It's Not That Complicated
If you offer a service or sell a product, you’d better be sure your potential customers know what it is. More importantly, they need to know what it does for them, but almost as important is to keep your offer simple.
One of the problems many new business people (and some long-established ones) suffer from is lack of focus. Not a lack of focus on building their business, but more often a lack of clarity about what that business is. Too many set themselves such a wide remit, scared of missing out on a job they could do, that no one actually knows what they’re best at.
When we talk to people, individually or in a crowd, they will often only remember one or two key things we say. So when we’re promoting our business, we’d better be sure those one or two things are the things our business is based upon: the benefits we can offer our customers. Trying to be all things to all people means too many people won’t have a clue what we offer, and there’s a danger we’ll come across as experts at nothing in particular.
Bigger companies tend to be better at this. Even if the company has a hundred products and services, they often promote each of those as a brand, or divide them into groups under a series of ‘umbrella’ brand names. But look at it this way: consumers buying a Mars bar don’t even care that the Mars Corporation makes Snickers and Bountys as well, and the Mars Corporation rarely bothers to remind us, because it doesn’t matter to a Mars bar buyer.
Likewise, if you’re trying to sell me a specific product, telling me you can also offer something else, even something quite similar, is just a distraction. Telling me about another half dozen products you also offer will just bury your original message under a pile of irrelevance. Things might be different after I’ve bought your first product, but sell me a watch first, for example, then show me the rings…
Most business is simple: we provide a product or a service to someone who wants it. Making the process more complicated just makes it more confusing, and confused customers rarely buy.
Roy
One of the problems many new business people (and some long-established ones) suffer from is lack of focus. Not a lack of focus on building their business, but more often a lack of clarity about what that business is. Too many set themselves such a wide remit, scared of missing out on a job they could do, that no one actually knows what they’re best at.
When we talk to people, individually or in a crowd, they will often only remember one or two key things we say. So when we’re promoting our business, we’d better be sure those one or two things are the things our business is based upon: the benefits we can offer our customers. Trying to be all things to all people means too many people won’t have a clue what we offer, and there’s a danger we’ll come across as experts at nothing in particular.
Bigger companies tend to be better at this. Even if the company has a hundred products and services, they often promote each of those as a brand, or divide them into groups under a series of ‘umbrella’ brand names. But look at it this way: consumers buying a Mars bar don’t even care that the Mars Corporation makes Snickers and Bountys as well, and the Mars Corporation rarely bothers to remind us, because it doesn’t matter to a Mars bar buyer.
Likewise, if you’re trying to sell me a specific product, telling me you can also offer something else, even something quite similar, is just a distraction. Telling me about another half dozen products you also offer will just bury your original message under a pile of irrelevance. Things might be different after I’ve bought your first product, but sell me a watch first, for example, then show me the rings…
Most business is simple: we provide a product or a service to someone who wants it. Making the process more complicated just makes it more confusing, and confused customers rarely buy.
Roy
Labels: affiliate marketing, networking, selling
posted by Roy Everitt at
12:53
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