Selasa, 30 Oktober 2012
4 Marketing Tips For Small Businesses From 'Your Business'
4 Marketing Tips For Small Businesses From 'Your Business' Host JJ Ramberg: There is exactly one show on U.S. television that focuses exclusively on the needs of small business: "Your Business" on MSNBC. Host JJ Ramberg has just published a book titled "It's Your Business: 183 Essential Tips That Will Transform Your Small Business." JJ has unique insight on small companies, having seen hundreds of them in the 6 years that she's hosted the show. JJ was kind enough to answer four questions for me and share four exclusive marketing tips.
Minggu, 14 Oktober 2012
Get Your Customers to Sell for You
Get Your Customers to Sell for You: 
Use your website and social networking to generate easy-to-close referral sales.
When it comes to selling, referrals are the Holy Grail. It's much easier to make a sale when the sales process starts with a customer recommending you to a friend or colleague.
Ideally, you want to turn your best customers into a "volunteer sales force," according to Rob Fuggetta, author of the newly published book Brand Advocates: Turning Enthusiastic Customers Into a Powerful Marketing Force.
When I recently spoke with Fuggetta (who also heads the firm Zuberance) about referral selling, he gave me the following five tips:
1. Identify your best customers.
First, find out which of your existing customers are likely to join your "volunteer sales force." Use your website, blog, newsletter, or other customer touch points to ask the following question:
On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our company or product?
Any customer who responds with a "9″ or a "10″ is a candidate to become what Fuggetta calls a "brand advocate" who will help you sell your product to other people. Capture the contact information for these customers, and you're well on your way to getting those easy-to-close referral sales.
2. Make it easy for your best customers to post reviews.
Once you've identified potential brand advocates, invite them to write reviews of your company or product on sites that post customer reviews (e.g., Yelp, Amazon, Best Buy) and provide them with links to the appropriate pages on those review sites.
According to Fuggetta, about 20% of customers who answered "9″ or "10″ will write reviews. Therefore, if you've got 10,000 customers and 2,000 answer "9″ or "10," you'll end up with 400 customer reviews. That's a lot of reviews.
Customer reviews accomplish two things. First, they make your product more attractive to new buyers, because buyers are more influenced by the opinions of their peers than your advertising or marketing. Second, when existing customers make a public commitment to your product, they are more likely to follow through on the next three steps.
3. Encourage your best customers to write testimonials.
Reviews talk about the product and how well it works. Testimonials are personal stories about how the product "changed the world" for the customer or the customer's firm. (Think "Kodak moment.") Testimonials are much more useful than reviews as sales tools because stories tend to stick in people's minds.
Fuggetta cites the example of a restaurant called Rubio's that reputedly sells great fish tacos. While Rubio's has plenty of Yelp reviews to that effect, what sticks in the mind is the woman who named her daughter Ruby because she went into labor while eating a fish taco at the restaurant.
When you get a testimonial, you post it on your website, of course. However, testimonials are even more powerful as sales tools when customers post them on their Facebook pages, especially if they're willing to include a link to your website.
4. Invite your best customers to answer questions from prospects.
Prospects often have questions before they buy. Though your sales team can probably answer those questions, those answers will be taken more seriously when they're provided by one of your existing customers. There are two ways to make this happen.
The cheapest method is to have a support forum in which customers can answer questions. The trick here is that it has to be easy for prospects to register and ask questions. Also, you'll need to keep an eye on the forum to make sure that dissatisfied customers don't start bad-mouthing.
A more elegant approach is to put a banner on your website reading: "Got a question? Ask a customer!" When a prospect clicks on the banner, your website sends requests to your network of brand advocates (who've given their permission for you to do this, of course) so that whoever is available can answer the question.
Fuggetta claims that using existing customers as advocates in this way has allowed one of Zuberance's clients to achieve astronomical sales conversion rates of 25%. In other words, one out of four prospects who ask questions of existing customers end up purchasing the product!
5. Give your best customers promotional offers to share.
Once you've developed your network, you can get them to share your special offers with friends and colleagues in the same way they share cute-kitty videos and interesting news articles, using whatever social networking platform they prefer.
Such offers can range from special discounts and coupons (for consumer products) to white papers and invitations to webinars (for B2B products). The trick here is to make the offers easy to share and have an easy way to give your advocates a heads-up that the offers are available.
Interestingly, such sharable offers are more effective when customers don't receive any compensation for sharing them. Turns out that giving existing customers special gifts or discounts makes their recommendations less likely to be heeded.
Like this post? If so, sign up for the free Sales Source newsletter.
Use your website and social networking to generate easy-to-close referral sales.
When it comes to selling, referrals are the Holy Grail. It's much easier to make a sale when the sales process starts with a customer recommending you to a friend or colleague.
Ideally, you want to turn your best customers into a "volunteer sales force," according to Rob Fuggetta, author of the newly published book Brand Advocates: Turning Enthusiastic Customers Into a Powerful Marketing Force.
When I recently spoke with Fuggetta (who also heads the firm Zuberance) about referral selling, he gave me the following five tips:
1. Identify your best customers.
First, find out which of your existing customers are likely to join your "volunteer sales force." Use your website, blog, newsletter, or other customer touch points to ask the following question:
On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our company or product?
Any customer who responds with a "9″ or a "10″ is a candidate to become what Fuggetta calls a "brand advocate" who will help you sell your product to other people. Capture the contact information for these customers, and you're well on your way to getting those easy-to-close referral sales.
2. Make it easy for your best customers to post reviews.
Once you've identified potential brand advocates, invite them to write reviews of your company or product on sites that post customer reviews (e.g., Yelp, Amazon, Best Buy) and provide them with links to the appropriate pages on those review sites.
According to Fuggetta, about 20% of customers who answered "9″ or "10″ will write reviews. Therefore, if you've got 10,000 customers and 2,000 answer "9″ or "10," you'll end up with 400 customer reviews. That's a lot of reviews.
Customer reviews accomplish two things. First, they make your product more attractive to new buyers, because buyers are more influenced by the opinions of their peers than your advertising or marketing. Second, when existing customers make a public commitment to your product, they are more likely to follow through on the next three steps.
3. Encourage your best customers to write testimonials.
Reviews talk about the product and how well it works. Testimonials are personal stories about how the product "changed the world" for the customer or the customer's firm. (Think "Kodak moment.") Testimonials are much more useful than reviews as sales tools because stories tend to stick in people's minds.
Fuggetta cites the example of a restaurant called Rubio's that reputedly sells great fish tacos. While Rubio's has plenty of Yelp reviews to that effect, what sticks in the mind is the woman who named her daughter Ruby because she went into labor while eating a fish taco at the restaurant.
