Shocking Fact: 90% of business pitches fail because they're packed with bullet points and lack emotional resonance. Are you guilty?

There is an unfortunate inverse relationship between intelligence and communication skills. The brighter the team, the more challenging it is for them to articulate their value.

In the past month, I've sifted through hundreds of websites spanning industries like cybersecurity, IT, semiconductor fabrication, defense manufacturing, IaaS, SaaS, and high-tech industrial manufacturing. Essentially, these are the brains behind the world's technological cutting edge.

But their pitch?

It's a headache.

Homepages, whitepapers, decks (I sent away for some of them), internal pages—it's all a challenging read.

Despite my advanced degrees and genuine interest in understanding their work, the endless barrage of bullet points and mind-numbing information nuked the landscape of my brain beyond recognition.

Sure, there are some exceptions, but generally, it feels like being bombarded by an avalanche of information and bullet points. Overwhelmed by features, capabilities, and solution packages.

The reason? The brilliant minds behind these technologies, primarily analytical in character, are motivated by numbers, data, and logic. However, when explaining their work, they often need help with words.

So, they give their audience all their information, bullet point after bullet point, feature after feature, leaving the reader to piece it all together.

I've seen my clients, these brilliant minds, need help explaining their products' value. They can deliver a 9,000-bullet point presentation about their product but can't articulate a compelling reason to buy it.

But that's fine—it's not their job.

I want these analytical geniuses to understand that you don't need 9,000 reasons to convince someone to buy your product—you need one.

You need one compelling reason instead of a laundry list of bullet points.

The decision-maker, who is more likely a "driver" than an analyst, is less interested in data and logical reasoning. They are dynamic, looking for the key benefit and evaluating the risk. They're on board if the benefit outweighs the risk and the deal seems feasible.

Once a decision is made, all that data justifies it. It's not that the data presented on all these websites is unimportant—it's just "premature." It's presented too soon.

Your 9,000 bullet points about how it goes "beep" and it's blue and it does this or that come into play after the decision—justifying the decision. They are part of the technical discussion. The driver has probably tuned out at this stage, leaving the analysts to relish in the technical discussion.

To reach this point, you have to let go of the barrage of bullet points and discuss the emotional hook that will sway the driver.

Of the several hundred websites I've looked at in the past 90 days, only three did that. Only one did it well (Cybereason, if you're interested in the company.)

That's painful.

You can't sell with bullet points, and you can't overwhelm people with information and expect them to decipher it.

Jargon up the wang. Stop it.

Technospeak. Stop it.

Yes, your audience is sophisticated.

But they're also people, and they don't know as much as you do. You have to help them get to "yes." You have to take responsibility for that sales journey.

When I work with clients, I stress the importance of guiding the prospect through the emotional journey to a "yes". After achieving that, you can reinforce the decision with the logical reasons that support the "yes".

That's how you boost sales. I tell my clients that B2B is B2D—Business to Decision-maker.

In the end, analysts and drivers need each other. Analysts design innovative solutions that enhance humanity while drivers navigate the grey area, bridging the gap between logic and emotion and taking risks.

To increase sales, B2B leaders need to stop oversharing and find one compelling reason to make their prospects care.

Start with that.

Stop with bullets and information.

Give me (the prospect) one good reason to buy.

And I assure you, that reason will not be a feature, but a feeling, that I will receive working with your company.

I'll leave you with this example.

M&M's bag. Right? Back of it. Tells you everything you would ever want to know about everything that goes into M&Ms. Ingredients. Calories. Composition. Who makes it. How long it's good to eat. Barcodes. Daily values.

Is that how it's on the shelf?

Or do we give customers instead one good reason to buy it?

Grab and go.

I realize it's a consumer-packaged good, and you may object to my example, saying, "B2B is more complicated! It's not that easy! It's not..."

Actually, it is.

For all you super smart businesses out there who can put a billion resistors on a nanometer of a wafer, secure a computer better than Fort Knox, or machine a piece of aluminum so it can go inside a turbofan and sustain temps and pressures that are unimaginable, or some other feat of mathematics, engineering, or computer science, I assure you...

... there is a similar "melts in your mouth not in your hands" statement for your customer. It may be hard to find, but it's there.

There is one good reason.