38. A guide for Startups. How do I explain what I do to prospects?

Introduction

As a salesperson or small business leader, the one thing that you need to do more than anything else is to explain what you do; at tradeshows, in meetings, or even at the bar.
The problem is when your explanation isn’t clear, people get confused about how you help, and they tune out. 

This is something that can be easily fixed if you know how to communicate and how to explain in a way that makes people want to listen. In today’s episode, I’m going to teach you a formula that you can follow that will give you the perfect way to pitch to people at your next trade show.

To help you improve your marketing strategy, download the free brand script worksheet, which includes sections for each part of the storytelling framework we discuss in our episodes, here (or copy and paste the link below): 

demodia.com/brandscript-worksheet

To communicate clearly what you do - download our Storytelling Pitch Template.  It will show you how to use the talking points you’ve written to create the perfect elevator pitch.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1awdCO0SQontpZSX8Gzb8dxQietcGdJArvBieeKkVdfs/edit#heading=h.3h55xh94y8o2

---

Join marketing experts Simon Harvey and Daniel Kleber on Authentic Marketing, the biweekly podcast that provides proven marketing tips to improve your marketing efforts and help your business grow.

Subscribe to our biweekly episodes dropping Friday on your favourite podcast platforms like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other.

Book a consultation with our Authentic Engagement coaches to help you navigate through the jungle of the business world: demodia.com/sales-marketing-review

Demodia Instagram: instagram.com/demodia_digital

Demodia LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/demodia

Episode Transcript

As a salesperson or small business leader, the one thing that you need to do more than anything else is to explain what you do at trade shows, in meetings, or even at the bar. The problem is that when your explanation isn't clear, people get confused about how you help and they tune out. You know, you've seen them before, they just sit there nodding politely before eventually they say thanks and they walk away. The thing is, this is something that can be easily fixed if you know how to communicate and how to explain in a way that makes people want to listen. In this episode, I'm going to teach you a formula that you can follow. that will give you the perfect way to pitch to people at your next trade show or event. So let's get started. Hi there, I'm Simon Harvey and welcome to the Authentic Marketing Podcast in association with Demodia, where we give you actionable advice that will help you create marketing that works. So we're definitely into event season at the moment. Um, I've spent quite a bit of time in the last few weeks visiting trade shows and company user groups. I don't know about you, but it's interesting for me. I love to see all the different products that are being pitched and actually most interesting, probably more interesting than anything is just to hear how people explain them. I think to me, it's a bit like a game these days. You know, I go up to the people at the booth. And ask them, so what is it you guys are doing? And largely, I think in most cases, the first thing that everybody comes back with, they come back with something technical. We've got an app that does whatever it happens to do, or we provide It's, you know, widgets for someone else, you know, we provide something for someone. It always goes into these sort of feature, function, technical level type things. It's much more talking about the how they solve a problem rather than the what they do. You know, these are all good questions. great generally, but they don't exactly engage me. In fact, most of the time, the trouble is when somebody starts an explanation like this, for my mind, certainly I'm standing there and I'm trying to mentally work out how these people help their customers. And in doing that, I'm sort of a bit like daydreaming. You know, I'm not really listening to the end of the pitch anymore. And I think that's the trouble. When it's not clear, when it's not clear for me, when it's not clear for you, when you start listening to this, how that particular person helps or what particular problem they solve, we all tend to tune out and we all go into this sort of daydream mode, either wondering about what it could be doing and what they could be trying to tell us, or if we're really lost, we're just off elsewhere. The solution to this is actually really simple. I've talked about this all the time and of course it's telling stories. You know when you tell a story you're following a pattern that our brains have evolved to consume, that our brains have evolved to remember and our brains have evolved to process. Consume, process and remember is exactly what you want when you're explaining to somebody what you do. So today in my conversation with Daniel, we're going to dive into those steps. We're going to talk about exactly the points that you need to follow to ensure that your visitors to your booth or the person you're meeting at a meeting next understands exactly what it is that you do. So let's go and see Daniel and see how he's going. Hi there Daniel. Good to see you again. Welcome back

Hello Simon. Yes. It's great to be back again. It's

great. Is it? Oh, that's good to hear. How's things? How's your holiday?

my holiday was very nice, but at the same time also very very Devastating because uh, yeah, I did so much

Yeah, you're looking a bit tired today so, uh, yeah

Yeah, I hope the coffee will help me.