When you get a testimonial, you post it on your website, of course. However, testimonials are even more powerful as sales tools when customers post them on their Facebook pages, especially if they're willing to include a link to your website.
4. Invite your best customers to answer questions from prospects.
Prospects often have questions before they buy. Though your sales team can probably answer those questions, those answers will be taken more seriously when they're provided by one of your existing customers. There are two ways to make this happen.
The cheapest method is to have a support forum in which customers can answer questions. The trick here is that it has to be easy for prospects to register and ask questions. Also, you'll need to keep an eye on the forum to make sure that dissatisfied customers don't start bad-mouthing.
A more elegant approach is to put a banner on your website reading: "Got a question? Ask a customer!" When a prospect clicks on the banner, your website sends requests to your network of brand advocates (who've given their permission for you to do this, of course) so that whoever is available can answer the question.
Fuggetta claims that using existing customers as advocates in this way has allowed one of Zuberance's clients to achieve astronomical sales conversion rates of 25%. In other words, one out of four prospects who ask questions of existing customers end up purchasing the product!
5. Give your best customers promotional offers to share.
Once you've developed your network, you can get them to share your special offers with friends and colleagues in the same way they share cute-kitty videos and interesting news articles, using whatever social networking platform they prefer.
Such offers can range from special discounts and coupons (for consumer products) to white papers and invitations to webinars (for B2B products). The trick here is to make the offers easy to share and have an easy way to give your advocates a heads-up that the offers are available.
Interestingly, such sharable offers are more effective when customers don't receive any compensation for sharing them. Turns out that giving existing customers special gifts or discounts makes their recommendations less likely to be heeded.
Like this post? If so, sign up for the free Sales Source newsletter.
Packaging 101: Tips From a Branding Whiz
Packaging 101: Tips From a Branding Whiz: 
Your packaging decisions might seem trivial, but they're not. It will be the first thing a consumer sees--and you want it to be a joy to dive into.
With toddlers running around our homes, we're always reminded how important packaging is.
Like most kids their age, when a box arrives, our one-year-olds often obsess over the wrapping--and completely ignore the gift inside. While we adults usually want what's inside the box, we're usually just as enticed by good packaging.
And there's no denying that the first thing a customer will notice is your packaging. So how do you create smart, branded packaging that is attractive and also conveys your company's message?
When we set out to create Altruette, we had a specific look in mind for our packaging but we didn't know how to turn our concept into a finished product. Like most first-time entrepreneurs, we had zero expertise when it came to packaging. We admired the shape of a box that Lee had stumbled on years earlier but had no idea how to actually get it made.
There are numerous box makers who are easy to find online, but it's difficult to distinguish one from the other without seeing their products in real life. So Lee set out to a packaging trade show at Javits and found a few promising leads. We priced them out and weighed the quality vs. cost and settled on a German company with an office in California. They did great work--but, even so, it took months to get a sample and to receive our entire shipment.
But when we set out to create a new line for a younger generation (altruette girls), which launches in a few weeks (more on that soon!), we were less sure about what we wanted. We knew we loved our original boxes but we also knew that this next line needed to connect to our original look but work for a younger generation. It had to be more of an evolutionary process and we needed someone to guide us. We asked around but had no luck finding anyone through our network.
So after hitting a few deadends, we went on LinkedIn and started searching. We stumbled on Drina Karp, a freelancer in New York City, who had worked for some pretty impressive brands (Kate Spade, Marc Jacobs, Vera Wang, Godiva and Biotherm). Her portfolio of past clients caught our eye and lead us to reach out to her directly.
We worked closely with Drina to come up with the look of our upcoming launch. We asked her to walk us through the process. Here's how she does it.
How do you work with clients?The creative process begins with the concept. This is the most important stage and it's the most time consuming. Sometimes I have a creative direction based upon a brand's established identity. With a launch, I have to create a look based upon the ideas communicated to me from the client as to what they hope to achieve. This is where communication is so important. Learning the questions to ask to be able to create a design concept, considering the marketing objectives and intended audience, that will satisfy visually and insure the brand a success. I present my ideas, I receive feedback from the client, sometimes there are revises, and a direction is chosen.
What should the client be thinking about early on?
It is important for a client to be able to communicate to me their needs. Marketing objective, target audience, designs that inspire them, their budget, and any production concerns are all a part of the picture that needs to be communicated so I can create a design that inspires and answers their needs.
How can you test a look of a package before taking it to market?
Most companies create printed "comps" of their designs to get a realistic product that they can look at. This really allows you to judge a product. If anything needs to be changed, you will know it. No one wants to find out after a product is produced that other decisions might have been preferable. Trust me, you'd rather spend money to test the package before the launch rather than end up with thousands of boxes that aren't perfect.
If I have a vision in my head of what my packaging should look like, how can I communicate that to you? Should I draw something? Should I write down my vision?
Clients are generally inspired by other products they have seen. I ask them for the names of what they like, or what they do not like. It doesn't have to be a similar product. I can be directed to a website or e-mailed images. If they have a specific thought, they can draw it if they are comfortable drawing, or just share it with me verbally. Depends upon their skill set. I do think it is so important to get a real understanding of the visual history of a company, so I will ask for past products, or printed material that are relevant to our project. Large companies will have created marketing briefs with an analysis of goals and visual direction, which can guide the conversation between the client and myself.
How do you convince clients to let go of their idea (if it's not a good one!)?
A tough question. I am being hired to give my design direction, and I will always do my best to lead the client to the most satisfactory solution. When a client knows their product and their audience, I find a collaboration between us--my experience with theirs and the back and forth--will lead to the best solution. I am being hired because of my previous work and my design sense. So if I am hired for a project, we are usually in agreement and the conversation flows back and forth creating the best resolution.
Most projects work this way but a client might also see something that they like which does not excite me. I would discuss with them our goal and try to explain how the new idea works, or might not work, to resolve the design. I will do my best to make them happy and give them what they visualize. But I would also present a design that would satisfy us both, bridging any differences.
Your packaging decisions might seem trivial, but they're not. It will be the first thing a consumer sees--and you want it to be a joy to dive into.
With toddlers running around our homes, we're always reminded how important packaging is.
Like most kids their age, when a box arrives, our one-year-olds often obsess over the wrapping--and completely ignore the gift inside. While we adults usually want what's inside the box, we're usually just as enticed by good packaging.
And there's no denying that the first thing a customer will notice is your packaging. So how do you create smart, branded packaging that is attractive and also conveys your company's message?
