Comments on: Five questions to help you communicate what you do

By: Sonja Jefferson

Sonja Jefferson — Thu, 26 May 2011 18:20:05 +0000

That’s fantastic Sue. Enjoy your meeting and really, really good luck with your new business venture. Sonja

By: sue ritchie

sue ritchie — Thu, 26 May 2011 14:34:37 +0000

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

By: Sonja Jefferson

Sonja Jefferson — Thu, 26 May 2011 11:35:32 +0000

Agreed Jim and I know how good you are at turning a clear message into something fabulously interesting and memorable. Thanks for the comment.

By: Jim O'Connor

Jim O'Connor — Thu, 26 May 2011 11:21:19 +0000

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!

By: Sonja Jefferson

Sonja Jefferson — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 15:15:54 +0000

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

By: Ben

Ben — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 12:51:36 +0000

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.

By: Business writing: 6 ways to get your business voice right

Business writing: 6 ways to get your business voice right — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 15:43:00 +0000

[...] and specialized. I can’t explain it in simple language. Potential customers need to see how you solve problems for people like them. Expertise can be a stumbling block if you just dump it in somebody’s path. Take a step back [...]

By: Caroline Nisson

Caroline Nisson — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 16:39:28 +0000

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.

By: Sonja Jefferson

Sonja Jefferson — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:05:34 +0000

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…?”

By: Robert Middleton

Robert Middleton — Wed, 14 May 2008 16:21:14 +0000

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