Are you selling the “what” or the “why”?
One question I get asked over and over in my consulting and sales training is how to stand out and show how you’re different than your competitors. However, when I dig into how you’re presenting yourselves, I see a lot of the same things. You’re selling ‘what’ you do and not ‘why’ they should hire you. Very often I can take someone’s web page or marketing piece, remove that company’s name and replace it with a competitor’s, and that competitor can fulfill everything written. So, want to know how to sell your ‘why’?
Listen to this 10-minute episode and find out.
If you have any questions about anything in this, or any of my podcasts, or have a suggestion for a topic or guest, please reach out directly to me at [email protected] or visit my website www.AlanBerg.com
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Below is a full transcript. If you have any questions about anything in this, or any of my podcasts, or have a suggestion for a topic or guest, please reach out directly to me at [email protected] or contact me via text, use the short form on this page, or call 732.422.6362
Please be sure to subscribe to this podcast and leave a review (thanks, it really does make a difference). If you want to get notifications of new episodes and upcoming workshops and webinars, you can sign up at www.ConnectWithAlanBerg.com
– Are you selling what you do, or why people should hire you, specifically? Well, listen to this episode, and find out how selling your why is gonna get you more profits, and more happy customers.
– Hi, it’s Alan Berg for the Wedding Business Solutions podcast. Today, I want to talk about something that comes up a lot in my speaking and in my consulting and that’s are you selling what you do, or are you selling why they should hire you, specifically? Too many people in our industry, and actually a lot of businesses in and outside of our industry, sell the ‘what’ you do. Sell that bullet point list of the services that you provide. And what I try to point out is if you are, let’s say you’re a wedding planner, I could make a bullet point list of what a wedding planner does and you would do those things on there. And so does every other good wedding planner in the country, actually in the world, does those same things.
Same for a DJ, same for a photographer, same for a caterer. I could make a bullet point list of the services you provide, the things you’re going to do for them. That doesn’t make you different, right? It’s that same list. It’s how you execute those services. It’s the results that you provide that make you unique. So, when I go to your marketing pieces, when I go to your website and I look to see what makes you different, because that’s the thing I hear all the time, is “How do I represent, how do I show what really makes me different?” But then I see a lot of the same. As a matter of fact, I’ve done this many times. I’ve done this in some presentations. I’ll copy the bullet point list off of somebody’s website. I’ll put it up on a screen and I say, “How many of you can fulfill this list?” And let’s say it’s a room full of DJs, Everybody in the room can fulfill everything on that list. Well, that doesn’t make you unique then.
So, showing what makes you unique is to talk about the results that you specifically provide for your customers and your couples. And my favorite way to do this, many of you heard this before from me, maybe you’re using it, maybe not, because there’s a difference between hearing something and actually acting on it, if you use your ‘brand’, which is not your ‘branding’, your branding is your colors and your logos and your fonts, if you’re watching this on video over my shoulder here you’ll see the Wedding Business Solutions logo, you can see it on the podcast, that logo, that’s branding. Branding is your logo, your colors, your fonts how you use them, where you use them. You should have a ‘style guide’ where you talk about that. We’ll talk about that on another episode, that’s your branding.
Your brand is what people say about you after they do business with you. So, if you were to put forward, instead of saying we do this bullet point list of services, you were to put forward, “This is what people like you say after they’ve chosen us” and they’re talking about the results. Because they’re not going to talk about those same things. And a lot of those things on your bullet point list are assumed. Don’t I assume that my DJ is going to have every song that I want? Yeah. Don’t I assume that you have professional equipment? Yeah. I assume that of my photographer, of my videographer, I assume you have that part taken care of. If you’re a professional, you should. What I want to know is, what is that result that I’m going to get by choosing you? I go to photographer’s websites and I see a lot of beautiful pictures. I go to another photographer’s website, I see a lot of beautiful pictures. What I don’t see is WHY do they choose you versus another photographer? Because they do!
