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Do This to Make Your Products Easier to Buy

Make Your Products Easier to Buy

If you want to make your products easier to buy, they have to be easier to sell.

The most common mistake product marketers make with product positioning is they do it without regard for their salesforce’s ability to deliver it. Making products easier for the salesforce to sell is the single biggest thing product marketers can do to improve sales of their products.

Sure, you want to nail the product positioning so that prospective buyers understand your unique value. It goes without saying! But a lot of product marketing organizations do this without any regard for their salesforce’s ability to internalize that positioning and communicate it in their own conversational style.

3 Things That Make Your Products Easier to Buy

Here are 3 things you can do to make it easier for sales to sell your products which in turn, makes them easier for customers to buy.

1. Create Conversational Positioning

Conversational positioning solves two problems at the same time. 

First, it doesn’t require salespeople to translate proper (and often fluffy) corporate positioning into their own words. This is the root cause of every salesperson telling a different story, most of which miss the mark. Conversational positioning allows salespeople to more easily internalize your value story and deliver it consistently within their own comfort zone.

Second, it keeps your would-be buyers in their comfort zone because they feel like they’re having a conversation with someone that thinks just like they do, whether it’s a real conversation with a salesperson, a web page, a video, etc. 

Bottom line: conversational positioning creates the perception you know your buyers as well as they know themselves (and better than the competition) and therefore your products are a better fit. It also eliminates the need for two or more versions of your positioning. It’s less work for product marketing with better results.

2. Lead With Customer Outcomes

The biggest mistake product marketers make here is too much focus on problems (albeit a critical part of positioning) without putting those problems into context relative to the bigger-picture customer outcomes. 

Here’s the thing to keep in mind. Buyers get paid for business results. If salespeople lead with the business outcomes that are most important to buyers, “the problems” your products solve will be positioned in the perfect context which makes their strategic value far more obvious, not to mention differentiating.

Think about how easy your positioning would be to communicate if you used this format.

  • Reiterate the business goals and priorities that are most important to your buyers in any given market.
  • Remind them why those goals are important both operationally and strategically.
  • Remind them why it’s so difficult to meet those goals (problems/obstacles) without your product.
  • Then close the loop with the product features and capabilities that eliminate the problems/obstacles.

3. Train Sales More on the Customer, Less on the Product

Buyers buy because you understand them, not the other way around. When your salespeople project greater knowledge of the buyers than your competitors, it creates the perception your products are superior, leading to more wins.

That’s not to say product expertise isn’t important. It is. But if salespeople can’t carry on a business conversation with buyers about their top priorities, why those priorities are critical to their success, and why they can’t get there, all the product knowledge in the world won’t help them.

It’s too easy for salespeople, especially the less experienced ones, to think the problems your products solve are the buyer’s biggest needs. It’s critical for your salespeople to understand the bigger picture of customer priorities so they can more eloquently position the value of your products accordingly.

Here’s the bottom line if you want to make your products easier to buy, Spend more time training your salespeople on the business goals and priorities of your target buyers, the market dynamics driving those priorities and the obstacles standing in their way. The more eloquently your salespeople can drive those conversations, the richer the product discussions will be because they’re wrapped in the perfect business value context.

If you want to learn more best practices like this, contact us to discuss a personalized training program for your product marketing and sales teams or take our online Product Marketing 101 Basic Skills Course or our online Product Demo Skills Course

by John Mansour on January 22, 2025.