«Return to Blog List Customer Results: The #1 Way to Start a Sales Conversation
Jill Konrath’s (author of Selling to Big Companies) blog post today drives home what you have to communiate when selling anything: stress results.
Jill writes:
Statements about your company and what it does are NOT value propositions. Period. They are not value propositions.
If you want to get decision makers "at hello", you need to clearly articulate the results the customers can expect from using your product, service or solution. That’s results, spelled
R-E-S-U-L-T-S.
If you really want to "get them at hello," then make sure you:
Talk results.
Decision makers don’t care about your products or services. They only care about the results they’ll see. Stress that and you’ll catch their attention. Omit those results and you’ve lost them.
Get real.
Refer to actual client successes and include measures or statistics. Success stories from other companies in their industry are especially compelling. By giving specific examples, you really pique their curiosity.
When selling, don’t just use a case study in a packet of collateral. Weave in salient results from other customers at every opportunity – in voice mail messages, emails, letters, and every conversation.
Have a great weekend!
Casey,
These are great thoughts. Beginning with the reader’s desired outcome is the only way to connect with them.
I recently read David Allen’s “Getting Things Done,” and wrote an article on copywriting based on two things he said in his book.
First, he says to imagine a “wildly successful outcome” and second to ask the question, “wouldn’t it be great if ____.”
Because I’m always thinking of copywriting, I thought these were excellent ways to think of the customer’s wildly successful outcomes and results they thought would be really great.
Just like you, I think this is the only way to start a persuasive document. I posted the article at Dynamic Copywriting: Your Customers Desired Outcome if you would like to take a look at it.
Charles Brown
Charles,
Thanks for the post and introducing us to David Allen. I’ll have to check out that book.
Here’s the link to Charles’ post: http://dynamiccopywriting.blogspot.com/2008/04/your-customers-desired-outcome.html
Really great point. If you can think about the customer’s most desired outcome, and can provide another customer anecdote that lines up, then that’s really powerful.
Casey