar? I’m always amazed at how many companies waste their prospect’s valuable attention telling them what those companies know better than they do.
Why should I care? What if you had opened with “I’m about to show you how you can recapture market share through your existing supply chain.” Now you have their attention and interest. You see, you’re about to solve the problem that’s been interfering with their sleep. Instead of belaboring the obvious, you’ve presented yourself as a problem-solver who understands their specific needs.
What do I need to know? Talk about benefits, not features. Don’t tell me your product has been engineered to use a three-handled veeblefetzer unless you can explain what that will do for me. “The three-handled veeblefetzer lets you core twice as many radishes in the same time.” Now you have my attention.
How do I know it works? Coring twice as many radishes is a bold promise – and I’m not sure you can deliver on it. So tell me how your product achieves that kind of performance. “The three-handled veeblefetzer cradles the radish, allowing the blades to operate faster with greater accuracy, and reducing waste caused by improper coring.” (Whatever you do, don’t let your engineers write the explanation. Otherwise, nobody but other engineers will understand it.)
Can you prove it? Before I buy, I need to be confident your product will perform. Give me examples of how it helped companies like mine achieve their goals. Give me hard evidence it doubled radish production for another company. That means we’d meet client requests in half the time. Cut labor costs in half or handle twice as much business.
I can bring that information and a recommendation to my boss. But send me into management with nothing more than vague promises of propelling my radish production into new partnership paradigms crafted upon foundations of quality and responsiveness, and you’ll never see a purchase order.
What if I want to know more? You don’t need to present excruciating detail. But make that detail available in a white paper, or on your website. Management may be put off by all the technical jargon, but Engineering won’t sign off without more meat. Don’t tell everybody everything, but be sure to tell them where they can find it.
What do I do next? You’ve convinced me! I’m ready to buy! All I have to do is … er … uh … okay, what do I have to do? Should I call you? Visit your website? If you don’t tell me to do something, I’ll do nothing.
A famed orator once explained his secret: “I tell them what I’m going to tell them, I tell them, then I tell them what I told them.” In today’s environment, you lack that luxury. Tell prospects what they don’t know, tell them what matters, tell them what to do – and it won’t be long before management tells you that you’re a genius.
Scott Flood creates effective copy for companies and other organizations. To learn more, visit www.sfwriting.com or contact him at sflood@sfwriting.com.