Financial Services, Speaker and Coach

When networking or selling you want to tell your story. Professional, effective sales and marketing requires that you share benefits first, and features second. After personal introductions, a  typical conversation often starts like this:

Person A: “What do you do?”

Person B: “I…”

Here’s the problem; they don’t want to know about you. They want to know the benefit they will receive from listening to or doing business with you. When you start with “I” or “We” that’s all about you. In many cases, especially in sales, they may not care a thing about you and your qualifications and accomplishments and history and experience and features and blah, blah, blah. They want you to answer one simple question:

“What’s in this for me/my firm?” man-looking-in-mirror

That’s it, plain and simple, and you cannot answer that question when you lead with “I”.  Your best results occur when you describe, position, and sell from the perspective of the other person, and the other person is not “I”. When interacting with others, make every attempt to begin conversations with the word “You”.  Talk about benefits they receive from their perspective, not from the perspective of what you do. This is called The 2nd Person Paradigm™.

The 2nd Person Paradigm™ means you look at people and situations through a window that faces them. Often people talk to others as if they are looking in a mirror rehearing what they should say. To communicate and to sell you must look at them through a window, not yourself in mirror. When selling make every attempt to communicate by talking about them and their needs. Do this by leading with the word “You.”

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