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It’s The Experience



Last week during our Leadership MasterClass, I was reminded again of a critically important concept that we must acknowledge and follow when we market ourselves or our clients. At RAB, we teach that rule number one of advertising is:

People don’t buy products and services; they buy what the product or service does for them.

At the beginning of our MasterClass, we go around the room and answer various questions. This time the question was, “what is your most memorable meal?” These affinity-building exercises are fun and engaging for the participants, but this one reinforced our valuable lesson. Not a single person sharing their most memorable meal talked about the food. It was all about the people they were with or the setting. In other words, it was not about the product, it was about the experience. From Sunday morning pot-roast to a corner café in France, each manager shared a vivid memory with great detail.

Over the weekend I was listening to the radio and was disheartened to hear so many commercials extolling the virtues of products. From Friday night fish fry deals that highlighted the type of food, to low payments for cars – all the ads were selling products. People don’t buy products and services, they buy what the product or service does for them. See the disconnect?

The next time you’re meeting with a client and determining a marketing strategy, we recommend you go beyond the product and focus on the experience. You can start the conversation with some great questions like these:

1. You sell the same products as some of your competitors, so why should people shop from you instead?

2. When people buy your products/services, can you describe the experience they will have?

3. When people buy from you and tell their friends about it, what would you hope they would be saying?

The key with these questions is to dig even deeper. These are just the thought-starters. With each answer, you might suggest using these “drill-down” questions:

1. What do you mean by that?

2. Can you give me a specific example of that?

The specifics and the examples are where great commercial copy is hiding, because the examples are the experiences. At your next sales meeting, a great exercise would be to ask each person in the room to share their most memorable meal. Chances are it’s not going to be much about the food at all, it will be about the experience. The sellers can experience the same valuable lesson that we experienced in our Leadership MasterClass. By the way, our next Leadership MasterClass starts on September 30.

Jeff Schmidt is the SVP of Professional Development. You can reach him at Jeff.Schmidt@RAB.com. You can also connect with him on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Source: Jeff Schmidt, RAB