Sell Your Skills Better by Tailoring Your Speech to the Needs of the Listener
If you’ve ever had a job interview or business offer, you’re probably familiar with how inconvenient it is to list positive qualities for you or your product. Here’s a secret: the listener is just as uncomfortable. Instead, focus on what you (or what you are selling) can offer the person to make them more interesting.
As writer James Greig points out, all too often it is about the “I” of a product or person. Your résumé says “I’m great,” and the products you buy speak of how proud the company is of all the work that has been done on this amazing new version that is only progressively better than the previous one and costs twice as much. This is a terrible way of serving. Instead, try to identify the problem the person you are talking to is trying to solve, and then demonstrate how you (or your product / service) solve that problem:
In other words: To write better, think about the hidden reasons for using your product or service, not the obvious ones.
The first iPod was not sold as a “5GB MP3 player” (boring / technical), but as “1000 songs in your pocket” (wow / that’s cool).
Olark bills itself as not just a “live chat” (mmm), but a way to “make your customer happy” (win).
And this is not “LinkedIn: Social Network for Business” (yawn), this is “LinkedIn: Be Great at What You Do” (because who wouldn’t want that?)
The more you can focus on how you are solving a legitimate (rather than fictitious) problem for your client, the more likely you are to be able to sell it to them. Of course, there is a downside to the coin: there are people you can’t sell because they don’t really need your services. This is good. It is easier to keep someone who truly needs you than to impose your services on someone who was not really in the service you provide in the first place.
Don’t Think About Yourself (An Introduction to Online Copywriting) | Greig.cc via 99u