30 Seconds to Explosive Networking & Sales
This is probably one of the most important things that you will
ever do for you and your business. It will definitely have the
biggest impact of anything you have ever done.
This activity is to help you not only create a 30 second
elevator speech, but to better understand what you really do. It
will define your USP (Unique selling proposition). This usually
even changes my client's vision of who they are and what they do
for their customers.
1. Column One - Products, Services or Features
List your products/services, probably what you are currently
telling me what you do or sell. Write down all of them.
2. Column Two - Benefits
List the benefits that your products, services or features
provide. Each benefit should be directly linked to the product
identified in Column One. Look to answer the question "Why"
should someone buy the product, service or features.
3. Column Three - Why Buy From Me?
Identify what makes you unique in the sea of sameness where you
can find hundreds of businesses selling the same products,
services or features. Avoid price as may become a losing
strategy.
4. Column Four - Measurable Results
This is where the rubber meets the road, where the real power
statement will be found. Review the previous 3 columns and list
the measurable results that your products of services deliver.
This will turn the benefits...the "Why buy the product?" and
"Why buy it from me?" into a measurable result (make sure it is
a result not an activity). This will do more than just improve
your networking and marketing. It will make it so powerful that
once you start using it you'll have people running up to you
after a networking event..."How do you do that?"...."Can you
REALLY do that?" And that IS what you're trying to do isn't it,
Getting noticed?
For most of my clients there is someone just like you on every
street corner. Imagine for a moment that you are standing on a
street corner with hundreds of other people. They all are the
same height, same hair color, same skin color, and even wearing
the same clothes. Rather daunting to think someone could find
you in that crowd isn't it?
Well....that's your job. To be found on that street corner. And,
for most of my clients, that is where they, and their
businesses, are standing....in that very crowd.
Our job from this point forward is two-fold:
1) Be the first person anyone sees when they walk up to that
street corner.
2) And eventually, have people coming to THAT street corner just
to find you. They know YOU are on that street corner so they
come THERE just for you.
Does this your perception of the hundreds on the street
corner...and your business? It does for those that find that
measurable result from column 4 and start using it.
Most of your competitors talk about their products. Your job is
to be different, to find what your prospect needs, what benefits
and solutions your product provides to meet those needs, and
then why buy the product from you. What are the products
benefits, and YOUR benefits? And then turn that into something
that is so visible, so powerful and grabbing but talking about
measurable results that people can't help but come up to you to
ask, "How do you do that?", or occasionally, "Nah! No way...Not
really...Can You Really Do that?"
I want you to consider this worksheet as a work in progress.
These questions and answers should generate thoughts that keep
changing and getting better over time. For the first pass, get
something down. Don't worry about perfection. Get it down. We'll
come back after you've finished the entire sheet and probably
change those answers. We will come back tomorrow, and weeks
later with better and better answers. This exercise generates
thoughts that will drive you to improve them and what you
perceive as the deliverable to your customer.
Usually the first pass results in a weak, wishy-washy response
to "Why buy the product?" and "Why buy it from me?" Once we are
forced to put a measurable on it we start thinking differently.
More often than not my client says,
"You mean I've got to actually COMMIT to that?" or
"I don't have any control over that."
YES committing to that IS what will make you stand out on that
corner, and ultimately that IS what the client THINKS you are
delivering. Up 'til now you've allowed the customer to come to
his own conclusion about what results he'll get. People buy you
on the value they perceive you deliver. So help them find your
value and define clearly what you deliver. Your prospect will
literally chase you to get that result.
Watch your networking and marketing results go through the roof!