Effective sales communication between company and customer is crucial. Sales staff should not have random exchanges but “intent-full” conversations – whether in print, online, or in person. This strategy is known as sales messaging for a reason: Your conversation intentionally puts over – or delivers – a message that’s relevant at that moment with that prospect or client.
Both marketers and salespeople will use sales messaging to improve business efforts to connect with target customers. (As we always say, no sales, no business.) And when done well, it’s a powerful tool for attracting them further down your funnel. So we’ll look at sales messaging in detail in this post.
What is Sales Messaging?
As we indicated, your sales message is a persuasive pitch (sometimes disguised in a “normal” conversation!) to your potential customers – one that intrigues, motivates, and convinces them to move towards closing a sale.
The messaging is crafted to display the reasons why your potential customers should buy your products or service. To be successfully delivered, however, it should reflect your overall brand messaging so as not to confuse your audience.
In addition, and depending on your different customer segments and buyer personas, you will probably create different sales messages to suit every occasion.
Why is Sales Messaging Important?
Good sales messaging about your products or services will result not only in sales. It will also maintain your brand’s consistency and reliability. And when customers rely on your brand, they become advocates to other potential customers.
What’s in a Messaging Framework?
A strategic messaging framework keeps everyone on the same pathway. It should be part of your overall sales playbook. The reason is that having a clear structure and presentation (a.k.a. framework) to your sales messages will allow you to remain consistent throughout all your communications in all channels. Creating a new communication? Check it out against the framework in your playbook.
You therefore need to find what works best for you in order to create your unique representation of
- your products/service and
- what differentiates them.
If you don’t know where to start, take a look at the following three-point framework you could use to create sales messages.
1 Identify the Problem.
Your message should highlight the problem you’re going to solve. This allows you to emotionally reach the right audience. However, be careful not to go on about the problem without giving them the solution. Show them why it solves their problem.
2 Demonstrate Value.
Your customers are seeking a solution to problems they cannot solve. But there may be several products on the market that do this. So you need to show the unique value of your products by pinpointing detail on how your solution understands their needs, aligns to their personal values, and is the best one out there.
Why? Because you want to convince a buyer that your product or service can alleviate their pain. You can do that by including the positive outcomes for them that come from using your products.
Some of these may not be financial outcomes. They may be personal lifestyle, environmental, or social values.
3 Call to Action.
Call your potential customer to the desired action you expect them to take at the point they find themselves in the sales cycle. Clearly state the outcome of doing business with you and what happens if they do not choose you. Be very specific and give them the tools and contact points, such as a phone number, email address, shopping cart link, QR code, or website link depending on the action you want them to take.
Who Uses the Framework?
Many departments in your organization can use the framework including
- marketing,
- sales,
- public relations,
- human resources/recruitment,
- content creation, and
- communications.
How Can You Improve Your Sales Messaging?
- Be product specific. Appeal to your potential customer’s needs. They buy products to solve their needs. Use your sales message to convince them to engage with a specific product in order to spark their interest.
- Use keywords that grab their attention. Don’t shy away from humor, surprise elements, and other “current parlance” to demand their attention. Your customers’ attention is important to help them make a decision.
- Anticipate questions that may arise and address potential concerns and questions before they’re raised.
- Test the framework. Once you’ve created a framework, you must test out the messaging you’ve created with your actual audience. This might be in the form of A/B tests. Since you’re creating the sales message intentionally for your customers, you obviously need their feedback (including analytics feedback) to improve your next message.
Improving your sales messaging will almost certainly lead to a higher conversion rate. But it needs to be delivered to achieve that! So we’ll look at that next.
Delivering Your Sales Message
There are multiple platforms you can use to deliver your sales messaging to different target audiences. The key, as we’ve seen above, is to have a clear and consistent message that will attract the right audience or have an immediate effect on those you already have in your funnel.
How many messages you create will always vary and depend on the function of each message. We can categorize these delivery channels into the following:
- Company website. Use your website to clearly communicate your brand promise, mission and vision, and values. This connects to people who share similar concerns in the bigger picture as they land on your home page.
- Social media. Today’s customers connect on a personal level with brands via social media platforms. Brands can leverage these platforms to share their sales messages in a subtle way in each social post: Not all posts should be marketing or calls to action, but all posts should be on point in some way.
- Marketing pitches and presentations. During prospecting, salespeople can incorporate the key sales message into their (perhaps written) pitches and presentations for specific products/services in order to close more sales.
- Emails. Through well-crafted email campaigns, you have an opportunity to deliver your sales message to a lot of people at once, after segmenting your market and testing for A/B, as above.
How to Use Sales Messaging Effectively
Map out where each sales message will be used in the available delivery channels and at what stage of the sales process. As we said, this strategy should be available in the sales playbook and updated regularly.
You can create a framework/template for each delivery channel or method to help you remain consistent and precise. This allows you to not become overwhelmed by the task of keeping it all in mind while on the spot in a live sales situation. That’s the point of having a framework and your business’s unique sales playbook!
Need Help to Create a Perfect Sales Messaging Strategy For Your Company?
If you’d like our expert advice and guidance on how to create a sales messaging system that will increase your conversion rates, don’t hesitate to contact us to schedule your free consultation.