🦉 How to Draw an Owl
🪖 Combatting Digital Overload
🙈 Please Don’t “We We”
🦉 How to Draw an Owl
There’s a classic meme on the internet called, “How to Draw An Owl.” It’s positioned as a fun and creative guide for beginners in two steps:
Step 1: Draw 2 circles. One for the head and one for the body.
Step 2: Draw the rest of the damn owl!
Aghhh! This sums up the experience many of us have with business.
You read the business books, listen to podcasts, and look for best practices — but it all sounds like the “experts” are telling you to draw a proverbial owl: “Just find your WHY” or “Pick your BHAG — big hairy audacious goal” and you will be successful.
But all these guides and how-to manuals simply give us the “why” and the “what,” not the “how.”
The purpose of the Sales Sprint is to clearly show you how. By the end of the sprint, you will learn how to develop brand messaging that provokes your customers to buy, and prove it works.
🪖 Combatting Digital Overload
Generating sales leads and opportunities is harder than ever. Digital marketing is oversaturated and underperforming.
In 2019 Sticky Branding ran a comprehensive study comparing marketing campaigns over a five year period. Even before the craziness of the pandemic and the bubble and bust that followed, marketing strategies were rapidly atrophying.
In 2019 it was taking 10 times the marketing budget to generate 30% of the results of similar campaigns in 2014. In 2024, it’s a whole lot worse!
I am willing to bet if you can meet the right people — the people who need your expertise and services — you can close the sale. The challenge is how do you get enough meetings with the right people to move the sales needle?
It starts with your pitch.
With all the marketing noise you need to be laser focused on reaching the right customers with the right message at the right time with a message that will provoke them to act.
In our upcoming Sales Sprint, you will learn:
- Burning Needs: Discover your customers’ “Burning Needs.” What will they create a budget for or act-on if you can provide the solution?
- Offer Messaging Stack: Create brand messaging that gains executive access (meetings with business owners and C-suite executives) that provokes them to act.
- Prove it works: Using a Win / Loss Card™, validate your brand messaging works. If your messaging doesn’t sell, you’ll learn how to adjust it.
🙈 Please Don’t “We We”
You see it all the time. Companies make bold claims:
“We are the oldest…”
“We are the greatest…”
“We have the best customer service…”
“We have the best people, products, features…”
We. We. We.
But please! Please! Don’t we-we all over your customers. Nobody likes to be we’d on.
I’m making a joke, but it’s actually serious. Go look at your website and marketing collateral. What tense is the copy?
Does your marketing speak in “you” and “I,” or is it taking a “we”? If it’s taking a we, it’s time for an upgrade.
It’s amazing how few companies can clearly explain their services. They pontificate and use puffy language, benefit statements, and other phrases to create a value proposition. And inevitably, all that language is focused inwards.
But what about your customers?
A prospect or customer doesn’t visit your website to read your brand’s boastful claims. They came there to solve THEIR problem. Sure, they want to ensure your company is qualified and credible, but that’s more to do with their needs than yours.
🤔 Thoughts on Today’s Issue?
We’d love to hear your feedback. Reply to this message with any thoughts, comments, or ideas for future issues.