If you’re selling into an organization with multiple decision-makers and/or influencers, you’ll need to customize the story you’re telling for each recipient.
What you’re selling stays the same, what it does stays the same as well. But each individual involved in the buying process likely cares about slightly different things. The CFO, for example, is going to bring a different world view to the relationship than the CIO, or CMO, or VP of Sales.
To sell effectively in this increasingly-complex environment, you need to customize your story not just for the organization and it’s vertical industry, but for each individual as well.
Do this once (either for your product overall or by unique vertical into which your selling) and the messaging will likely work again and again, especially if you operationalize it into sales scripts, marketing content, etc.
Embedded below is a template to get you started. You’ll see that it starts with prospective customers in a given vertical (or any grouping that makes sense for you), then gets down to individual roles in the organization.
First you map out what they care about – their priorities, needs, and pain independent of your sale. You can then convert that fundamental, individual understanding into messages that more directly and successfully combine their needs with your potential.
Give it a shot (if you know your customer, I bet it’s faster to complete than you think) and let me know what you think.
