Pop quiz.
Which message converts better?
Version A
“Revolutionize your work with the best project management tool designed for all teams.”
Version B
“With Basecamp, everything’s organized in one place, you’re on top of things, progress is clear, and a sense of calm sets in.”
B converts better than A.
Why?
People don’t care about your product. They care about what your product can do for them.
A is about what the product is.
B is about what you can do.
There’s a good lesson here.
Shifting from what your product is to what you can do inspires people to care and motivates them to want to learn more.
Here’s another example.
Version A (Lower converting – What the product is)
“Online photography courses for students, parents, enthusiasts, and pros.”
Version B (Higher converting – What you can do)
“Take better pics of your kids in 15 days.”
This isn’t magic.
When you enter the conversation already taking place in your prospect’s mind, a lightbulb in their head switches on and subconsciously thinks, “You get me, what do you have?”
In other words, customers feel like you’re reading their minds.
How To Read Your Customer’s Mind
Here are three ways to read your customer’s mind.
1) Podcasts where a customer is interviewed. Listen for words the customer uses to describe the “before story” or what sucked before people gave you money.
Here’s an example of a “before story” I used to write Gong’s cold call script:
Here’s how the customer quote translates to a cold call script for Gong:
LEVEL 2: POTENTIAL PROBLEM
“The reason for my call is that many VPs of Sales are relying on SVPs or a bottom-up methodology to prepare forecasts.”
LEVEL 3: POKE THE BEAR
“If you don’t mind me asking, how are you forecasting today? Is it a human-derived process where reps forecast to directors, directors to VPs, and VPs forecast to SVPs, or are you also using machine learning to predict more accurately?”
2) Case studies. Look for quotes that described the “before story.” By way of example, here’s a quote from a customer that switched to Captivate IQ.
And here’s how the customer quote converts into a cold call script:
Potential Problem
“We often hear that determining payouts involves a lot of manual data entry like hard-pasting Excel pages into Google Sheets and then manually making adjustments one sheet a time.
Poke the Bear
“If you don’t mind me asking, how are you calculating and running payouts today? Is it a manual process or is it automated?”
3) Interview customers that purchased within 45 days (so the buying story is fresh) using Jobs to Be Done.
Say:
“You didn’t wake up one day and decide to buy our solution. Take me through your journey.”
Finding the first thought
- When did you first start looking for something to solve your problem?
- What triggered you to think about this?
Building the consideration set
- Tell me about how you looked for a product to solve your problem.
- Walk me through the kind of solutions you tried. What did you try first? How did that go? What did you try next? How did that go?
Knowing how to ready your customer’s mind is a superpower for skyrocketing response rates.