So if you doze off in the middle of the conversation, everyone will know why.

Yes.

Cool. So yeah, we've been talking today about trade shows. You know, a few weeks ago, we were at quite a few trade shows together and talking with a lot of startups and things there just before you went off. Yes. And yeah, we've been talking a little bit earlier just about as a business owner and somebody that's presenting at one of these trade shows. What's the best practices for there? So maybe as a quick test, I'll try you out on here. So you know, I've coming up to you at a trade show booth. Maybe you can tell me what you do for your job. You know, how do you help? What do you do for our customers?

What I do? Um, is I take the data that is collected on your website and I even help you to collect the data and then I use your data in order to create automated marketing to target specific customer segments.

Okay. That's pretty concise and pretty similar to what I was getting from most people in there.

Yeah.

Trouble is that doesn't tell me really anything. You've just told me how you go about doing what you do, but you haven't actually told me what you do. Okay. How does that help me in any way?

So it does help you if you're a business, of course, it does help you to get new leads.

Okay. And why do I care about new leads?

You care about new leads because you want new customers.

Okay, you getting closer?

Yeah, okay. I can feel it. One second. True new customers, you get more money.

Okay, we're getting a bit closer. I would say, you know, what you've done is you've done a fairly good job of describing the features effectively of your product. You know, the things that you do as a service. Yes. And you've probably done a reasonably good job of defining something that I want. You know, I want more customers. I want more leads. I want more money. Yes. That's the trouble. That's the thing that I want. What's missing from here though is what I call the problem. So when we talk about storytelling. There's seven key things that you need to talk about, really, and I think the problem is probably one of the main things that you talk about, you know, when you talk about getting through to people, you know, people's brains are wired to filter out things that don't help them to thrive or survive. So if you're not going to help me be better, or you're not going to help me be more healthy or something like that, I'm tuned out. Basically, I'm not really interested.

Okay, so you want me to actually talk about the problem that I solve for our customers?

Yeah, go on, give it one more try. All right,

let me focus for a second. So, I will help you to get more customers.

Nope, you've just said what I want.

I will help you to find more customers.

Same thing, you've told me what I want.

Um.

How about starting your sentence with the problem is. The

problem is that you don't have enough customers.

Much better, there you go, if you think of it that way.

Yeah, that was a hard one.

Then, then you can start to actually come up with the right sort of phrase. So if you start off by saying, yeah, the problem is You don't have enough customers, or the problem is it's difficult to find the right customers. Yeah, there's various different ways you could phrase the problem. And not necessarily one of them isn't better or worse than another. It depends on who your customer is. But yeah, if you start off by saying, and you can literally use the words, the problem is, that puts your mind in the right set. And then you can explain to people what the problem is. And now they're listening.

It's not that easy, you know. To tell the problem.

Yeah, it's, you got to think about it a little bit, but that's the good thing. If you know your customers, then you will understand what their problem is. And that's the way that they will understand that you understand them.

Yes. Okay. That's good. Now, I would like to know how you specifically do this. Like, how would you tell the problem and which tools do you use in order to communicate this clearly?

Okay, so tools I would say is a framework and it's basically the storytelling framework. The story process that we follow goes like this. It's got seven steps in it and it starts off at the beginning. So it starts off by identifying who your hero is. You need to know who the hero is and that hero is your customer. And as you alluded to a minute ago when you were talking, your hero wants something. So they want more money, they want more leads, they want to be able to get to the moon, whatever it is, they want something, but the trouble is something gets in the way and that's the problem. So that's the second thing and that's where you focus on most probably, at least at the start of the conversation, is making sure they understand what the problem is that you solve. So that problem can be a great big thing and that problem might have a set of symptoms associated with it, that's what we call internal and external problems. Then you can go on and talk about yourself. Once you've established the problem that you solved and something that the customer wants, then you can introduce yourself as what we call the guide. And the guide is somebody like Yoda in star Wars, for example, you know, they're the person that's been there. They've done that before and they know how to solve the problem that you've got. So that's your business. You know, you've been there with lots of customers before, you know, how to solve their problem. And you can explain. Then the next thing you need to do is you need to sort of having explained who you are and what your solution is basically in there is you need to then explain to them what the transformation is they're going to go through. So you need to paint a picture of what success looks like at the end. So when they've followed your advice and done exactly what you've told, you know, what's that transformation going to be like? That's the whole point of a story. You know that the whole idea of a story and the definition of a story is it's a hero that goes through some sort of transformation and changes. Um, and then on the other side of it, you need to explain what failure looks like. You know, you need to explain what the consequences are if they don't actually follow your advice. So again, um, If there's nothing to lose, then basically there's no point in undertaking the journey in the first place. There's no point in doing anything with you.

