It’s never about you. And that includes me. In our business we write letters to people and we send quotes. We have sales pages on our websites. So we have brochures.
Have you gone and read one of those? Quite often they’ll start with, (I am using my other business as an example) “At Fire Protection Online we are the ‘UK’s biggest blah blah blah blah’.
The customer does not care at this point. That is about you. They didn’t want to know about you, not yet. They are looking for information about the services you provide.
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They don’t want to know about you, there may be a time for telling them later on but for now they are looking for benefits.
When you talk about you, it’s a feature. Now benefits — in other words — what’s in it for them? So when they are looking, they are thinking ‘how does this help me?’
When they come to my business, I am going to talk about mine. So when they come to Fire Protection Online, they have a problem.
They need something, their problem might be that they need information. Because someone has told them they need, for example, to get some fire marshals or to train up some fire marshals and they are wondering what happens.
We don’t provide fire marshal training but we do provide lot of information about it and explain how to get it.
We provide fire marshal clothing and vests and equipment and special kits and things like that, megaphones, whatever they may need. But they have a problem.
We will provide the solution. But we will put it in their terms. So instead of saying, “At fire protection online WE”, our things refer to YOU, to you the reader, the one reader.
We will say for instance, ‘You are probably looking for training information and it’s not easy to find is it?’ And then they are thinking.
You see how that is getting in the mind of the THEM. So I want you to look through your copy. Look through the last couple of quotations that were sent out.
Look at your leaflets, your brochures, your catalogs, your website. Have a look through and see how much of it says, ‘WE do this, WE do that.’
And the reason I say this is because I get things for people all the time. I get quotes, I get letters. I see websites and quite often every darn paragraph starts with the word ‘WE’.
And it’s the first thing that I notice because it’s not good. If you see written sales copy on extremely good advert, it doesn’t refer to the company, it’s pretty obvious who the company is. It’s got a logo there. Okay?
Now, once you have covered the benefits, if anything — it appears to be written from your point of view.
So for instance, ‘We are the largest fire protection company. We are the UK’s number 1. We are the juniors, da, da, da, da. We etc. we are the, you’ve come to right place.’ or that kind of thing.
Turn that around to word it from their point of view. There’s always a way of rewording that sentence to put it from the user’s point of view. Okay?
So you know it might be something like, ‘You can trust in the fact that Fire Protection Online are the UK’s biggest…’ that kind of thing.
Word it from the customer’s point of view. What appeals to them, not what you want to appeal to them. Does that make sense?
It will apply to everything, even in design. Generally, this is why inventors, by the way are quite often bankrupt.
Inventors invent things that they want to invent. They don’t invent things that people actually want. Now there’s a catch 22 because if it isn’t invented, how could anyone know that they want it.
That’s a gamble. That’s why I am not an inventor.
But when you come out with new products and new services, you can test them. There are prototypes. There are tests, all sorts.
This is checking out what the customer wants. Okay? Making something. So many of our suppliers just send us an email, ‘Hey we have launched our new product.’
And we think to ourselves, ‘And we are one of their biggest customers, if not their biggest customers’. And I think to myself ‘We don’t want to sell that, people don’t use those. Why do you ask us?’
But when we ask, they think if they tell us, we go tell all their competitors. Oh it’s ridiculous. But so have all sorts of excuses for not asking us, they just don’t want to know what a customer wants, they don’t want to do it for customer.
I recommend that YOU do. That’s what I mean by ‘It’s not about you, it’s never about you.’ So it will go on.
Drive Time Podcast
Now it is Thursday. As you know on Thursdays, we talk about a Drive Time Podcast. Today it is the “Eventual Millionaire”. This is by the wonderful Jamie Tardy. She is a lovely lady.
She has been podcasting forever. People such as John Lee Dumas, Entrepreneur on Fire who is one of the most popular on the planet, started by being mentored by Jamie Tardy.
She has been around a while. She is brilliant. Now, what she describes in Eventual Millionaire is this — she interviews people who know they are going to be an eventual millionaire in their business.
They are driven to succeed. They may not be successful already but still driven. She interviews the top people because she has been around for ages.
She has THE BEST guests. It’s not about her, it’s about her wanting to be an eventual millionaire. Although she does assume that, if she learns from the best, she will become one.
Go check out her website. It’ll be worth your time. Its good podcast. Talk to you soon.
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What do you need to change or reword to get the focus off of you?
