SIMPLE SALES SERIES

It’s No Good if It Doesn’t Sell

We don’t decide what is a great product or service. Customers and clients do. If we what we do well is what our customers value, it will sell. In my publishing job, I said this over and over . . .

It’s not a good book, if it doesn’t sell — at a profit.

Customers decide whether our offer is better than any alternative. They let us know by how they vote with their money. Our job is to make an offer they find attractive, knowing full well that we cannot coax or coerce them to behave.

The Recipe for a Product Offering that Sells

While I was publishing, I spent a great deal of time talking to customers who used my products and to customers who did not.

Most marketers would recommend that you find out how folks are using your “stuff,” what they like, what they don’t, what they wish for, and what other “stuff” they like just as much or better. They would suggest that you especially find out why folks who aren’t using your “stuff,” aren’t using it. I did all that — but only about 10% of the time.

The other 90% of the time we talked about THEM, not about my “stuff.”

That’s how I got to my recipe for a product that sells. It’s the recipe I used when driving the strategy of the company we turned around.

1. Talk to your ideal customers about
   • what wish they had more time to do.
   • what they wish they could learn.
   • what they wish someone would invent.
   • what problem they would love to get off their mind or off their desks.

   Listen actively to understand the outcome they prize. Find the patterns in what they say.

2. Build a product or service that does one thing well — in less time. If you bundle more than one need, do it carefully. Less is more. Simple is elegant.
3. Design the product or service to match customers’ sensibilities. Make it beautiful and functional, and a reflection of what they value. Adding “quality” they can’t see or don’t want is adding cost they don’t want.
4. Price the offer at what the work is worth — what you need to make a profit and what it saves the customer.
5. Test what you plan by asking customers who know you, who don’t know you, and who are notoriously on the opposite side of the fence.

Every bit of the development is about how the features of the product or service benefits the customer. Add to “How are WE doing?” the additional question “What drives YOU crazy?”

How do you find customer needs customers that aren’t being met? Are you your own customer? How might you use that in your favor?

I’m really interested in informal ways we get customers to talk about their experiences.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Is your business stuck? Check out the Start-up Strategy Package. Work with Liz!!

Related
To follow the entire series: Liz Strauss’ Inside-Out Thinking to Building a Solid Business, see the Successful Series Page.

SIMPLE SALES SERIES

Still The Decision Model

You’re at a party, a social. Someone walks up. You introduce yourselves. She offers her card and asks, “What do you do?”

The rest of the conversation and possible future business hinges on how you answer that question. Before you start consider the outcome you’re going for.

Many folks would tell you this is the time for your “elevator pitch.” I suggest that term might not be the best way to look at a relationship. Why don’t we say that an authentic conversation is our goal? After all, if you’re looking for potential clients, we want to know them well and for them to know us too.

Let’s look at how we might talk about ourselves without getting caught in that self-promotional loop.

Three Steps to an Intriguing Answer to “What Do You Do?”

Marketing and self-promotion are only difficult when we’re not inside what we’re talking about. When we’re fully-expressed in what we’re saying, the words come out as if we’re talking over a kitchen table to a close friend. So how do we get to the answer that is ourselves fully expressed, that says what we do?

It takes these three steps.

• First Define It. Pull all of the ideas your message needs to communicate into a one sentence. Your ideas should include: your customer, the problem you solve, your unique approach or service, and should reflect your most powerful skill. Let that sentence sit for a few days.

  My first try was something like this: I spark discussions that get thinking businesses to engage their customers in beneficial conversation. (I know. I know.)

• Then Refine It. Return to the sentence edit it down to shortest most conversational form. Consider the sound and meaning of each individual word. Use the simpler words when you can. Avoid buzz words and don’t try to say everything that you do — leave a little room for your listener’s imagination. When you’re happy with it, let the sentence rest again. If you get frustrated, leave the task and go back later. Take your time.

  I refined it to: I teach businesses how to turn strangers into fiercely loyal customer-friends.

  Hint: You’ll know that you’re at a good one when you can hear someone replying, “How do you do that?” After all the goal we established was to get a conversation started.

• Then Make It Part of You. When you’re sure it’s done, practice saying the sentence until it rolls off your tongue. Keep practicing your answer until it becomes as easy as saying your name.

Everytime you say the sentence in answer to the question “What do you do?” listen and watch the response. Use that feedback to adapt it even more.

The idea is to have the answer inside and thought through before the question comes up. Then the self-conscious blues won’t get in the way of you being able to show your best thinking and skills to someone new.

Try on a few answers, if you’re not sure. Having a handful is better than being caught out without one.

What do you say when someone asks you, “What do you do?”

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Is your business stuck? Check out the Start-up Strategy Package. Work with Liz!!

Related
To follow the entire series: Liz Strauss’ Inside-Out Thinking to Building a Solid Business, see the Successful Series Page.