I
Feel Your Pain - How To Push The "Ouch" Button
by
Ivan Levison
How's your breath?
Is it sweet and pleasant? Or when you talk, do people wince
and stagger backwards?
Now, as you can guess, I'm not really worried about your personal
hygiene. But I AM concerned about how effectively you're selling
your product or service. Which is why I'm going to take a quick
look at an old Listerine mouthwash advertising campaign that
I think will prove instructive. Here's the story . . .
Years ago, when Listerine's ad agency first got the account,
they obviously could have positioned the product in an infinite
number of ways. (Just as you can position YOUR product or service
in an infinite number of ways.) They could have positioned
Listerine as the inexpensive mouthwash, the premium mouthwash,
the great-tasting mouthwash, the super-powerful mouthwash .
. . You get the point.
Which
way did the agency go? They chose to position Listerine as
the mouthwash that could prevent "halitosis."
Yup. They found out that the scientific word for nasty breath
was halitosis and then began a campaign designed to convince
everyone that they were at risk for this dread disease. If
you had halitosis, everyone would talk about you behind your
back. The only way to avoid being a pariah was to keep rinsing
with Listerine. The advertising agency used the tag line:
"He
said, that she said, that he had halitosis!"
The result? Listerine mouthwash flew off the shelf.
Yes. Fear and pain are wonderful motivators, and those of
us who market high-tech products have it a lot easier than
the makers of Listerine. We don't have to manufacture pain.
Our users have to deal with it every day!
Everyone from the humble home user, who has to suffer crashes,
to the IT professional, trying to keep a network humming, knows
pain first hand.
What I want to suggest is that when you're selling prospects,
acknowledge the pain they're in, show them that you understand
what they're up against, and explain how you can help them
solve their toughest problems.
Where's a good place to start?
How about right at the beginning of your letter or e-mail.
That's the perfect place to let your readers know that you
identify with their problems. Let me give you just two examples
of how you can use pain to create an immediate bond with your
readers. (Example #1 was written for individual PC users. Example
#2, written back in 1997, was addressed to MIS professionals.)
Example #1:
Dear Peter:
Imagine that you're sitting in front of your computer, surfing
the Web, jumping from site to site . . .
Suddenly you land at a Web page that's loaded with valuable
information you know you want to save and use. What options
do you have?
You can print out the page, but that doesn't get you very
much.
You can create a bookmark and go back on line every time you
want to check it out -- a royal pain in the neck.
Or you can use new DocuMagix HotPage!
That's right. HotPage is a powerful companion to Netscape
Navigator that lets you put all the information in Web pages
to work for you!
Example #2:
Dear Peter:
If you're an MIS professional, you face two extremely difficult
problems:
Problem #1: Deploying mission-critical applications to hundreds
or thousands of users is a nightmare. It wastes endless hours
of precious time and costs your company a ton of money.
Problem #2: Your remote users are getting poor performance.
If they're accessing mission-critical applications over remote
node and branch office connections, they're going s-----l-----o-----w.
That's why it's so important for you to take a WinFrame Test
Drive right now.
You see, WinFrame extends mission-critical Windows applications
to remote users over existing enterprise networks, corporate
Intranets, and the Internet. Best of all, you can deploy these
apps to hundreds, or even thousands of users in a matter of
minutes. That's right -- minutes!
The take-away message this month? Don't start your letter or
e-mail by talking about how great your company or product
is. Begin by demonstrating that you understand your readers'
pain and you're halfway to a sale!