When we set out to create Altruette, we had a specific look in mind for our packaging but we didn't know how to turn our concept into a finished product. Like most first-time entrepreneurs, we had zero expertise when it came to packaging. We admired the shape of a box that Lee had stumbled on years earlier but had no idea how to actually get it made.
There are numerous box makers who are easy to find online, but it's difficult to distinguish one from the other without seeing their products in real life. So Lee set out to a packaging trade show at Javits and found a few promising leads. We priced them out and weighed the quality vs. cost and settled on a German company with an office in California. They did great work--but, even so, it took months to get a sample and to receive our entire shipment.
But when we set out to create a new line for a younger generation (altruette girls), which launches in a few weeks (more on that soon!), we were less sure about what we wanted. We knew we loved our original boxes but we also knew that this next line needed to connect to our original look but work for a younger generation. It had to be more of an evolutionary process and we needed someone to guide us. We asked around but had no luck finding anyone through our network.
So after hitting a few deadends, we went on LinkedIn and started searching. We stumbled on Drina Karp, a freelancer in New York City, who had worked for some pretty impressive brands (Kate Spade, Marc Jacobs, Vera Wang, Godiva and Biotherm). Her portfolio of past clients caught our eye and lead us to reach out to her directly.
We worked closely with Drina to come up with the look of our upcoming launch. We asked her to walk us through the process. Here's how she does it.
How do you work with clients?The creative process begins with the concept. This is the most important stage and it's the most time consuming. Sometimes I have a creative direction based upon a brand's established identity. With a launch, I have to create a look based upon the ideas communicated to me from the client as to what they hope to achieve. This is where communication is so important. Learning the questions to ask to be able to create a design concept, considering the marketing objectives and intended audience, that will satisfy visually and insure the brand a success. I present my ideas, I receive feedback from the client, sometimes there are revises, and a direction is chosen.
What should the client be thinking about early on?
It is important for a client to be able to communicate to me their needs. Marketing objective, target audience, designs that inspire them, their budget, and any production concerns are all a part of the picture that needs to be communicated so I can create a design that inspires and answers their needs.
How can you test a look of a package before taking it to market?
Most companies create printed "comps" of their designs to get a realistic product that they can look at. This really allows you to judge a product. If anything needs to be changed, you will know it. No one wants to find out after a product is produced that other decisions might have been preferable. Trust me, you'd rather spend money to test the package before the launch rather than end up with thousands of boxes that aren't perfect.
If I have a vision in my head of what my packaging should look like, how can I communicate that to you? Should I draw something? Should I write down my vision?
Clients are generally inspired by other products they have seen. I ask them for the names of what they like, or what they do not like. It doesn't have to be a similar product. I can be directed to a website or e-mailed images. If they have a specific thought, they can draw it if they are comfortable drawing, or just share it with me verbally. Depends upon their skill set. I do think it is so important to get a real understanding of the visual history of a company, so I will ask for past products, or printed material that are relevant to our project. Large companies will have created marketing briefs with an analysis of goals and visual direction, which can guide the conversation between the client and myself.
How do you convince clients to let go of their idea (if it's not a good one!)?
A tough question. I am being hired to give my design direction, and I will always do my best to lead the client to the most satisfactory solution. When a client knows their product and their audience, I find a collaboration between us--my experience with theirs and the back and forth--will lead to the best solution. I am being hired because of my previous work and my design sense. So if I am hired for a project, we are usually in agreement and the conversation flows back and forth creating the best resolution.
Most projects work this way but a client might also see something that they like which does not excite me. I would discuss with them our goal and try to explain how the new idea works, or might not work, to resolve the design. I will do my best to make them happy and give them what they visualize. But I would also present a design that would satisfy us both, bridging any differences.
You're Not a Zombie: 6 Ways to Shake Up Your Sales Day
You're Not a Zombie: 6 Ways to Shake Up Your Sales Day: 
In a rut? Here are practical ways to pull yourself out of the daily grind and back to loving your job.
Let’s face it: sales can be a grind.
On the bad days, there is no job as regimented, as rote or as repetitious as a salesperson’s. If you are an outside rep, your airport/flying/rental/meeting/hotel cycle can destroy one of the true joys of life. If you are an inside salesperson, you call your leads in the morning, email your pipeline in the afternoon and repeat.
Falling into this mindset is a form of living death. Your brain activity fades. Your waking hours blur. When you dream, it’s in your telephone voice. You have a telephone voice! When the bad days stack up in rows of five, when the unending stream of follow-ups, cold calls and manager check-ins become habitual, you know. You have become a “sales zombie.”
This is not you!
Your life is not inexorably like this! You might feel trapped in routine, but it doesn’t have to be that way. If you examine it closely, sales is actually the most random, freewheeling, challenging and bizarrely fun job you can have. Here are seven ways to recapture that chaotic freedom--and not one of them involves getting yelled at by your boss.
Remember We're All Human
Although you might get 30 new leads a day, 150 a week, 7,500 in a year, every single one of them is a human being. Even at the worst run companies, marketing departments don’t put dogs on lead sheets. Every single person you talk with every single day has (or had) a mom, a hobby, a tragedy, a moment of glory. Take 10 seconds before you make your next call and remember that.
Print this out and tape it to the top of your monitor: “I’m talking with another human being.”
Pay attention (no, really pay attention). There’s a lot more information available to us than we normally grasp. Did they pick up on the first ring or the sixth? Is this person inside or outside? What’s that humming in the background? People express much more to each other than we normally realize. Pay attention to your prospect’s tone and word choice. Why did they say “cold cuts” instead of “baloney”? Do they have a runny nose?
Get off the script. Drop the canned intro and the rehearsed responses. Move to a genuine conversation as soon as you can. Of course you have an objective--you want to sell this person something! But reading from a script is the worst possible way to do it. Remember: You are talking with another human being. This is what you are good at. This is why you are in sales.
Cut the crap. Bad calls, rude people, the frustrations of leaving yet another voicemail, another unreturned email proposal... these happen every day. You must become an expert in dropping the crap before you start the next conversation. Everyone does it differently--stand up, walk around, get a drink of water, joke, watch some YouTube, whatever it is. Don’t carry that crappy feeling from one bad call to another.
Clear-cut your pipeline. Your sales pipeline is like your basement--you accumulate stuff there that you think you might use. But you don’t, and more stuff comes in. One of the best ways to shake up your sales day is to blow away your pipeline. It sounds radical, but it can be liberating and productive to simply cut any deal that you haven’t worked on in thirty days. Or delete any opportunity that won’t close this quarter. Your timeframes will vary depending on your sales cycle, but be aggressive. You should aim to erase 50 to 75 percent of your total pipeline value. Now, suddenly, that cushion of imagined, delayed or doubtful deals is gone. You aren’t fooling yourself anymore.
