I recently finished reading Selling the Invisible (TB-$C) by Harry Beckwith. Really good book and I highly recommend to anyone who markets services.
Below is one of many excerpts I thought really hit home for those of us who attempt to sell services.
Consider this:
[Your wife] sends you to the store for milk. You bring home milk.
Next time, she says, "Get raisins, Drano, Gummy Bears, milk and some hundred-watt light bulbs."
You forget the milk; but it's the milk you family needed most. All you have for breakfast tomorrow is [dry] cereal.
You run this risk when you hand prospects a grocery list of different messages about you. They remember the raisins, which aren't important, and forget the milk. Your prospects forget your real point of distinction, and remember a supporting message that hardly matters.
Now, consider some even grimmer evidence against communicating too much. Horace Schwerin and Henry Newell, in their helpful book Persuasion described their test of two commercials for the same car. Commercial one was single-minded. It talked only about performance. Commercial two went further. It pointed out that in addition to exceptional performance, the car offered outstanding styling, a choice of several models, and excellent economy. (This type of commercial is known in the agency business as The Commercial the Client Will Love.)
After showing subjects the two commercials, the testers asked viewers if either commercial might make them switch to that brand new car. Six percent answered yes, the performance spot would make them consider switching.
But what about the second commercial, with all that valuable added information - how many were affected by it?
Not one. Zero percent.
Saying many things usually communicates nothing.
What do you think? How focused is your sales message?
I'm certainly guilty of trying too communicate too many different messages at times. I think it's the shotgun theory. You know your prospect has a hot button or two and you feel you've asked all the right questions to bring out those hot buttons, but just in case, let's throw a few extra messages out there.
Or perhaps, we're all guilty of not having a really good handle on our "ideal customer." "Heck, nearly everybody could use my great services, so let me shotgun a bunch of messages out there so I can appeal to them all."
Here's my solution, at least what I try to do. In a sales situation, I'm not too concerned with using a shotgun-type message to address and reduce the perceived risk(s) that clients have about working with me. Most likely, they may not remember each specific item, but they will feel I've lowered their perceived risk (or not). During discovery, I want to identify the prospects top two or three needs (hot buttons) and then I'll want to repeat those needs during the conversation and deliver one message for each need addressing how I can meet those needs. Select and deliver no more than two or three need/message combinations. Finally, I want to use one message that differentiates my firm from competitors (including the biggest competitor of all which is Status Quo Inc.) and deliver that same message two or three times during the course of the sales meeting.
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