I won a copy (thanks Andy Beal) of “The Referral Engine” by John Jantsch (which was nice) and it is a great read for anyone interested in growing their business through referrals. One section starts with the sentence “People don’t talk about boring companies..”. He’s right, they don’t!

This is a challenge that I have faced since setting up MyProjectTracker. For months, it was all about features and capabilities. The 15 second pitch included the words project management (and yes, I could see peoples eyes glaze over!). In other words spoken like an IT person selling to an IT person, not as a marketer or sales person to a business owner.

I was pitching a great product (modesty aside)  in a boring way.

Learning to speak in the language of our customer has been one of the toughest challenges I have had to face as a start-up. In my previous lives, I have been able to talk tech because I was selling to techies. Now I have had to leave behind my background of technical comfort and drag myself kicking and screaming into the real world where people talk about unique selling points and customer benefit. Not only that, but to stand out, I have to find a way to do it that puts us above the competition.

In some ways, I consider myself fortunate in that I understood that this was/is going to be a challenge and sought help early enough along before I dug a large hole for the company. It has been a lengthy process and it’s still going. I am still working to shape the company message and still seek assistance when needed.

The ability to project a strong message for our potential customers so they can really understand the benefit of the product is too important to get wrong.

I still on occasion find myself talking about hosted project management solutions. It’s going to take some more practice, fine tuning and help but I’ll get there. I can’t speak for Eoin of course – he’d just say he’s naturally gifted.

Do you talk the language of your customer and make your message fresh?