Once upon a time - a long, long time ago - I was in Sales.
One of the biggest advice our sales trainer gave us was that the organization thinks FAB i.e. Features, Advantages and then Benefits of its products. However, when you sell it to a customer you have to think outside it - articulate the benefit , then the advantage and finally the feature. Talking about just the feature will not help the customer visualise the benefit.
Same in the case of Enterprise 2.0 or Social Business - as Jacob Morgan points out in this insightful article - and this is not just true for external vendors, but also internal social champions in the organization
One of the biggest advice our sales trainer gave us was that the organization thinks FAB i.e. Features, Advantages and then Benefits of its products. However, when you sell it to a customer you have to think outside it - articulate the benefit , then the advantage and finally the feature. Talking about just the feature will not help the customer visualise the benefit.
Same in the case of Enterprise 2.0 or Social Business - as Jacob Morgan points out in this insightful article - and this is not just true for external vendors, but also internal social champions in the organization
This means that instead of telling employees that they can post status updates, create their own rich profiles, or collaboratively edit a document tell them about the value that all of this brings to their lives. Will it help employees save time with tasks that usually take a while to do? Will it make life easier when it comes time to finding information that they need to get access to? Will it help create a sense of community within an otherwise siloed and non-communicative organization? Will they be able to spend more time with time with their families instead of working longer hours? Will their dependence on email be reduced so that they can actually focus on getting work done and not on answering messages?
Whatever the value is, that is what you need to convey. The technology and the features are just enablers that exist in order to make the lives of the employees and users easier. Focusing on the cool things that a technology can do will not help with adoption but focusing on the value for the employees will.
