“SO, WHAT DO YOU DO?”
If a potential customer asks you to describe what you do, what do you say?
In my experience, the usual response is a literal one:
- “We’re IT developers. We build web-enabled retail systems.”
- “I’m a builder. I renovate old houses.”
- “We’re a recruitment company. We source contractors.”
This is all very well; it’s part of the answer, but it’s not actually what your potential customer wanted to hear when he or she asked what you do. I think there’s a better way to get your message across – verbally and on your website. It’s a case of understanding where your customer is coming from and answering the right question.
What customers are really asking
What customers ask and what they really want to hear are often two different things entirely. When they ask you what you do or look at your company website, what they’re really trying to ascertain is:
“Are you someone who can help me solve my particular problem?”
If you just give a factual explanation of your services, you’re not really answering their question. As David Meerman Scott says in his recent blog article on www.webinknow.com:
“Customers don’t care about you and your products or services. They care about themselves and their problems.”
You need to spell out what’s in it for them. You need to need to tell them what kind of issues you solve and for who. You need to show them that you solve problems for people just like them.
5 questions to help you
So, if you’re setting up a new business or redefining an existing one, here are 5 crucial questions you need to answer to get your customers’ full attention:
- CUSTOMERS: Who do you work for? What kind of people benefit from your help? Where are they based?
- ISSUES: What kind of issues or challenges do you solve for your customers? When should they pick up the phone to you?
- SERVICES: How do you help them? What kind of services do you offer? What’s your process?
- BENEFITS: What kind of results or outcome can they expect from working with you? How can you prove this?
- MISSION: Why are you in business? What difference did you set out to make? What’s your crusade?
Whether you’re writing your company website or describing what you do in person, remember to answer these questions. Don’t just talk about what your products and services do. Tell your customers how you solve their problems. This is what they really want to hear.
A formula to work to
Further reading: Robert Middleton of Action Plan Marketing is particularly good on the subject of describing what you do. See www.actionplan.com. He calls this your ‘Audio Logo’. Here’s his formula:
What do you do?
We work with (this target market) ……….
Who (have this issue or challenge) ……….
How do you do that?
We help them get (ultimate outcome) ……….
Tell me more
A good example is (success story) ……….
Related articles:
- Make Your Offer Crystal Clear
- Emotion, Not Logic Will Get Your Message Across
- Narrow Your Niche For More Leads
- What is Your Crusade?
As a small company, it’s really tempting to say something vague like “We do anything our customers want us to do”. We tend to fear saying something specific in case we exclude ourselves from a job. However, as Sonja says, I’ve found that customers really want to know to know when to pick up the phone and call you. In the example above “We are a recruitment company, we source contractors” the customer will pick up the phone when they want to recruit contractors. Is that what you want? Or do you want to catch them earlier? Perhaps you’d like to say “We solve staffing problems.” Then the customer will call you when they have a staffing problem.
I’ve found that it helps to be specific. I say “I run meetings”. This is indeed what I do. I also do a number of other things, such as manage change. I’ve found that for new customers, the specific offer to run a meeting helps them to know when to call me. Being specific does not exclude me from work. I will run a meeting for them, and it’s successful, and then they’ll use my other services. So phone me: I run meetings. What do you do?
Thanks Jane. I totally agree – being specific really does help. I get my best response when I tell people that I write web content. If I tell them I’m a marketing consultant this does not help them to understand when to pick up the phone to me. It also helps when I tell people more about my clients, so: ” I work for small professional firms and consultants. My clients are experts in their fields who need help translating their specialist knowledge into quality written content that generates interest in what they do.”
This seems to do the trick. I’d be fascinated to learn what works for others.
The essence of this message is what I call “The Ultimate Outcome.” What happens too often is that we get into “process talk” where we talk all about the stuff we “DO” and why we do it. But, as Sonja says, we need to talk about how we solve our clients problems.
