"The final copy was exactly what we wanted, fitting our length, style, voice, and formatting requirements."  

Erik Griffin, SOHO Prospecting

TechPromo Newsletter, March 2006

The Newsletter For Technology Promotion

Plus This Quick Tip -
Tell a Story - Even With a Technical Article

Customers On The Streetcorner?
You don't go out on the corner to find your customers, do you?

Not knowing exactly who they are and what they need is almost that bad.

You sell to more than one person at any company. You've got to impress everyone from the technician who maintains it to the CEO who approves the final purchase.

Many Buyers, One Company
Before you even specify a new product, you need to understand everyone who signs off on the buying decision. Think about what to ask, then talk to prospective customers. Ask the managers who buy it, the engineers who use it, and the technicians who fix it. The factory line workers know what works best in production. They may surprise you with more good questions. Better still, find a strategic partner in the market you're targeting. Confirm what their worst problems are, what they really lack.

Then find out when they need the solution. When is it too late? Once you know that, you can decide if your product can arrive in time to help them. Draw up a realistic schedule. If you won't make it with the resources you have, you'll save money building something else - something you can produce on time.

What Do They Care About?
When you're first starting out with no customers, all you know is why you would buy your product. Sure, surveys from industry groups like the Semiconductor Industry Association or Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International will show you larger trends, but if your machine or technical process is cutting-edge new, all you have is your personal experience with the problem you solve.

It's a little easier if your market follows an ANSI, IEEE or ISO standard. You still have questions, though - what non-standard problems give your audience the most trouble? Are there some management or test features that would make your product easier to use than a competitor's? Have your earlier systems been trouble-free? And what other issues does your audience care about? They'll give you answers if you ask enough people.

Business customers have different needs from retail buyers. Any company's managers, engineers, and buyers look for business survival, time and money savings, cutting-edge competitiveness, job security, career advancement, and risk avoidance.

Solve Their Biggest Problems Reliably First
Maybe you've outgrown your old network, or you need to simplify your network management. Buying routers and management software from Cisco or 3Com is a pretty safe bet. Both companies have been around many years, with great track records. Their boxes are reliable enough to keep your network up - and you employed. And they'll minimize your headaches later, with management of your entire network from a single server. If you have a problem, pick up the phone for instant local support. You shouldn't have any trouble getting that purchase order approved.

Offer More Than Anyone Else
After problem-solving and reliability, you need to convince your audience you offer more than your competition. IC design software firm Cadence Design Systems does this with great ongoing service. They tell you up front they'll put their design experts onsite to solve your problems using their software and device models. If your computer simulation hangs up for a certain condition, they'll help you get it working. If you need help with their new auto place-and-route tool, their support engineers provide it. Part of the product sale includes a seminar on how to use it.

Testimonials Are Crucial
If you're not Cadence or Cisco, you need other ways to convince your audience. Testimonials from satisfied customers work best for this. You should include exactly how much faster their simulations ran or how much throughput improved with your product. Exact numbers may look strange to you, but they're much more convincing if they don't look like you made them up.

Show Them Irresistible Advantages
If you don't have customers who've used your brand-new product, you need to offer prospects something else. Up-front customer education works very well. Show your customers how to get the most efficiency from your roof-mounted solar panels and save up to 93% on their monthly power bill in a free seminar. Offer the most accurate performance figures before the sale. Take those figures from an independent testing firm. And use panels approved by UL.

An unusual time advantage works well too. Your competitor's building materials need two years to get through government approvals before customers can use them, but yours come pre-approved so they only take six months. And they meet MNL standards for concrete so they're extremely reliable. It's OK if your competitors meet those standards too - when they don't talk about this valuable benefit to your audience and you do, you have an advantage.

You may not have the name recognition of an AMD or Intel. But you can show your audience the same reliability, time, and money advantages to solve their problem. That'll keep their jobs safe, advance their careers - and convince them to choose your product.

Mark Bohrer is a business writer and former engineer. He's based in Silicon Valley.

You've seen them before - a product plug and feature list, followed by a vendor quote or two, with dry specifications at the end. But you're researching a new capital purchase, so you had to read at least the bullet points. You'd have paid more attention to something with a better storyline all the way through. And that would have made you more interested in the product.

Everybody Likes A Good Story
Even constantly-busy engineers or managers will read your article's first couple lines if the headline hooks them with an application like theirs, or a critical benefit they need. But they'll read most of it if it tells a good story.

People like to travel, even if it's only in their minds. They much prefer reading about a customer's journey - his problem, alternatives he tried to solve it, discovery of your solution, how well it handled the problem. It's no accident this case-study approach is so popular with most audiences.

Show Him How It Works And Why He Should Care
Your customer knows he wants faster wafer throughput, or how many components he needs to place and route two years from now. He wants all those critical features, and you need to list them. If your product has unusual advantages, explaining how they work keeps him reading. But if you can show him how to catch twice as many silicon defects or how easy it is to integrate your software with his other design tools, he'll really be interested.

Sure, features are important to technical audiences. They need to be sure the product does what they want. But they need at least a suggestion of the benefits those features give them. And if you tell them a good story about your product, they're more likely to choose you.