What Do You Do?

A Short Exercise to Get Your Initial Product Messaging Correct

All too often when I work with companies, they are quick to deploy marketing dollars and sales resources without first achieving complete clarity on what their offering specifically does and why it actually matters to a potential buyer.

There are many frameworks accessible on-line in order for you to nail down your elevator pitch as a company (i.e. if you were in an elevator ride how you would you explain what your company does to a buyer on the ride with you). These are great to get all of your company aligned around a core message.

However, in a very busy SAAS world, with SDRS and marketing pumping tons of messaging into the market, I find that such an exercise is not enough. These messages often speak to an overall company vision and outcome that don't exactly nail what your product can do today. It is critical for companies, especially when they are in their early phase of product-market fit, to make it absolutely clear to the very busy buyer why they should pay attention.

As such, here is a simple exercise to run with your product, sales, and marketing teams. At Bonfire, our founders find it both clarifying and extremely helpful. We call it the "what do you do" workshop where the answers lie in "what your customers can do" with your offering.

Follow these steps and let us know if you find it helpful for your efforts:

1) PERSONAS: Identify whom you believe to be the primary and secondary persona that you are serving.

2) DO NEW: For each persona, write down the top three new things that they can do today with your product that they could not do before.

3) DO BETTER: For each persona, write down the top three things that they already do but can do better with your product.

4) DO MORE: For each persona, write down the top three things that they already do but can do more off with no more effort with your product.

5) PRIORITIZE: Compare your results above from items 2-4 and determine which three things actually drive the most value / remove the most pain for your buyers. Look for items that also are not items that your competitors can easily claim they do as well.

With these three capabilities that you now enable very clear to you, leverage those in your messaging across your website, SDR scripts, and product demos. This exercise should also help frame for you where to put your very critical R&D resources in regard to your product roadmap.

Good luck with your messaging and let me know how it works for you.