Speed up. Sometimes you need additional speed to reach escape velocity. On your next call, talk faster than you normally do. Instead of contacting 40 people today, do 80. At 3 p.m. on a bad day, I will occasionally run from one meeting to another just for the hell of it. This is fun in airports too. Everyone thinks you are late for a flight, but you are just running for the sake of moving faster. Rapid acceleration from our normal pace. There’s nothing like it.
Slow down. Sometimes the endless attention-grabbing activities are distracting us from what really matters. Are you really spending your time working on the most important thing? We should all be more skeptical about how we use our time at the office. Is this meeting really worth 20% of your day? Pausing to consider, evaluating our activities, just going to the bathroom once a day without checking your email, all these little actions bring perspective to our work day.
Life as we know it is precious and fleeting. And remember, we sleep through a third of it. Luckily, we work in the strange, pressurized, intense world of sales. We make our companies go. We bring in the revenue that pays everyone’s salaries. It’s an awesome responsibility, and it cannot be done if we are walking dead.
So, please try these small and subtle ways to shake up your day. And, share your best suggestions for waking up below.
In a rut? Here are practical ways to pull yourself out of the daily grind and back to loving your job.
Let’s face it: sales can be a grind.
On the bad days, there is no job as regimented, as rote or as repetitious as a salesperson’s. If you are an outside rep, your airport/flying/rental/meeting/hotel cycle can destroy one of the true joys of life. If you are an inside salesperson, you call your leads in the morning, email your pipeline in the afternoon and repeat.
Falling into this mindset is a form of living death. Your brain activity fades. Your waking hours blur. When you dream, it’s in your telephone voice. You have a telephone voice! When the bad days stack up in rows of five, when the unending stream of follow-ups, cold calls and manager check-ins become habitual, you know. You have become a “sales zombie.”
This is not you!
Your life is not inexorably like this! You might feel trapped in routine, but it doesn’t have to be that way. If you examine it closely, sales is actually the most random, freewheeling, challenging and bizarrely fun job you can have. Here are seven ways to recapture that chaotic freedom--and not one of them involves getting yelled at by your boss.
Remember We're All Human
Although you might get 30 new leads a day, 150 a week, 7,500 in a year, every single one of them is a human being. Even at the worst run companies, marketing departments don’t put dogs on lead sheets. Every single person you talk with every single day has (or had) a mom, a hobby, a tragedy, a moment of glory. Take 10 seconds before you make your next call and remember that.
Print this out and tape it to the top of your monitor: “I’m talking with another human being.”
Pay attention (no, really pay attention). There’s a lot more information available to us than we normally grasp. Did they pick up on the first ring or the sixth? Is this person inside or outside? What’s that humming in the background? People express much more to each other than we normally realize. Pay attention to your prospect’s tone and word choice. Why did they say “cold cuts” instead of “baloney”? Do they have a runny nose?
Get off the script. Drop the canned intro and the rehearsed responses. Move to a genuine conversation as soon as you can. Of course you have an objective--you want to sell this person something! But reading from a script is the worst possible way to do it. Remember: You are talking with another human being. This is what you are good at. This is why you are in sales.
Cut the crap. Bad calls, rude people, the frustrations of leaving yet another voicemail, another unreturned email proposal... these happen every day. You must become an expert in dropping the crap before you start the next conversation. Everyone does it differently--stand up, walk around, get a drink of water, joke, watch some YouTube, whatever it is. Don’t carry that crappy feeling from one bad call to another.
Clear-cut your pipeline. Your sales pipeline is like your basement--you accumulate stuff there that you think you might use. But you don’t, and more stuff comes in. One of the best ways to shake up your sales day is to blow away your pipeline. It sounds radical, but it can be liberating and productive to simply cut any deal that you haven’t worked on in thirty days. Or delete any opportunity that won’t close this quarter. Your timeframes will vary depending on your sales cycle, but be aggressive. You should aim to erase 50 to 75 percent of your total pipeline value. Now, suddenly, that cushion of imagined, delayed or doubtful deals is gone. You aren’t fooling yourself anymore.
Speed up. Sometimes you need additional speed to reach escape velocity. On your next call, talk faster than you normally do. Instead of contacting 40 people today, do 80. At 3 p.m. on a bad day, I will occasionally run from one meeting to another just for the hell of it. This is fun in airports too. Everyone thinks you are late for a flight, but you are just running for the sake of moving faster. Rapid acceleration from our normal pace. There’s nothing like it.
Slow down. Sometimes the endless attention-grabbing activities are distracting us from what really matters. Are you really spending your time working on the most important thing? We should all be more skeptical about how we use our time at the office. Is this meeting really worth 20% of your day? Pausing to consider, evaluating our activities, just going to the bathroom once a day without checking your email, all these little actions bring perspective to our work day.
Life as we know it is precious and fleeting. And remember, we sleep through a third of it. Luckily, we work in the strange, pressurized, intense world of sales. We make our companies go. We bring in the revenue that pays everyone’s salaries. It’s an awesome responsibility, and it cannot be done if we are walking dead.
So, please try these small and subtle ways to shake up your day. And, share your best suggestions for waking up below.
Software Is Eating Marketing
Software Is Eating Marketing: 
One VC argues that software is disrupting several industries in the 21st century, including marketing.
When I was a kid, The Graduate was a generation-defining hit movie, with Dustin Hoffman playing an aimless college graduate. In the middle of a graduation party, an older businessman takes the wayward Hoffman aside and delivers some wise advice: “plastics.” That should be the field his generation should focus on, the field that would shape the future.
Today’s advice for aspiring graduates is also a single word: “software.”
In a sweeping Wall Street Journal article last summer, Netscape founder Marc Andreessen identifies the 21stcentury phenomenon of software eating the world. Software is disrupting industry after industry and transforming large swathes of the economy. When I was an entrepreneur in the 1990s, I would debate with my investors what sliver of the $70 billion U.S. software industry we could carve out.
Today, as a venture capitalist, I meet with entrepreneurs who are trying to figure out what portion of the $70 trillion global economy they can dominate.
Within the $1 trillion marketing industry, the impact of software eating marketing has now reached the board room. With the explosion of digital marketing, it is clear that technology is radically transforming the marketing function and the role of the marketing professional.
The changes rippling through the marketing industry goes far beyond the simple mantra of “follow the eyeballs” to different screens. Gartner analyst Laura McLellan predicts that by 2017, CMOs will spend more on IT than CIOs. The repercussions of social, mobile, video, Big Data, CRM, cloud and other disruptive forces are impacting all aspects of business, but particularly marketing.
