Reading for the first time? Nice to meet you. My name is Feranmi (Fer) and at night I’m building an AI-powered platform that allows product teams to get actionable customer insights from discovery calls in minutes. During the day, I help brands & companies educate their users, drive organic traffic and conversion with content marketing. Then, at midnight, I watch a lot of ESPN FC and write this newsletter.
Long story short, this newsletter, allows you to discover ideas (valuable, I hope) related to marketing, business & technology. You can then think deeper about them to apply to your business & career. As the name implies, I’ll try to be short, to the point, and matter-of-factly.
April Dunford is an excellent writer. The most popular book from her is “Obviously Awesome” and has been recommended mostly in product marketing circles. But every early-stage startup founder should read it too. I’ll share in the coming episodes how this book is shaping my thinking about the product I’m building.
The other book from her that I haven’t seen recommended as much but even just as insightful is “Sales Pitch”.
One of the main ideas from the book on how to create a great sales pitch is teaching your potential user how to buy.
Helping potential customers/clients understand all their options, trade-offs between each, and why & when to pick your solution/product can help you win. Basically, you should position yourself as an experienced guide to a buyer.
Often, we assume buyers understand how to make the right buying decision and just need to tell them about our features and the value we bring. But the thing is, there are probably three or more solutions like yours that are offering exactly the same thing as you do.
The first step of sales is asking questions to understand the problems, pains, and other solutions the buyer has considered.
Then, help them understand how to make a choice and in the process make a case for your solution showing how it solves their problem in a different way than competitors.
I think Mark Zuckerberg does a good job using this idea to make a case for Meta Quest 3 over the Apple Vision Pro.
You can apply this to your next sales pitch, content marketing campaign, and your paid advertising creatives.
“Stop selling. Start helping.” - Zig Ziglar
Related Resource
Sales Pitch: How to Craft a Story to Stand Out and Win by April Dunford
That’s it for this week!