But with the Ultiamte Outcome, you can take it deeper than that. So if you say, “We help your company increase productivity,” ask what your clients will get once they have that productivity. Can you go deeper than that?
“Well, let’s see, if our clients are more productive, they’ll be more profitable. But that’s kind of general. Let’s look at the past few clients we’ve worked with. Hmmm, in most of the client engagements we’ve had this year, our clients’ profitabilty increased by a minimum of 24%.”
So that would change the message to a more powerful Ultimate Outcome such as “We help our clients increase their profitability by a minimum of 24% in one year.”
Now at the moment, maybe you can’t promise that. But keep looking deeper to tangible results that really mean something to your prospects, something they can’t ignore, something they have to find out more about.
When you have zeroed in on that, you have an Ultimate Outcome and powerful marketing message that will engage your prospects and get them closer to working with you.
Bottom line, it’s all about tangible results, not processes.
Cheers,
Robert Middleton
Thanks very much Robert. I love the emphasis on digging deeper to uncover the ultimate outcome.
It reminds me of some fantastic sales training I had years ago. Our trainer, Dermot Bradley (a wiley ex-IBM salesman who’d definately kissed the Blarney)taught what he called ‘The Delilah Technique’: to find out the real benefit of what you do, ask why your service was important to your clients, and keep asking why. That way you’ll get to the crux of it. “Why…? Why…? Why…?”
Hi Sonja!
This is fabulous information. I worked with two companies who had recently joined forces causing
problems among the workforce. As an experienced psychotherapist I was called in to offer Life Coaching
to individual employees. After long discussion and many ‘WHYs’ it transpired that there was a major “split” between the employees from top to bottom and by working on communication skills with mixed groups, including the Directors, and offering an opportunity to express hostilities and differences the company became more unified.
The Directors told me later that the reason they had chosen me was that I had listened to them and worked out a way of solving their problems rather than imposing a set agenda.
Hi Sonja
I love your articles and your presentations. I think any business is set up to solve or meet a particular need of a customer. This defines the organisation. Being able to continue this is the secret for growth. Your 5 prescriptive questions for businesses to identity or redefine their role to their customers are spot on. However, every organisation should be able to grow with the time and should be able to develop programs of work that will be geared towards contributing to the customers need. Hence they need to be creative, innovative and dynamic in terms of their execution acuities.
Thanks for your wonderful work. You’re a talented writer.
Thanks Ben. That’s great feedback. I hope the 5 questions help business owners to get to the heart of their message by approaching it from the customer point of view. All businesses are indeed set up to solve the needs of their customers as you say but you’d be surprised at how many forget to communicate that when describing what they do. It’s far more powerful than just listing your services I reckon. Sonja
Hi Sonja, totally agree with everything you’ve written (and it is written with clarity – very appropriate, given subject matter).
Here’s a twist. Any business that wants to get noticed has to do something a bit lateral/creative to get noticed. Saying you “boost productivity by 24%” is great, but even better if it can be portrayed in a surprising/remarkable way. With my “ideas head” on I can do that for people. But if they don’t have clarity and a single-minded message the creative person is snookered before they start. Clarity is the big DO NOT PASS GO UNTIL YOU HAVE ACHEIVED IT thing!
Agreed Jim and I know how good you are at turning a clear message into something fabulously interesting and memorable. Thanks for the comment.
Hi Sonja
Great advice, and some which I have just taken myself. I am just starting out in business, and have just distilled my own offering…and it has liberated me! I am attending my first business club meeting tomorrow and instead of feeeling nervous, I am raring to go becuase I know who I am and what I do; I help people who are having a mid-life crisis to enjoy doing things differently.
It’s marvellous just how this simple sentence has encapsulated the essence of who I am.
I am looking forward to reading more of your posts and exploring your site 🙂
Sue
That’s fantastic Sue. Enjoy your meeting and really, really good luck with your new business venture. Sonja