As a result, marketing leaders and agencies now carry the burden of understanding technology’s impact on their business, the entire customer experience, and leading innovation within their enterprises, not simply following a course set by their IT department.
“Madison Avenue meets MIT” and “Revenge of the Nerds” are common themes in marketing circles as technologists are becoming the rock stars of customer engagement--employing algorithms and analytics along with artistic creativity to win market share. In much the way Apple disrupted the music and phone industries with smart industrial design and clever software that shielded users from complexity, technologists are building sophisticated systems with interfaces that are as simple for marketers and designers to manipulate as their iPhones.
MITX, the Massachusetts Interactive Technology Exchange (and an organization I serve on the board of) is putting on a killer conference on this topic called FutureM that kicks off on October 22nd. FutureM will gather marketing and technology leaders to address these challenges head on, exposing marketers to today’s most innovative thought leaders and companies who are transforming marketing.
Hosted in Boston, at the nexus of the technology and advertising industry, FutureM is a weeklong extravaganza that will bring together marketing artists and marketing scientists, left brain and right brain thinkers alike, to debate the most pressing issues facing the industry. FutureM is fast becoming the equivalent of SXSW, the place to get inspired and see what’s next, but focused on digital marketing.
If you think the last few years were disruptive, imagine how much the marketing industry will be transformed in the next three years!
One VC argues that software is disrupting several industries in the 21st century, including marketing.
When I was a kid, The Graduate was a generation-defining hit movie, with Dustin Hoffman playing an aimless college graduate. In the middle of a graduation party, an older businessman takes the wayward Hoffman aside and delivers some wise advice: “plastics.” That should be the field his generation should focus on, the field that would shape the future.
Today’s advice for aspiring graduates is also a single word: “software.”
In a sweeping Wall Street Journal article last summer, Netscape founder Marc Andreessen identifies the 21stcentury phenomenon of software eating the world. Software is disrupting industry after industry and transforming large swathes of the economy. When I was an entrepreneur in the 1990s, I would debate with my investors what sliver of the $70 billion U.S. software industry we could carve out.
Today, as a venture capitalist, I meet with entrepreneurs who are trying to figure out what portion of the $70 trillion global economy they can dominate.
Within the $1 trillion marketing industry, the impact of software eating marketing has now reached the board room. With the explosion of digital marketing, it is clear that technology is radically transforming the marketing function and the role of the marketing professional.
The changes rippling through the marketing industry goes far beyond the simple mantra of “follow the eyeballs” to different screens. Gartner analyst Laura McLellan predicts that by 2017, CMOs will spend more on IT than CIOs. The repercussions of social, mobile, video, Big Data, CRM, cloud and other disruptive forces are impacting all aspects of business, but particularly marketing.
As a result, marketing leaders and agencies now carry the burden of understanding technology’s impact on their business, the entire customer experience, and leading innovation within their enterprises, not simply following a course set by their IT department.
“Madison Avenue meets MIT” and “Revenge of the Nerds” are common themes in marketing circles as technologists are becoming the rock stars of customer engagement--employing algorithms and analytics along with artistic creativity to win market share. In much the way Apple disrupted the music and phone industries with smart industrial design and clever software that shielded users from complexity, technologists are building sophisticated systems with interfaces that are as simple for marketers and designers to manipulate as their iPhones.
MITX, the Massachusetts Interactive Technology Exchange (and an organization I serve on the board of) is putting on a killer conference on this topic called FutureM that kicks off on October 22nd. FutureM will gather marketing and technology leaders to address these challenges head on, exposing marketers to today’s most innovative thought leaders and companies who are transforming marketing.
Hosted in Boston, at the nexus of the technology and advertising industry, FutureM is a weeklong extravaganza that will bring together marketing artists and marketing scientists, left brain and right brain thinkers alike, to debate the most pressing issues facing the industry. FutureM is fast becoming the equivalent of SXSW, the place to get inspired and see what’s next, but focused on digital marketing.
If you think the last few years were disruptive, imagine how much the marketing industry will be transformed in the next three years!
Senin, 08 Oktober 2012
Top 6 Lies That Sales Gurus Tell
Top 6 Lies That Sales Gurus Tell: 
Sales training can be a big investment so best you know where they're fooling themselves (and you).
Sales training is a multi-billion dollar industry in the United States alone and is probably the most common type of employee training that most companies provide.
For the past ten years, I've interviewed well over 100 sales trainers, from firms big and small. Most of them are wonderful, upbeat, positive folk, but...some have a tendency to tell whoppers when they talk about the services they provide.
To be clear, I don't think that the sales trainers themselves realize that they're telling lies. They're communicating ideas and concepts that they truly believe but which, in my view, don't correspond to reality.
Here are the six most common lies:
1. We did real scientific research.
Many sales gurus claim to base their techniques on exhaustive research. In most cases, the "research" consists of anecdotes resulting from previous sales training engagements. Usually, when there is some kind survey involved, the sampling is usually too small to be of any scientific validity.
2. We can create sales stars.
Many sales gurus claim that their techniques and tools will allow average-performing salespeople to sell as much as top-performing salespeople. In fact, sales training usually provides incremental improvement, turning average salespeople into above-average, no higher.
3. We studied best practices.
The lie here isn't that they haven't studied successful organizations in successful companies, but that the "best practices" that work well inside one firm will automatically work as well in another. In fact, most sales environments tend to be idiosyncratic, because every firm must address its customer's needs uniquely.
4. We teach the latest techniques.
Give me a break. While there are a few exceptions, almost every sales training program in the world is some variation of the 1970s concept of "solution selling." The training firm may trick the concept out with some fancy new terminology (e.g. "The Challenger Sale"), but most of the time it's the same-old, same-old.
5. We can motivate your troops.
The truth is that nobody can motivate anybody else because motivation comes from inside. It is possible to set the conditions so that it's easier for people to motivate themselves, and you can suggest ways for people to get themselves more motivated, but a rah-rah keynote is of value only as entertainment.
6. We customize to match your needs.
Every sales training firm provides some level of customization. However, most sales training firms specialize in a particular aspect of selling and thus tend to build programs that address that aspect. Remember: to a guy with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
This is not to say that sales training doesn't have value. Quite the contrary, I've observed that sales training often has a faster ROI than investment in new technology. I recently discussed some of these issues (and how to avoid getting taken in) during a webinar hosted by AchieveGlobal. You can find a recording of the webinar HERE.
