Make sure you’re selling not telling

The promotional materials like fliers, brochures and emails that come into my inbox or letterbox often surprise me.  Many of them are telling not selling.  They’re describing their product rather than working out from my point of view the benefits to me of buying it.  Let’s look at an easy example first to make the point.  Have you ever enjoyed buying a computer?  A lot of computer salesman are, fortunately, very knowledgeable about quite a complex product.  The good ones can listen to your requirement and then describe the features of their products in terms of how it answers your needs.  They find out what you are going to use it for and say things like, “OK, if you have to print out large reports there is probably a good return on investment in the top model in the printer range.  It’ll save you a lot of time.”  They don’t say, “This printer has a rear entry sheet feeder that holds up to 100 sheets of 64gsm paper, printers up to 32ppm with a maximum of 5760 x 1440 dpi and has an input memory of 64KBs”  You can enjoy buying from the first one; the latter can be a nightmare.
Look at your promotional material with this in mind.  Does your passion and knowledge make you put in too much about the detail of the product, and not enough about what it does for the consumer? If you’re selling gifts, for example, make your first question, “Who’s it for?”  That way you can talk about the how the recipient will enjoy it.
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Tip from Shaf – Focus your advertising on your market
A good way of designing your brochures and so on is to think of the newspaper that your target market reads.  This gives you the level and feel of what your stuff should look like.
 
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Take time to consider your target audience when you are designing promotional materials.  What will make them read it?  Remember it’s quite easy to open a promotional letter and only half take it out of the envelope before binning it.  So you need a simple benefit statement or question to get their attention.  Keep it simple.
 Look too at your order forms and contracts.  If they have more disclaimers and conditions of sale on them warning people why they shouldn’t buy, than benefit statements saying why they should you’ve got it upside down.
Web sites also are often poor silent salespeople.  They’re difficult to navigate and frustrating to use. For an example of a clean uncluttered website which is easy to navigate have a look at the website www.estock.co.uk
 
Whatever you sell and whomever you sell to maintain a professional and smart appearance about everything the customer sees with your name on it.