The 8020 Blog

I seem to be getting grumpier and less tolerant as I get older. I just don’t care so much  about treading on certain people’s toes. Anyhow, a good toe stomping might help them wake up. I’ll share with you my latest head-shaking stimulus.

I sometimes offer selected organizations the opportunity to use one of my services for zero fee. This particular service adds enormous value to that organization’s client base and often brings in new clients.

It’s really a “you’d-have-to-be-brain-dead-to-say-no” value proposition.

The smart ones grab the chance (I never offer it twice) and strengthen their relationship with grateful clients and attract new ones who pay them lots of lovely money. Everyone’s happy.

But in stunning display of extraordinary stupidity I also get a range of reasons why, in a recession, attracting new clients and adding value to existing clients is apparently not such a good idea.

By way of exampe there was one genius who was (and I do hope that I am using the past tense correctly here) in charge of marketing for a Chamber of Commerce who told me that “now was not a good time to get new members because we are re-doing our web page”.

Two points: we should all be ALWAYS be “re-doing our web page” and secondly there is NEVER “not a good time” to get new clients! Make it work you idiot!

There are a bunch of people out there (Branson, Gates and a whole lot of others you’ve never heard of) who do NOT allow themselves or their team to find reasons NOT to do marketing and sales. They make things happen even in the face of adversity and pressure. They operate multiple marketing and product expansion programs simultaneously and they constantly and energetically seek out and create opporutnities for growth.

These are the aggressive, growth orientated business athletes - the future belongs to them and the recovery of our economy heavily is dependent on them.

In football (American, Aussie, soccer, league, rugby, Gaelic ect) there is a saying: “catch-up footy”. It’s what happens when a team is behind on the scoreboard with only a few minutes left on the clock.

Players then have to get results - and fast! Most of the time it doesn’t work. Passes are forced, kicks goes astray, accuracy and quality is sacrificed for speed and stress.

Humans tend to behave the same way in business. We want (always) a result NOW - so we create a game of perpetual catch-up and sacrifice care and thoroughness for speed and stress.

Inevitably we then find ourselves on a treadmill, running hard and staying in the same place year after year.

The quickly scribbled sales letter, the poorly researched product offer, the sloppy brochure copy, the hurriedly put-together web page, the lack of learning about what works and does not work in marketing and so on.

So next time you are in catch-up mode and you find that your days are “all about NOW” and you get sick of not scoring here’s what to do: book a 2 week holiday; chill out for the first week and then spend the second week carefully planning what your business needs to do in order to create serious growth. And do this part slowly. And include blocks of time (at least one day a week) for continual learning and development.

One day of good preparation will save you months of poor and ineffective execution.

It often surprises me how rarely a business owner can describe their product features and benefits clearly.

This makes it much more difficult for them to come up with a clear and compelling value proposition in a brochure or on a web page or in a sales presentation.

If you ask a business owner why people should buy their product/service the answers generally fall into one of two categories:  general motherhood statements like “we give great service” or a description of their product/service e.g. “we do financial planning”.

I encourage my clients to draw two columns on a page with the titles “Features” and “Benefits” respectively.

Then I ask them to take one of their products/services and list 3 - 7 Features of that product and then the Benefits of each feature. Many of them struggle to understand the difference between the two so I explain that a Feature describes what the product or service is and the Benefit describes what it does in terms of benefiting the client. Not rocket science.

For example:
Feature: Our tires have 30% more tread
Benefit: Keep your family safer, have fewer punctures, change tires less often and save money.

Did you spot the difference?

Clients don’t buy features, they buy benefits. Get clear on how a client benefits when they experience your product/service. Then you can target your marketing and selling activity much more effectively and efficiently.