Think about it. Everybody that’s ever chosen you, has chosen you and has not chosen every other photographer in the world. They only chose you. Why? It was more than just your pictures. Your pictures were like fishing and there’s the bait and they saw the bait and they’re like, ooh, I like that bait and they bit. Great, now what? Your beautiful pictures, another photographer’s beautiful pictures, another photographer’s beautiful pictures, now, how do I tell the difference between you? How do I get to understand you, your personality, the way that you work with your couples and your customers? It’s not in the pictures. As a matter of fact, worse than that, the pictures are a representation of the style and the couples and the customers you’ve had the privilege of working with already.
Somebody looking at that picture who is not a photographer is not going to understand composition and focus and lighting and all those other things that you understand, the technical aspects. And photographers will sit there looking at each other’s photos and go, “Wow, I really love the composition on this.” Or “Your use of shadow there that was great. “This is fantastic.” But regular people, non-photographers, they can’t tell that. They don’t understand, a matter of fact, you show a wedding photo to someone else, let’s say showed it to a bride. She’s going to look at that picture and instead of seeing the light and the shadows, she will see that, but not be able to articulate that she likes it. But she might look at that picture and go, “Oh, I don’t think I’d wear that dress. “Or those flowers? “No, no, I don’t know, hairstyle, nah. “Oh, those shoes, no, “I definitely wouldn’t wear those shoes.” They are now critiquing that person’s style, that wedding’s style, which maybe they connect with, maybe they don’t, but you didn’t have control over that. You didn’t pick the dress. You didn’t pick the flowers. You didn’t pick the colors. They did and you were capturing that for that particular couple.
What I want to see is why you? Why you? I said this to a caterer the other day, “If we were going to dinner, would we first choose the restaurant or would you first choose the dish that we’re going to eat?” And he said, “Well, you would choose the restaurant.” I said, “Right, so why does your website put the food “and the menu is out first “when I haven’t chosen the caterer yet?” Pictures of food are pretty, but that doesn’t tell me what you’re going to do for me. That was somebody else’s food. And maybe I don’t like that food. Maybe you put broccoli out there and I don’t like broccoli, or maybe I love broccoli, or maybe it’s Brussels sprouts and I don’t like Brussels sprouts. That’s not, you’re putting pictures of food, you’re not putting out why do people choose you. We typically choose the restaurant first and then we decide what we’re going to eat.
Even if we know that that restaurant is known for something and we’ve been there before, we could walk in, sit down and say, “You know what? “I’m going to have the fried chicken today “because I love their fried chicken.” And then the waiter or waitress comes over and says, “Hey, we have some specials today. “Would you like to hear them?” And you go, “Sure, I’d like to hear your specials.” And then they tell you that they have something that day and you’re like, “I’m having that instead.” You went there for the fried chicken, you ended up with something else because you chose the restaurant.
So, what are you selling? Are you selling your floral designs? Are you selling your dress designs? Are you selling your invitation designs? Or are you selling why they should hire you, specifically? And that, again, is found in your reviews, in your testimonials. And if you put them short, really short, all throughout your marketing, all throughout your website. Not on a separate page that nobody goes and looks at, but all throughout like little speed bumps all over the place, people are going to slow down when they see that, keep going and they will have now gotten a soundbite of why people love you. And that’s why they’re single sentences or phrases and not paragraphs. Because that’s going to stop them, make them go around it or just go away.
You want them to read just those little soundbites of people saying, “They’re great. “This is why I love them. “This is why we chose them. “This is why we did that.” So, you get to pick those words and phrases and sprinkle them, like a chef sprinkles spices on a dish. You get to sprinkle those throughout your site so they can see the WHY not just the WHAT. You want to see an example of that? Go to my website, www.AlanBerg.com and you will see it from the homepage, all the way through every page. You will see people talking about me in ways that I never could because I’m not the customer. I’m going to tell you what I can do for you. They’re telling you what I did do for them and that’s the same thing I want you to do as well. So, take a look at your marketing materials. Take a look at your website. If you take your logo off there, could you put a competitor’s logo on and they could fulfill everything on there? If they can, then that’s your what, not why they should hire you specifically. So, make sure you’re selling your why not your what.
I’m Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you’d like to suggest other topics for “The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast” please let me know. My email is [email protected]. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.
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