Know-How Exchange : Strategy

Dear aah

Come on, what’s your name!?

I’m guessing that you will have carried out a comprehensive feature / benefit analysis of the product(s) that you are up against so that you can make not only statements about your products, but position the statements to show clear advantages over your competition.

I think that it is probably wise to carry over the old maxim of “Not slagging-off the competition” which you find in face to face sales. It devalues your own product, draws unnecessary attention to the competitor and leads the purchaser to thinking, “Why did they need to do that?” Those lists with ticks in feature boxes for an A:B comparison are about as far as you can go, but I find even them hard to believe – after all, I’m not going to print anything nice about my competition, am I?

Where there is a feature which is implicit in the design, it would be a good idea to point it out. Use professionally made-up labels, perhaps black print on white plastic, to extol the hidden features and their associated benefits. Black print on stainless steel looks good too. Where the features are explicit, then explain the benefit in the same manner. Where there is an issue of durability or reliability, point to the reason for this to be the case and state it.

You can back everything which you label on the product by an accompanying explanatory booklet which can go into greater detail about the technology you have used, physical tests carried out and perhaps third party references. If there is, in your opinion a killer benefit or USP, then it’s a good idea to make a major play on it, perhaps differentiating the labelling. In fact you can go further in differentiating the types of labels you use – you could colour code them for factual information, durability information, price information and safety information; but be sure that you clearly explain the nature of the colour coding.

When presented, as there is no-one available to explain the product, it needs to read like a poster, so treat it as such. Ask your best visual people to come up with the layout and wording of your labelling and get a wide selection of people to try to see if they get the message you are trying to convey.

I’ve seen some exhibition displays which are very clever and very eye catching – to demonstrate load bearing in a structure, an exhibit had a huge weight sitting on it, but on a load cell. The load cell gave the force the weight was exerting. If you are looking at durability information, such as protection against stress fractures, the use of a Perspex model showing the stress lines on a polarising filter can be very effective. In fact, the better you can visualise your product benefits, the better. If your paint is to a better quality, state it. Even better, show it with an instrument like the Elcometer Paint Thickness Gauge. The more of this kind of visual display you can deploy, the better, but you have to apply a limit. It is probably best to keep the electronic gimmicks down to 5 or 6 lest they distract from the presentation of the product itself.

It sounds very challenging – taking the sales-person out of selling spoils the fun for me, but working out how to do it by proxy kind of makes up for it!

Best wishes

Steve Alker
SalesVision and Unimax Solutions

To build upon Steve's point above regarding a feature/benefit analysis, I assume that importance of these benefits to the target market have also been observed. If you tout what you believe are important benefits, without making sure that these benefits are of greatest value to your target, you risk having any product claims fall on deaf ears. You'll also need to make sure that any language you use is relevant to your target - I would see if you can incorporate your unique position into the copy you use as much as you can.

Good luck!

focus on KEY BENEFITS in terms of target audience. bring them alive and send your product in an outer cover of this.

look at this objectively. check ith them how will they be presnting. check details on ho best at each stage you can send in you product.

if this product is such that can DEMONSTRATE it reason for being better then bring only this across