No, 9-year olds are not a new market that we are selling to. I read this post on Inc.com about how in today’s world of information overload the job of the sales person is so much harder. It’s so much harder to cut through the clutter, distractions and never ending list of priorities vying for the customer’s attention. It’s so much harder to say something that will be remembered an hour later, a day later, a week later or a month later.
The article goes on to suggest that if you can’t answer 3 basic questions about you or your business in a way that a 9-year old can comprehend, then you are probably confusing your customers as well. More importantly you are not communicating anything they are going to remember.
Challenge accepted.
The natural tendency when faced with this challenge is to use the, “throw a bunch of spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks” approach. Maybe if I use enough big words and communicate my value prop in big, elaborate terms the person I am trying to connect with will remember my company, my product and me.
Wrong!
Just like the article highlights it doesn’t work. Most of us are geared to remember simple things and not complex ideas or jargony language.
Unfortunately most people that speak to customers (sales, marketing, support, product) have been trained to over complicate, pontificate and try and pitch our services, products and ideas as if we were explaining the theory behind E=MC2
So for my own benefit here is how I would explain ConceptShare to a 9-year old. It’s the same way I would describe it to a partner, customer or individual user.
What Does ConceptShare Do?
ConceptShare is a web-based tool that makes it easy to draw (circles, arrows, etc.) on top of creative work (images, documents, web pages, audio, interactive, video), so people can provide quick and accurate feedback.
Why Do People Decide To Use ConceptShare (Translation: what pain is being addressed)?
ConceptShare makes it easy for teams to immediately and accurately understand one other’s feedback on creative work and reduce the number of mistakes and redos; ultimately saving time and money.
Why Don’t They Do It Themselves (Translation: why don’t they build it themselves)?
ConceptShare spends 100% of its time understanding what customers need and developing the best possible tool for drawing circles on top of files. With that much focus, time and resources we can build something better than what others can build on their own.
Is this oversimplifying it? To a certain extent it is, but remember the goal is for the person you are communicating with to understand what you do. In its most simplest form.
Get them to understand the core of what you do and they’ll remember you and invite you back to tell them more. That is when you have permission start to peel back the layers of the onion and get to the more complicated stuff.
Keep it simple.