The essence of being overt is to be clear and assure your prospective customer understands exactly what you want them to understand about
benefits, difference, and reasons to believe in outstanding value of your offering.In my business I see a lot of customer communication materials. Unfortunately, I see too many customer presentations whereby you finally understand what company does and what benefits they deliver to their customers somewhere around slide 7 of a way-too-many-slides presentation.
No long ago I was leading a sales and marketing meeting, discussing with a management team launch of a new product line. We were reviewing new product's positioning, competitive environment, pricing methodology, and sales collateral. While reviewing customer presentations I noted there were continuous questions:
"What does that mean?" "What do we mean by that?" "What are keys things I should say about this slide?" "What is point we want to make on this slide?"
As these questions were asked several times it become obvious..."Why don't you just say on slide what it is you mean and what it is you want customer to know about benefits they'll realize as a result of employing your solution?" The question was simple enough and left meeting participants looking around room at each other.
It's amazing positive impact you can have on your sales efforts by simply communicating with your prospective customers clearly and directly about value you offer. To greatly impact your revenue there are really only a few things you have to do...
Don't Make Your Customer Translate Your Offering into Something They Value - A huge mistake in marketing and sales is to unwittingly make your customer translate everything you say into something they value.
Regardless of your market, customers of all types have similar buying processes. Customers evaluate you offering by first asking themselves two questions - "Why do I need this product/service? What do we get (benefit) out of using it?" No matter what you say, write or present; this is first and only thing going through mind of a buyer.
A great number of vendors (technology companies tend to be greatest offenders) make mistake of communicating with prospective customers from "love" they have for their product or service. Their typical communication is driven from speeds-feeds-features-functionality of their offering. Their big mistake is not realizing customers never buy speeds-feeds-features-functionality; they only buy benefits they can realize from employing your speeds-feeds-features-functionality. If you communicate from your speeds-feeds-features-functionality you force your customer to translate them into meaningful benefits they value. Remember, customers only buy benefits. It only makes sense then that you should lead your communications with benefits they want, expect, and will enjoy.
"But aren't speeds-feeds-features-functionality necessary?"
Yes. Speeds-feeds-features-functionality, especially in technology markets, are necessary and often critical to closing a sale. The difference is you want your speeds-feeds-features-functionality to be evaluated as proof of your ability to deliver benefits, not as evidence in investigation of benefits you offer. Put another way, once your prospective customer resonates on benefits and value you offer, speeds-feeds-features-functionality of your product or service is then evaluated solely in its capacity to deliver benefits your customer wishes to purchase.