In a future post, I'll explain how to choose a sales training firm that will have the most positive impact on revenue and profit, so stay tuned.
Like this post? If so, sign up for the free Sales Source newsletter.
Sales training can be a big investment so best you know where they're fooling themselves (and you).
Sales training is a multi-billion dollar industry in the United States alone and is probably the most common type of employee training that most companies provide.
For the past ten years, I've interviewed well over 100 sales trainers, from firms big and small. Most of them are wonderful, upbeat, positive folk, but...some have a tendency to tell whoppers when they talk about the services they provide.
To be clear, I don't think that the sales trainers themselves realize that they're telling lies. They're communicating ideas and concepts that they truly believe but which, in my view, don't correspond to reality.
Here are the six most common lies:
1. We did real scientific research.
Many sales gurus claim to base their techniques on exhaustive research. In most cases, the "research" consists of anecdotes resulting from previous sales training engagements. Usually, when there is some kind survey involved, the sampling is usually too small to be of any scientific validity.
2. We can create sales stars.
Many sales gurus claim that their techniques and tools will allow average-performing salespeople to sell as much as top-performing salespeople. In fact, sales training usually provides incremental improvement, turning average salespeople into above-average, no higher.
3. We studied best practices.
The lie here isn't that they haven't studied successful organizations in successful companies, but that the "best practices" that work well inside one firm will automatically work as well in another. In fact, most sales environments tend to be idiosyncratic, because every firm must address its customer's needs uniquely.
4. We teach the latest techniques.
Give me a break. While there are a few exceptions, almost every sales training program in the world is some variation of the 1970s concept of "solution selling." The training firm may trick the concept out with some fancy new terminology (e.g. "The Challenger Sale"), but most of the time it's the same-old, same-old.
5. We can motivate your troops.
The truth is that nobody can motivate anybody else because motivation comes from inside. It is possible to set the conditions so that it's easier for people to motivate themselves, and you can suggest ways for people to get themselves more motivated, but a rah-rah keynote is of value only as entertainment.
6. We customize to match your needs.
Every sales training firm provides some level of customization. However, most sales training firms specialize in a particular aspect of selling and thus tend to build programs that address that aspect. Remember: to a guy with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
This is not to say that sales training doesn't have value. Quite the contrary, I've observed that sales training often has a faster ROI than investment in new technology. I recently discussed some of these issues (and how to avoid getting taken in) during a webinar hosted by AchieveGlobal. You can find a recording of the webinar HERE.
In a future post, I'll explain how to choose a sales training firm that will have the most positive impact on revenue and profit, so stay tuned.
Like this post? If so, sign up for the free Sales Source newsletter.
4 Tips for Simpler Customer Service
4 Tips for Simpler Customer Service: 
It all boils down to a few simple fixes on your website, says the iDoneThis team. Here are their tips to help you spend less time on customer support.
You love your customers, of course, and want them to have the best possible experience with your product, but let's be honest, sometimes providing customer support is a real pain in the rear.
You're a small team after all with lengthy to-do lists and full lives--answering customers' e-mails and fielding their queries is important, but it eats into the time you've set aside for other tasks.
So what's the answer? You can't hide from reality if there's some fundamental problem with your product that's driving customers to contact you--if that's the case, stop reading blog posts and fix your product!--but if the issue is simply too many customer inquiries for too few staff, the blog of productivity management app iDoneThis has a suggestion to help: improve your copywriting.
The company went from 500 customers to 6,000 in about a month, the post explains, and predictably the burden of customer support skyrocketed while the number of employees held constant.
"We saw our support e-mails explode from 23 total requests between January and late March to about 300 over a two-week stretch at the beginning of April," the company says.
How did the iDoneThis team respond? They took a long, hard look at the words on their website and e-mails. "We knocked our support e-mail volume down from as high as 16 per 100 new users to zero by becoming better writers," declares the post, before going on to offer four tips on how you can manage a similar feat.
"Explain your service using the fewest possible words--every piece of detail is an opportunity for confusion."
In the post, the iDoneThis team explain how they tried out three versions of an e-mail they send to their customers explaining how to add completed to-do items to their calendars and discovered something counter-intuitive in the process. Offering more detail didn't eliminate questions, it increased them.
As a result they whittled their original e-mail of a dozen lines or so down to one that simply read: "Just reply to our email to make an entry." They've had exactly zero support emails since.
"Use help documentation to handle corner cases."
Sure, you should keep instructions as brief as possible as per tip one, but that doesn't mean you can get away with not explaining things more thoroughly elsewhere. Just keep that extra information for the befuddled separate.
"Explaining your service in the fewest possible words means handling the corner cases with copywriting outside of the main user interface flow. For instance, it's a corner case that a user will write his reply below the original message--the vast majority of people write their replies above the original message--so it should be left out of the primary set of instructions. But if you don't handle corner cases somewhere, you'll either continue to receive support queries or lose users for unknown reasons," says the post.
"Users won’t read most of the words you write--understand how context shapes meaning."
No matter what you say, if the user's intuition about a product tells them something different from your instructions, they're going to ignore what you write. This is sort of like making the largest button on the TV do anything other than turn it on: if you mix your visual and verbal signals you're going to confuse people.
For the iDoneThis team, this means that when new users sign up to an app that they know accepts completed to-do items via e-mail and receive a welcome email, they're going to reply to that email with completed to-do items. Even if you say in huge, bold, capital letters that it is simply a welcome e-mail and users shouldn't reply, they still reply.
"The support e-mails continued to flow in until we nixed the welcome e-mail and replaced it with a welcome Web page. The semantics made sense--Web pages said that they weren't editable, and they weren't editable; e-mails said to respond, and they were respond-able," the team concludes.
"Include help text on every single page."
"Users don't read most of the copy, so it's a good rule of thumb to repeat yourself and include help text on every single page. On our main page and our welcome page, we tell the user that iDoneThis is e-mail based, but we still received 6 emails per 100 new users asking us how to make entries via the browser. We added a paragraph to our Help section again explaining that entries could not be made through the browser and we still received support emails. Finally, we added help text to the calendar page itself... and the support queries went from 6 per 100 new users to zero," explains the post.
Find these real-life examples from iDoneThis useful? Check out the complete post for much more information on exact wording and other nitty gritty details of customer support-busting copywriting.
It all boils down to a few simple fixes on your website, says the iDoneThis team. Here are their tips to help you spend less time on customer support.
You love your customers, of course, and want them to have the best possible experience with your product, but let's be honest, sometimes providing customer support is a real pain in the rear.
You're a small team after all with lengthy to-do lists and full lives--answering customers' e-mails and fielding their queries is important, but it eats into the time you've set aside for other tasks.