Otherwise, it's not interesting enough.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, you know, you're familiar with James Bond.

Yes, I've seen a lot of James Bond movies. Yeah,

exactly. So, you know, there's always in James Bond, there's like a villain in there, isn't there?

Yes, Goldfinger.

Goldfinger, exactly. Yeah, he's a good example. And what does he want to do normally?

He wants to kill people.

Yeah, he wants to blow up the world with a space laser or let off some sort of bacterial or, you know, some virus or something like that. That's going to kill everybody. But what happens if you going through the film and then suddenly James Bond gets a phone call from the villain, whoever is in that particular film saying, you know, I've decided I'm not going to release the bacteria today or I'm going to take my space laser out of commission. You know. At that point in time, there is nothing to lose anymore, you know, nobody is at threat, the world's no longer at threat. And you know, no matter how much we might like James Bond, no matter how much we like the cars that he drives around in, the women that he drives around with, the places that they go and visit together, you know, they're all wonderful, fantastic things, great scenery, etc. But without some consequences, there is no story to be had there anymore, there's nothing to be lost.

Absolutely right.

It gets boring and your business conversations are exactly the same. So that's the framework I think that you need to go through. There's a couple of extra steps in there that aren't probably so relevant for presentations when you're introducing yourself at a booth. But yeah, that's the core elements that you need to go through.

I understand. Okay. So that's the framework that you use in order to communicate in an interesting and clear way. So what should I be putting? On my booth background if I have one at an event.

Yeah, I mean, okay, what do you see? Actually, you tell me, what did we see most at booths the other week? What was going on in the background on a lot of them?

What I remember most was The word AI, I

wasn't specifically meaning that, but you're absolutely right. God, AI was plastered over all of them everywhere, everywhere. But that's the thing, actually, that so many of the booths were just covered in buzzwords, you know, marketing terms, sales terms, you know, we do this, we do that. better. We do these technical things, you know, so many of them just had these big word clouds almost scattered over the backdrop with just dozens of catch phrases. You know, they're just trying to hopefully capture somebody's attention there. And the thing is, I think, you know, they're just boring. You just make yourself look the same as everybody else. And nobody is really clear as to what you do. So same applies. Start off by talking about the problem on the back of your booth, you know, make it very clear this is the problem that we solve and this is who we solve that problem for. So again, You know, let your audience self identify on there. We solve this for people that use SAP or we solve this for people that own shops or something like that. We solve this for people that want to be fashion conscious. You know, identify who your hero is somewhere on the booth that could be visually or it could be using words and then very specifically call out the problem that you solve for that particular hero.

There was one example that I can still remember quite clearly. There was one booth selling shoes to walk on ice. Mm hmm. And they were saying, We make slipping on ice impossible. And, uh, I think that stayed in my head because they were Exactly, like you say, communicating the problem very well.

No, they did a very good job of explaining what they do. Yeah, instead of saying that they sold, you know, sticky soles for shoes, basically, or crampons, or other sorts of things like that. Yeah, they sold you the problem, you know, we make slipping impossible.

Exactly.

Something along those lines, you know, they talk about what the actual problem was there. That was a very good example. There was another one that I really liked as well that was talking about the problem, or actually, no, it was talking about what somebody wants. That's the other thing that you could put onto there. You know, they said, we give you a way of booking your business trips within five minutes. You know, we enable you to book business trips in five minutes.

Ah yes, I remember this one.

So, so that's something else that's good. It's something that I want as a customer. So if you talk about those things, rather than just saying, you know, business travel agent, online bookings, business flights, all of those sort of buzzwords and keywords, talk about something that I want or talk about the problem that you've got to solve. You don't have time to go making business travel bookings yourself. You know, that's the problem. By talking in those words, yeah, absolutely, you're tuned in and you're listening in there. So, yeah, use that. Talk about the hero on the booth, talk about something they want, and talk about the problem you solve.

