Why do I find explaining my product difficult on email?
If some one asks me about what I do or what our product do, I have find it difficult to explain in few sentences.
What do we do?
We provide a web platform which helps the team to publish sustainability benchmarking/Indexes reports. We do that by animating complete benchmarking process starting from (a) collecting data, (b) analysing them (calculating the score for ranks) and © generation bespoke benchmarks for each participant (primarily companies).
Once the data is collected from an online survey tool it is analysed and transformed into Scorecards which has averages, benchmarks, ranks etc. It is followed by the last step to publish individual feedback report to each participant with ratings/bands/scores on where they stand and suggest best practices from the leaders. There can be any bespoke stats, info graphs, charts and images in them.
Using our software they collect data for their members/participant, analysis them and generate bespoke benchmarks. We are like a technology partner for the Sustainability researchers/team
Our clients include responsible investment (UN PRI), responsible banking (UNEP FI), nutrition (Acces to nutrition index), corporate responsibility index by (BITC), animal welfare (business benchmarks for farm animals welfare), Diversity index by (LGBT Great) and 8 others. Thus we are domain and industry independent making our platform more flexible and robust to handle data point from a few hundred to 9 thousand.
Participants can be companies, countries or individuals who need to be benchmarked using the same sets of indicators. Since the analysts can also fill in the indicators via publically available data on the web. The platform works beautifully within the team.
My Perspective
At my core I am a software developer, I love solving problems by developing better software. When we got this business we had to do multiple roles, I picked sales to be one of them. I knew it would be difficult and with no track record of selling previously. It is a challenging role to perform, to find the teams who could benefit the product and learn more about their current challenge. Pitching the product in a niche market is a different ball game.
Now that you have a little back story, I find it more comfortable to understand the current problem that the user may have. Thus making the presentation more conversational and trying to help with the solution.
However, as the saying goes
Think from a customer’s point of view
They may not have time for the sales presentation call. They would rather read your pitch in say a few minutes to make the decision. I agree with them. If the product solved the problem so effectively the story has to be told well.
After attending many sales videos and reading to a number of articles and constantly explain the product on chats and email. I came up with the 5 paragraphs mentioned above.
If you ask me “Am I happy with it”, My short answer would be NO. However, one thing I have realised I didn’t become a good software developer in my first year but it took me more time. I am a journey and with coming months I will only get better.
We could have hired an external agency, but one of my core belief is if the owner of the company can’t sell its product its kinda shame on me. Plus it is very expensive for outsourcing sales.
Conclusion
I am learning each day many things about our customers, our product, the messaging. Overall the sales numbers are not where I would want them to be. However, the number of demonstration of our platform “Probench” is very good. We are collaborating with many of you to make sure this technology is used well.
We should be able to talk about our product in 5 sentence, 5 paragraph, 5 minute video or 50 minutes demo.
There is no excuse for anyone with or without prior knowledge of sales. What are your thoughts? Are you facing similar challenges? Do comment below.
