How to Talk About the Value of Your Product Without Talking About the Product
The value of your product isn’t what the product does. It’s what the product does for the customer. Think situations and outcomes.
Here’s a typical scenario. A salesperson is having an initial conversation with a prospect. One of the first things the prospect will ask is, “Can you give me an overview of your product?”
Product marketing professionals have been trying for decades to create simple responses to that question. For all the advances they’ve made, the response is still largely built around features and/or benefits.
Here’s the problem. Neither is a great response in the mind of the prospect because it still doesn’t answer the question, “What does your product do for me?”
To answer the “What does your product do for me?” question clearly and succinctly, explain it in terms of a few common situations the buyer is familiar with.
The dialogue goes something like this.
The Value of Your Product, Conversationally
Buyer: Can you give me an overview of your product?
Salesperson: Sure. The biggest reason customers buy this product is [e.g., they can process more loans and give customers a better experience]. Here are 3 of the most common situations that inhibit your ability to grow volume and create a better customer experience.
1. Let’s say you’re doing a risk assessment on a loan application and…
2. What if the applicant omits critical information and you have to…
3. Then there’s the routing of the application for approval. What typically happens is…
Notice how you’re NOT talking about the product, but the buyer clearly understands the value in the exact context of what it does for them.
Talking about the customer and NOT talking about the product is the single most difficult thing for product companies to do. And it’s not just marketing and sales. It’s everyone!
There’s no simple way to explain the value of your product by talking about the product itself.
The best way to simplify your positioning is to make 80% of the dialogue about WHAT buyers are doing and WHY those things are critical to their success. The other 20%, product features, are proof points.
If you want to learn how to create simple, customer-centric positioning that everyone can understand, internalize and repeat, contact us about a personalized product marketing workshop where we’ll create your positioning right there in the classroom.
If you want to do it at your own pace, enroll in Product Management University On-Demand and do it on your own or with your team.
Live or on-demand, you’ll love our templates for marketing materials and sales tools because they’re easy to create and even easier to use.
Originally published at https://www.proficientz.com on January 5, 2022.
