1: A prospect has a problem.
They reach out to you and two of your competitors.
“What words and phrases do you think your competitors will use to describe their products and services?” Erik Peterson and Tim Riesterer write in their powerful book Conversations That Win the Complex Sale.
Here are some likely possibilities:
- Customer-focused
- Flexible
- World-class
- Easy to use
- Scalable
- Comprehensive
- Total solution
“Now ask yourself,” they suggest, “what words and phrases you use when you get in front of a prospect?
“Are they the same as the ones that everyone else uses?”
Ouch.
No wonder prospects struggle to choose between solutions.
“This is a key reason prospects struggle with their decisions. As Erik and Tim point out, “Everyone sounds the same. You need to separate yourself from your competition—and you do that through the words you use.”
Yesterday, we analyzed “The Value Wedge” and your “Power Position.” This messaging (1) is unique to you, (2) matters to the customer, and (3) is defensible,” the authors write.
To do this, identify the three key areas you want to build your message around.
We do this through the process of triangulation:
Step one: Identify three of your prospect’s main business objectives and the specific pain, threat, or challenge standing in their way.
Step two: Connect each business objective and its challenge to a specific weakness or vulnerability in a competitor’s offering.
Step three: Show how your differentiator or differentiators address the prospect’s challenge and set you apart from competitors.
Step four: Create a clear phrase that summarizes exactly what your prospect will achieve or do differently using your solution.
2: The final step is often a challenge for many salespeople. As you consider this phrase, determine where it fits within what Erik and Tim call the “Message Pyramid.”
The Message Pyramid has three types of information: what your solution ‘Is,’ what it ‘Does,’ and what it ‘Means.’
Here’s an example: The Tylenol brand began to take off in the 1970s. It featured the ingredient acetaminophen, which is the “Is” of Tylenol. That’s “what you’re really buying,” the authors note.
“What does Tylenol do?” they ask. Most say it relieves pain—and it does.
But so do many other pain relievers. Relieving pain shows “Value Parity,” the overlapping value between competitors that we explored yesterday.
“Tylenol would not have become the number one pain reliever in the United States if it had just done the same thing as every other pain reliever,” Erik and Tim write.
The “Value Wedge” that Tylenol had was not about pain relief. Rather: “It relieved pain without upsetting your stomach.
“And that’s what you can ‘Do’ with Tylenol: You can relieve your pain without upsetting your stomach.”
So, what does it “Mean” to use Tylenol? “It means that you can be more productive at work, because you don’t have either a headache or a stomachache,” they explain. “It means that you can be more patient with your kids, because you’re pain-free.”
Now, let’s connect this business story back to the Message Pyramid:
“You want your phrase to live in the ‘Does’ layer of the Message Pyramid,” the authors suggest.
“Most salespeople,” they observe, “do a good job of talking about the details of their solution—the ‘Is’ layer. And they also do a pretty good job of talking about the high-level value of their solution—the ‘Means’ layer.”
They often miss explaining what the prospect can “Do” differently with their solution versus the competition.
3: Which is why it’s wise to carefully consider the words that you use in your “Does” statements.
“Often companies try to separate themselves by taking the bulleted words just listed and putting the word really in front of them,” Erik and Tim observe.
As in: “But we’re really flexible. We’re really scalable. We’re really best in class.”
Not good. Not really good.
Instead, we want to choose words that you would use when talking to your best friend.
“If a friend asked you how you liked your new car,” they write, “you probably wouldn’t say, ‘It’s great. It completely optimizes my ability to get my family resources from point A to destination B.'”
Likewise, “you’ve probably never said to your spouse, ‘Honey, I feel like we’re not fully exploiting the opportunities in our backyard. It’s an underutilized resource that’s being used at only half of its capacity.’”
Why don’t you talk like that?
“Because that’s not how you talk to people you like,” they note. “So, why would you talk to your customers as if they are people that you don’t like?”
When creating your “Does” statements, use the natural words you’d use with friends.
In other words: “Don’t use buzzwords or marketing-speak,” Erik and Tim recommend.
More tomorrow [when we will look at several examples of companies doing this right].
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Reflection: Am I using generic language that blends in—or clearly communicating what my customer can actually do differently with my solution?
Action: Rewrite one key message using simple, natural language that clearly explains what my customer can do differently with my solution.