So what's the answer? You can't hide from reality if there's some fundamental problem with your product that's driving customers to contact you--if that's the case, stop reading blog posts and fix your product!--but if the issue is simply too many customer inquiries for too few staff, the blog of productivity management app iDoneThis has a suggestion to help: improve your copywriting.
The company went from 500 customers to 6,000 in about a month, the post explains, and predictably the burden of customer support skyrocketed while the number of employees held constant.
"We saw our support e-mails explode from 23 total requests between January and late March to about 300 over a two-week stretch at the beginning of April," the company says.
How did the iDoneThis team respond? They took a long, hard look at the words on their website and e-mails. "We knocked our support e-mail volume down from as high as 16 per 100 new users to zero by becoming better writers," declares the post, before going on to offer four tips on how you can manage a similar feat.
"Explain your service using the fewest possible words--every piece of detail is an opportunity for confusion."
In the post, the iDoneThis team explain how they tried out three versions of an e-mail they send to their customers explaining how to add completed to-do items to their calendars and discovered something counter-intuitive in the process. Offering more detail didn't eliminate questions, it increased them.
As a result they whittled their original e-mail of a dozen lines or so down to one that simply read: "Just reply to our email to make an entry." They've had exactly zero support emails since.
"Use help documentation to handle corner cases."
Sure, you should keep instructions as brief as possible as per tip one, but that doesn't mean you can get away with not explaining things more thoroughly elsewhere. Just keep that extra information for the befuddled separate.
"Explaining your service in the fewest possible words means handling the corner cases with copywriting outside of the main user interface flow. For instance, it's a corner case that a user will write his reply below the original message--the vast majority of people write their replies above the original message--so it should be left out of the primary set of instructions. But if you don't handle corner cases somewhere, you'll either continue to receive support queries or lose users for unknown reasons," says the post.
"Users won’t read most of the words you write--understand how context shapes meaning."
No matter what you say, if the user's intuition about a product tells them something different from your instructions, they're going to ignore what you write. This is sort of like making the largest button on the TV do anything other than turn it on: if you mix your visual and verbal signals you're going to confuse people.
For the iDoneThis team, this means that when new users sign up to an app that they know accepts completed to-do items via e-mail and receive a welcome email, they're going to reply to that email with completed to-do items. Even if you say in huge, bold, capital letters that it is simply a welcome e-mail and users shouldn't reply, they still reply.
"The support e-mails continued to flow in until we nixed the welcome e-mail and replaced it with a welcome Web page. The semantics made sense--Web pages said that they weren't editable, and they weren't editable; e-mails said to respond, and they were respond-able," the team concludes.
"Include help text on every single page."
"Users don't read most of the copy, so it's a good rule of thumb to repeat yourself and include help text on every single page. On our main page and our welcome page, we tell the user that iDoneThis is e-mail based, but we still received 6 emails per 100 new users asking us how to make entries via the browser. We added a paragraph to our Help section again explaining that entries could not be made through the browser and we still received support emails. Finally, we added help text to the calendar page itself... and the support queries went from 6 per 100 new users to zero," explains the post.
Find these real-life examples from iDoneThis useful? Check out the complete post for much more information on exact wording and other nitty gritty details of customer support-busting copywriting.
Secrets to Better (& Cheaper) Online Marketing
Secrets to Better (& Cheaper) Online Marketing: 
Hubspot founder Brian Halligan says you can quintuple your website's traffic--without spending a ton on Google ads and email marketing. Here's how.
Is the money you spend on Google Ad words the Web equivalent of shoveling cash into a burning furnace?
Hubspot CEO Brian Halligan challenged Inc. 500|5000 Conference attendees to quintuple their Web traffic in the next year--all by spending less on Google Ads, email campaigns, and other traditional techniques and instead creating blog posts, Facebook and LinkedIn pages, and participating in social media like Twitter.
“We’re sick and tired of being marketed to, and we’re getting really good at blocking everything out,” Halligan told the audience Thursday. “What I want marketers to do is… match the way humans shop and learn today, instead of interrupting people.”
This year Hubspot, a marketing software company based in Cambridge, Mass., made the Inc. 500 list for the second year straight, with $28.5 million in 2011 revenue. Founded six years ago by Halligan, a one-time venture capitalist, the company helps clients measure social media response, manage email campaigns, and other aspects of online marketing.
Over the years, consumers have become inured to Web ads, and bidding on Google Ads has become too competitive and expensive, Halligan said. Once you’ve bought them the money’s gone he added, pantomiming the act of shoveling cash into a burning furnace.
A smart blog post or online tool, he argues, can attract new customers for years to come. “Success is about the width of your brain, not the width of your wallet.”
Here’s how Halligan advises clients to increase their site traffic and their “conversion rate”--the number of people who buy a product, submit their email address, or otherwise express interest in the company’s services:
Divide and con-quer.
Businesses should divide their Web marketing departments into two parts: “content” and “context.” Content includes articles, blog posts, infographics, online tools--all the stuff that makes people actually want to visit the website. “Context” is how the site then persuades interested customers to actually sign up and buy, using information about the pages they visited, the searches they made, and other data to better tailor marketing messages.
It’s not marketing. It’s HBO.
Posts must be a complete package. They need to be useful, entertaining, and sold with a sharp headline. “Think of your marketing department like a production company,” Halligan says, “like it’s Showtime, it’s HBO, it’s CNN, it’s PBS.”
“If you are targeting the process engineers, have the best blog for process engineers,” Halligan said. That will keep new ones visiting, replenishing your list of leads.
Done right, a successful article or online calculator becomes “a massive magnet,” he said, not only in the short-term, as people interested in the article click and visit, but also in the long run as people keep visiting the page and all the links to it increase your site’s overall ranking on the major search engines.
Become a destination.
Progress snowballs: The more that bloggers, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn users link to a company’s site, the higher that company ends up in search rankings, and the more potential customers visit every week. So make it easier for them to link to your site. Set up pages on all the major social media sites, and have staff keep them fresh with news about your company and industry. “You want hundreds of highways coming in and out of it and that’s the links coming into your site, you want a giant airport, that’s your facebook page, you want a big ol’ train station, that’s your twitter,” Halligan said. “The more you become a hub on the Internet, the less you have to pay for traditional marketing.”
Learn from your audience.
As more visitors read articles and search for content on the site, their behavior leaves clues about the kinds of products and services they might want. Halligan pointed to companies like Netflix and Amazon, which mine users’ past browsing histories to suggest movies or books they might like.
