To sell stuff, you have to be able to explain it–fast. Thus the need for marketing collateral and an OK web site and some basic communication.
Contingency Sales believes the customer never reads 90% or more of all the stuff marketing departments create. Or if it is read, it has little or no impact. This is not just opinion. We buy stuff too and we see the collateral and most of it has zero value.
It actually irritates the prospect because it is so homogenized as to be meaningless. What the customer really wants to know is hidden somewhere in long, complicated messaging.
Messaging seems to always start with “X is the leading global provider of products and services that…..
Doesn’t that just make you want to scream? And after Elon Musk lands on Mars, these marketing types will have to change “global” to “intergalactic” or whatever the astronomical term needs to be.
It is also can be very expensive—so skip it.
A B2B tech startup needs only one message—-“why are we different” from anything you have seen before? You are always best off if you can corral the entire industry into one circle, and yourself in a separate one.
Different is always better than better. Always.
A B2B tech startup needs a Level 1, 2 and 3 document, each more technical in depth or for a different person or a different stage of the process.
The startup needs to understand people require different information at different times in a sales cycle.
How does a startup build this early collateral? Probably a good idea is to visit with some “friendlies,” companies where you have friends who will take a visit. Take them through a sales cycle, even though they are not a real prospect, then have them tell you what they heard.
Better, what they understood.
You will be shocked at how far early messaging is from ultimate solution message.
Running your messages by real humans can cut 90% off the time of message and collateral development.
Real humans, reacting to your message, makes you hone it to a fine point where everyone understands, in a single sentence, what you do, why it is different and why it matters.