Are you communicating with self-pushing statements

A trade show is a tool within your overall marketing system. People need to stop thinking of a trade show as an event - start thinking of it as a process. Begin with establishing your marketing messages.

I was having a conversation with messaging expert Rita Coco when she said, “If you only knew how your prospects hear you...you would immediately change how you talk to them!” We then took it one step further:

If you knew how your prospects experience you…you would immediately change how you communicate with them.

She followed up with this email:

As business owners, we need our future customers to choose us. We are wasting prospects’ time if they cannot decide in a few precious seconds.

We need to stop monologuing and start dialoging with our prospects; they deserve more than our ineffective, ‘self-pushing’ conversations. They deserve an opportunity to know whether we can solve a problem and/or make their life better.

Self-pushing conversations are loaded with statements containing: who we are; what we have; how we do things; where we are located; and how long we have been in business.

I call these statements; the ROYAL “WE”; these messages are autobiographical and self-serving when out of context. Businesses focused on these statements go “we, we, we, all the way home” – and never to the bank. Inadvertently, “we” lengthens sales cycles and clouds up prospect communications.

Self-pushing statements all too often make their entrance at the beginning of our marketing communications. They appear on the website home page, the front fold of the brochure, the first paragraph of a sales letter or in the line immediately following “Hello” in a call script.

Self-pushing statements are a company’s monologue. They waste our precious marketing dollars and customers’ and prospects’ time. A company’s dialogues invite prospects to converse with them.

So, are you communicating with self-pushing statements? Do you monologue or dialogue?