Don’t Be The Hero In Your B2B Sales And Marketing Process
Stop making your product or company the hero of your marketing story.
One of the biggest mistakes that we make in our marketing efforts is that we often talk about our product.
We talk about the great benefits that our products have, and we speak about how our product is the best in its market—the best of its kind, the best quality.
The problem is that when you only speak about the product from a company's perspective, it fails to land with customers.
The more self-orientated your marketing, the fewer customers care and the less they trust you.
Think about that acquaintance at a party that continually brags about achievements and their most recent successes. They talk about the most significant holiday they went on last month and how awesome they are in life.
The chances are that within the first couple of minutes, you will stop listening to that person. And the reason is that they blow too much of their own trumpet. In a way that is like traditional business marketing that is self-orientated where the company blows its own trumpet a little too much.
Donald Miller talks about the hero's story in his writings. Whereby great marketing allows you to tell a story through the customer's eyes, making them the hero of the story rather than to make your product or your company the hero of the story.
In my Sales and Marketing Programmes, we take clients through three pillars that they can leverage to tell better stories.
Pillar #1 - Show Empathy
Show empathy by demonstrating that you understand your customers from their point of view. Make your audience feel understood and feel heard. You can do that by telling stories and sharing use cases of existing clients.
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Pillar #2 - Build Trust
Reliability and consistency are key factors to establish trust, but no-one likes high levels of self-promotion. Instead, show your audience that you care about their success and provide value without asking for anything in return. If you want to do a self-plug, let testimonials and industry awards tell the story for you.
Pillar #3 - Establish Authority
I don't mean a dictator who tells people what to do. Establishing authority is about having good enough credibility to make a justified recommendation to your market. Think of it as a doctor giving a prognosis, to a specific health problem. Be a credible source of truth for your audience.
And so in your next marketing campaign or the next blog that you're writing. I'd like you to think about your company story and product from a user's perspective.
Rather than blowing your own trumpet about your product, think about how you can leverage these three pillars.
Over the past six months, our clients have applied these and in turn, increased new business acquisitions and lowered their customer acquisition cost.
Make your customer the hero of the story.
Trust me, it works.
Flavio Hangarter
PS: Whenever you’re ready, I help clever founders to set up their sales and marketing systems, generate leads and close more sales.
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