“The more you use the site, the more personalized it gets,” said Halligan. “Then the better value you get, and the more likely you are to convert” those visitors into paying customers. And that makes the site more useful for everybody.
Hubspot founder Brian Halligan says you can quintuple your website's traffic--without spending a ton on Google ads and email marketing. Here's how.
Is the money you spend on Google Ad words the Web equivalent of shoveling cash into a burning furnace?
Hubspot CEO Brian Halligan challenged Inc. 500|5000 Conference attendees to quintuple their Web traffic in the next year--all by spending less on Google Ads, email campaigns, and other traditional techniques and instead creating blog posts, Facebook and LinkedIn pages, and participating in social media like Twitter.
“We’re sick and tired of being marketed to, and we’re getting really good at blocking everything out,” Halligan told the audience Thursday. “What I want marketers to do is… match the way humans shop and learn today, instead of interrupting people.”
This year Hubspot, a marketing software company based in Cambridge, Mass., made the Inc. 500 list for the second year straight, with $28.5 million in 2011 revenue. Founded six years ago by Halligan, a one-time venture capitalist, the company helps clients measure social media response, manage email campaigns, and other aspects of online marketing.
Over the years, consumers have become inured to Web ads, and bidding on Google Ads has become too competitive and expensive, Halligan said. Once you’ve bought them the money’s gone he added, pantomiming the act of shoveling cash into a burning furnace.
A smart blog post or online tool, he argues, can attract new customers for years to come. “Success is about the width of your brain, not the width of your wallet.”
Here’s how Halligan advises clients to increase their site traffic and their “conversion rate”--the number of people who buy a product, submit their email address, or otherwise express interest in the company’s services:
Divide and con-quer.
Businesses should divide their Web marketing departments into two parts: “content” and “context.” Content includes articles, blog posts, infographics, online tools--all the stuff that makes people actually want to visit the website. “Context” is how the site then persuades interested customers to actually sign up and buy, using information about the pages they visited, the searches they made, and other data to better tailor marketing messages.
It’s not marketing. It’s HBO.
Posts must be a complete package. They need to be useful, entertaining, and sold with a sharp headline. “Think of your marketing department like a production company,” Halligan says, “like it’s Showtime, it’s HBO, it’s CNN, it’s PBS.”
“If you are targeting the process engineers, have the best blog for process engineers,” Halligan said. That will keep new ones visiting, replenishing your list of leads.
Done right, a successful article or online calculator becomes “a massive magnet,” he said, not only in the short-term, as people interested in the article click and visit, but also in the long run as people keep visiting the page and all the links to it increase your site’s overall ranking on the major search engines.
Become a destination.
Progress snowballs: The more that bloggers, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn users link to a company’s site, the higher that company ends up in search rankings, and the more potential customers visit every week. So make it easier for them to link to your site. Set up pages on all the major social media sites, and have staff keep them fresh with news about your company and industry. “You want hundreds of highways coming in and out of it and that’s the links coming into your site, you want a giant airport, that’s your facebook page, you want a big ol’ train station, that’s your twitter,” Halligan said. “The more you become a hub on the Internet, the less you have to pay for traditional marketing.”
Learn from your audience.
As more visitors read articles and search for content on the site, their behavior leaves clues about the kinds of products and services they might want. Halligan pointed to companies like Netflix and Amazon, which mine users’ past browsing histories to suggest movies or books they might like.
“The more you use the site, the more personalized it gets,” said Halligan. “Then the better value you get, and the more likely you are to convert” those visitors into paying customers. And that makes the site more useful for everybody.
Senin, 01 Oktober 2012
6 Ways to Convince Customers to Buy
6 Ways to Convince Customers to Buy: 
You'll sell more if you talk about your product using language your customer understands.
Customers never buy because of product features. They buy because they perceive some "benefit" to those features.
Unfortunately, most sales and marketing messages talk about features and let the customers try to figure out the benefits. That's asking your customer to do your heavy lifting for you.
You'll get more customers, more quickly, if you communicate the benefits of using your product rather than the features it possesses. Here are six rules for doing so, based upon a conversation with one of my favorite sales gurus, Barry Rhein:
1. Know the difference between a benefit and a feature.
A feature is something that a product or service "is" or "does." A benefit is something that the product or service "means" to the customer. For example:
Customers will remember a benefit longer and more easily if it's expressed using simple, strong words that evoke emotion.
Nothing leaches a benefit of emotion more than the use of tired business cliches or overly technical terminology.
Most people can only hold two or three thoughts at one time in their short-term memory. Long lists of benefits just cause confusion.
Benefits that are generic to your product category can convince a customer to buy... but not necessarily from you! Use benefits that differentiate you from the competition:
Customers ignore benefits that are abstract and expressed using vague adverbs and adjectives. Benefits that are concrete and specific are more convincing and "stick in the mind."
You'll sell more if you talk about your product using language your customer understands.
Customers never buy because of product features. They buy because they perceive some "benefit" to those features.
Unfortunately, most sales and marketing messages talk about features and let the customers try to figure out the benefits. That's asking your customer to do your heavy lifting for you.
You'll get more customers, more quickly, if you communicate the benefits of using your product rather than the features it possesses. Here are six rules for doing so, based upon a conversation with one of my favorite sales gurus, Barry Rhein:
1. Know the difference between a benefit and a feature.
A feature is something that a product or service "is" or "does." A benefit is something that the product or service "means" to the customer. For example:
- Wrong: "This car has a reinforced safety roof." (feature)
- Right: "This car keeps your family safe." (benefit)
Customers will remember a benefit longer and more easily if it's expressed using simple, strong words that evoke emotion.
- Wrong: "This roof provides protection in the event of a rollover accident."
- Right: "If this car rolls, there's a good chance you'll walk away unharmed."
Nothing leaches a benefit of emotion more than the use of tired business cliches or overly technical terminology.
- Wrong: "Robust implementation of 80210 protocols!!!"
- Right: "You can connect virtually anywhere."
Most people can only hold two or three thoughts at one time in their short-term memory. Long lists of benefits just cause confusion.
- Wrong: "Here are the top 10 benefits of using our product:"
- Right: "The two most important things to remember are..."
Benefits that are generic to your product category can convince a customer to buy... but not necessarily from you! Use benefits that differentiate you from the competition:
- Wrong: "Our software makes you more productive."
- Right: "Our customers report an average 30% decrease in costs, about twice the industry average."
Customers ignore benefits that are abstract and expressed using vague adverbs and adjectives. Benefits that are concrete and specific are more convincing and "stick in the mind."
- Wrong: "We can radically reduce your inventory costs."
- Right: "We decrease inventory costs by an average of 25%."
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