All right, that gives me a good and clear idea of what we should put on our booth.

Good, you can do that next then.

You want me to say it?

Go on. I don't know whether I want to hear it.

No, I think I'll leave it to you.

Okay then, thank you.

Alright, now we talked enough about events and booths, but another important thing that is part of every business's communication is pitch decks or presentation slides. Would you recommend to do the same there, like starting with the problem and then going through the seven steps of the framework that you described earlier?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, you've got to follow that same basic approach. I mean, again, so many people, when you sort of get through that initial part of the conversation, they pull out their PowerPoint deck, the first thing that they do is they jump into product features, they jump into screenshots, or they jump into all sorts of statistics. You know, the market does this, the market says that so many people do this. You know, I don't care about those things. I care about what I do and what the problem is for me. So absolutely follow the same framework. Start off with the first couple of slides being something related to your hero and something that they want, and then talk about the problem that's stopping them getting that thing that they want. And then you can go on and introduce yourself and then you can go into your slides with your screenshots and other things that explains how you solve that problem.

Okay. So. We talk about what they want and then about the problem that is stopping them. Or you want to talk about the problem first and then about what they want.

I don't think it matters too much. As long as you start with the problem somewhere very close to the beginning. Uh, whether it comes first or second, I don't think matters too much. Depends on the story and how you're gonna tell it.

Alright. Good. Thank you very much for all this information, Simon.

Good, so I hope that's been useful and yeah, I hope everyone's picked up some ideas there and I look forward to visiting the next trade show and seeing how things go there.

Sounds good.

Good, so catch up with you again next week then Daniel.

Yes, of course.

Take care then, get some sleep in the middle.

Yeah, will do.

Bye for now.

Bye.

Thanks for your input Daniel. You certainly sounded a little bit tired today after you're a couple of weeks away. I hope you get some good sleep tonight and that you come back refreshed for our next chat, definitely. Anyway, you know what? There was one easy takeaway from that conversation that I think is really a great tip for all of you out there. And that is start your conversation with a problem. The problem needs to become the thing that your brand is known for solving. And as a consumer, as a purchaser, if I have this problem, your brand is the first thing that I should think of. And for that reason, the problem needs to be the way that you start all of your conversations. You need to make that link straight back there between the problem and what you do. The challenge I think here is trying to come up with that problem. And this is something that I see quite frequently. You know, just as Daniel did when I asked him what he did, I asked salespeople or business owners the same question and they struggle. They struggle to come up with something that's a problem and they always default to telling me things like benefits or explaining how they solve the problem. So, a quick bit of advice that I'd give you, you know, if you want a way that you can check whether you're actually talking about a problem, try this, you know, just start your sentence with the problem is and see if that still makes sense. You know, if you put something after that and it turns out that it doesn't work, then you're talking about a feature or you're talking about the way that you do something, you're not talking about the problem. So the problem is we can't get enough money. The problem is we can't do something fast enough. The problem isn't we do widgets for. Think of it that way. So anyway, if you're having problems explaining to prospects what you do, then of course you can hire an authentic engagement coach. As always, just go to wantauthentic. com and there you can hire a coach that will show you how to increase the effectiveness of your communications and give you an easier way to grow your business. So let's talk about some concrete steps that you can take to improve your communications and create a pitch that people will understand and want to listen to. There are two things that I want you to do this week. Firstly, I want you to head to our website and download the brand script workbook if you haven't done that already. This is going to walk you through the process of creating your story talking points. If you haven't got the brand script workbook, then you'll find a link to that inside our show notes. Once you've completed the script, then the next thing you need to do is download the storytelling pitch template. So again, you'll find the link to that inside the show notes. And what this is going to do is it's going to give you a template that you can put those talking points into and help you create that perfect elevator script. So I want you to create that script. And then test it the next time you tell anyone what you do. So that's all for today's episode of the Authentic Marketing Podcast. Thanks for listening. And if this is your first time joining us, don't forget to bookmark and rate the podcast. You know, being part of the small business community yourself The most valuable thing that you can do for other entrepreneurs is to share this episode with someone that you know that runs their own company. If you found this helpful then they will do too, so please do. Take care and I'll see you next time.