How do you feel when you’re in front of a potential client and have to communicate the value of your services?
Do you fumble and struggle to find the right words? Or have you crafted the perfect pitch?
A lot of professional services businesses have unclear, generalist messaging and it’s limiting their ability to attract the right clients.
Now I believe this could be due to the nature of running a service business. We feel the pressure to cater to our clients’ every need which causes us to say yes to projects that we probably shouldn’t.
But the impact of broadening our service offering is that it makes it harder to craft clear and compelling key messaging that represents the whole set of services we offer.
In order for your messaging to be most effective, it’s important to be consistent across the board – from your one-on-one interactions, to the copy you have on your website.
And the ultimate goal is to explain your offering in a way that encourages your target audience to take action after seeing your marketing efforts.
One way to look at this is to think about Dragons’ Den
Imagine you had to go on the show and pitch to investors – could you describe your offering clearly enough to get investment?
Are the benefits to the ideal clients obvious?
Is the offering focused enough and demonstrably better than the competition?
I found a great example of a Dragons’ Den pitch that’s definitely worth a watch. Sam, from Gener8 does a stellar job of explaining the problem his offering solves, and why he has the perfect solution.
Watch the clip here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8usz6i07qYs
As his pitch was so good, I thought it would be useful to break it down and extract a framework you could use to inspire your messaging. Here it is:
Step 1 – Define the core problem the market is experiencing
Firstly, it’s critical to start by showing that you understand the target audience’s problem.
You must accurately describe the problem your potential clients are faced with to pique their interest in your services.
Step 2 – Make the problem relatable
Next Sam demonstrates how the problem affects daily life and the impact it’s having on the target audience.
This makes it relatable and shows that it’s an important issue to solve.
Step 3 – Explain your purpose
Have you thought about the wrong in the world you are trying to right?
Think beyond the immediate issues of the target audience and look for a greater challenge to solve relating to your services.
This makes me think of the famous Simon Sinek quote, “people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it”.
Step 4 – Describe your solution
Now that you’ve explained the market need, it’s time to talk about your solution to the problem and the headline benefits to your ideal clients. Can you describe it succintly in a way that's compelling and easy to understand?
Finally, dive into details of how the solution actually works and what makes the benefits to the client possible.
So consider how you talk about your offering, does it have follow a similar flow to the one described above?
