by Julie Squires
November 6, 2012

With marketing automation tools, it is relatively easy to distribute, measure and analyze any content you create. We like Marketo to get it done.

Messaging that increases sales, however, must be hand-built. We like a combination of, Adele Revella’s buyer persona method, accented with Jaynie L. Smith’s competitive advantage approach, to get it done.  Both thought leaders simplify and systematize an effective messaging process.

Your sales messages to prospects and customers must be like a firm, trusted handshake. Or a warm handshake. Or a friendly clasp.  Effective sales messaging must look them in the eyes and say, “I know you well.”

Our buyer persona mentor and colleague, Adele Revella, said it best in a recent email:

“So what’s changed? While it was always important
to know the audience before we created a story,
today’s audiences are overwhelmed with content, and
far less forgiving of companies that skip this step.” – A. Revella

You may have experienced this.

Buyer Persona Sales Messaging

Our company, and especially our clients, benefit – first – from Adele’s free eBook, The Buyer Persona Manifesto. Then we invested in her company-wide workshops to learn her method for effective sales messaging. We and our clients continue to benefit from her “With You All the Way” promise and close association.
 
Adele’s process includes step-by-step templates and detailed instructions – down to the 3 best times each day to reach a win/loss prospect at his desk – in order to interview the candidate and accurately populate Adele’s Five Rings of Insight™.  The 5 Rings address: 1. What made the prospects start looking for a solution? What was their Priority Initiative?  2. What do Success Factors look like to them?  3. What are the Perceived Barriers? 4. What is the Buying Process?  and 5. What is the Decision Criteria? What capabilities does the buyer deem important?

Click here to see succinct, fresh, customer-centric sales messaging we produce using Adele’s method.  These are rolled out for our clients in ads, videos, booth verbiage, press releases and more.  They boost revenue 20% to 25%.

Competitive Advantages

In sales messaging for clients, first we create a core message, and different version of that message, using Adele’s approach. We then stimulate prospects to action by adding competitive advantages to our content.  According to Jaynie L. Smith, a competitive advantage must be:

• Quantifiable and detailed.
• Sustainable.
• Something competitors cannot claim.
• Helpful to the buyer in making an educated decision. Tell the buyer something they do not know.

As an example, Softscribe Inc.’s current competitive advantages are:

• Softscribe Inc. solidifies a company’s brand awareness and can increase annual sales 20% to 25% or more.
• Softscribe Inc. generates the right messages for your audiences 100% of the time. This is essential to closing sales. We create and leverage time saving, effective, streamlined processes.
•  Softscribe Inc. staff members average 18 years’ earned industry depth, and experience in branding, marketing and PR.

Other examples of competitive advantages we created for clients include:

• [Company’s] market share in the hotel/casino vertical exceeds competitors’ by 400%.
• [Company’s] expertise in complete UHF RFID system integration delivers a 100% control of linen inventory.
• [Company] produces and supports 100% of its system and product development in-house. This allows [Company] to be twice as responsive to system enhancement requests compared to outsourcing and industry norms.
• [Company] leverages 20 years of technology innovation, proven methodologies and earned industry depth.

Check out Jaynie Smith’s two books, Creating Competitive Advantage and Relevant Selling for a “how-to” process on creating competitive advantages to power your sales messaging.

How do you capture the voice of your customers? 
I would like to know.

Do you have questions about your sales messaging?
Give me a shout at Julie(at)softscribeinc.com, or 404.256.5512.

About the Author:
Julie Squires is CEO of Softscribe Inc., an award winning market consulting, branding and PR corporation. Our invaluable clients are technology companies that target hospitality and other vertical markets. For them, we solidify brand awareness and can increase annual sales 20% to 25% or more. We generate the right messages for client audiences 100% of the time. This is essential to close sales. And our staff members average 18 years’ earned industry depth, and experience in branding, marketing and PR. Julie is also a star gazer.