112 The Power of An Effective Sales Message – with Zach Messler
“It’s what you say, and how you say it. Everybody is a sales person. You’re selling all the time, whether you know it or not.”
Zach Messler is a product marketing guy at heart. For twenty years, he has been into product marketing, sales and product messaging for B2B tech. He left his corporate career over a year ago to pursue his passion for effective communication towards efficient marketing.
Now, he helps entrepreneurs with their messaging, to know what to say and how to say it so that they make a bigger impact on the world, and a bigger impact on their wallets.
In this episode, we talk about:
What your message is,
What product marketing is all about,
Why clarity is important,
How change affects the way we do sales and many more.
If you’re dead serious about how to get your product out there to your audience and have them buy it then you have to tune in to this wonderful episode.
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Your Message is your Mess
It’s funny. I’ve been following this one guy and he says (one of the things that he says is), “Your mess is your message.” And I’m not so sure about that but then you know, you start to think about things and, how I got to where I am, is kind of my mess.
So I was working in tech for 20 years, and I was working at this one company that was just, everybody was pretty set in their ways. It was from the top down, and there was a certain structure in place. And it was just expected that you did things a certain way. I was being told that, the things to do from a marketing perspective from not the guy I reported to, but the guy he reported to, the Head of Marketing, was telling me a certain way that I had to do things, and I knew it wasn’t the right way.
I was at a point where I wasn’t really happy in the job because of that, because I was doing work that I didn’t believe in. I knew it wasn’t going to have an impact, and so I had a decision to make. I decided I’m going to look for a new job. At that point I also decided, if I’m ready to quit, if I’m ready to look for a new job, I’m just going to do what I know is right, and I’m not going to be afraid of anyone or anything because, I’m ready to go find a job. So if by doing the right thing I get laid off, I get fired, I get whatever, then so be it. Okay, great! So this is probably about a year and a half in, in a three-and-a-half-year tenure at this company.
And so I started doing that, and all of a sudden, things blew up in a good way. I started to see a bigger impact. I had a much closer relationship with the Sales team, and the Sales team started growing, and my impact got bigger. And then it just got to a point where I wanted to help more people, than just a few hundred salespeople at one company. And that’s why I went off to do my own thing.
So if it weren’t for being in this place, in an organization where things were, “this is our status quo”, “this is how things have to be”, “you’re going to do it this way”, if it weren’t for being in an environment like that, where my ways of messaging and marketing and the ways of the guy running the show there, weren’t so diametrically opposed, then who knows? I’d probably still be working in the corporate world.
And really, prior to that experience? I wouldn’t have said it then but looking back, I can say it now. I think I was afraid. I was afraid to be me. Because there was me, and there was corporate me, and corporate me was very buttoned up. And I’m not buttoned up. What you see is truly, what you see is what you get.
What is Product Marketing?
Product Marketing is one of these disciplines that means different things to different organizations.
Largely in my career, I’ve been the first Product Marketing hire and I’ve put infrastructure in place, and it’s messaging. It’s how do you talk about things, what do you say and how do you say it. It’s sales enablement. so it’s all the traditional Murakami-type stuff like the datasheets, and the brochures, and Excel sheets, and those sort of things, and its content.
Content Marketing has kind of drifted off and become its own big thing. But as a Product Marketer, I see Product Marketing as the center of the universe. Because again, it’s largely about positioning and messaging, what to say and how to say it.
So yeah, I’ve worked really closely with salespeople and it was just as is. It was largely a teaching role, it’s training, it’s coming up with messages, it’s understanding the buying audience better than anyone in the company – that’s largely the job, and then it’s translating. It’s the bridge between the product, and all the people that build and run and manage the product, and the market, and all the people that sell to, that uncover, that identify, that qualify and sell to the market. So it’s a translation job.
For me again it’s, what you say and how you say it, are extremely important. In Marketing, in Sales, in really anything, in any type of communication.
Everybody is a salesperson. You’re selling all the time whether you know it or not because, even if you’re not selling a product, you might be selling an idea. You’re always selling something. I know Daniel Pink wrote a book on that, “To Sell is Human”, a really good book.
Why Clarity is So Important
If your communication’s going to be effective, if your sales messaging, if your sales conversations are going to be good, if they’re going to work, if they’re going to be successful, they have to be clear, they have to be compelling, and they have to be convincing.
And so for me, to be clear is to be understood. To be compelling is to grab attention and to hold on to it. And then to be convincing is to drive someone to take the action that you want them to take. Clear, compelling, and convincing.
To be clear, it’s a practice to break things down into three areas. You answer three questions essentially, “What is it that I’m talking about?”, “What does it do?”, and “Why does it matter to my buying audience?”. It’s a little more nuance than that, but it’s usually, especially with founders, and especially with entrepreneurs, they’re excited about what they’re bringing forth to the world, and they dive right into the details.
It’s interesting. I went to a pitch contest last night, it was awesome. It was AARP has this innovation lab outside of DC, and they did a pitch competition. This was their national finals last night, and they had eight start-ups up pitching to the audience, and it was wild. Few of the eight were really good and they connected with the audience, but a bunch of them just dove so quickly into the detail and I was lost.
That’s really the key. When you do this exercise, “What is it?” – and it’s quite literally, “WHAT IS IT?”, it’s not getting into what it does, it’s not getting into why someone should care, or what you think of it. It’s like the example I’ve used before, “Okay, I’m holding a glass. You can’t see it but I just picked up a glass. So what is it?” “It’s a cylindrical container made out of glass. What does it do? It holds liquid.” It says few words as you can use, this exercise. This isn’t stuff that you’re going to flaw on a website, this isn’t stuff that you’re necessarily going to throw into a conversation.
The point of this is being able to get to the essence of the thing that you’re talking about. Because if you understand the essence of the thing that you’re talking about, whether it’s a glass which is easy, or some really complex idea that you’re trying to sell or trying to get across, or a product that you care so deeply about, that you’re so excited about, that you start speaking too fast and get into the details too quick, if you understand the essence, you’re going to be able to speak to it more clearly.
When you practice this, what happens over time is your communication becomes more clear.
How Change Affects the Way We Do Sales
People have a sense of, “everybody’s a marketer”, “everybody’s a salesperson”, “everyone’s a marketer”. Everyone believes they understand Marketing, but they don’t often. Because the conventional wisdom of Marketing – and even to make it more nuance, Messaging – is, “Okay I have a product. I need to talk about my product.” And today’s buyer, forget about it.
It doesn’t matter what you’re selling it’s, things change. This is what I was saying before, “I’m standing at the top of this giant water slide, ready to go down.” This is it.
Today’s buyers are dramatically different from the way they were even five years ago. That especially, most of what people think of as Product Messaging or Sales Messaging is, “You know I got to talk about my product, and the benefits, and the features, and what it does, and how awesome it is…” but buyers change.
Back in 2007, and it was the launch of the iPhone, it changed everybody. Now you have what you didn’t have 10 years ago. You have access to anything. Any information, anything you want at any time, you’re in control. And what happened back then was, control of a
Sales situation shifted from the seller to the buyer. The buyer has the control right now of the interaction. The buyer often doesn’t even need the salesperson, and that’s a fundamental shift.
And so if you start talking about how great your product is, and your buyer doesn’t know, doesn’t realize, doesn’t believe that they have a problem, that your product sells. Or, they have a circumstance that your product will help, or enhance, or something, if they can’t connect those dots, then you’ve just lost because, you’re annoying, and I don’t want to talk to you.
