TL;DR – If you want to build desirable traction: Stop being clever; start being clear

This quote from my interview with Christian Owens, CEO of Paddle, represents a valuable lesson worth reflecting upon. 

There’s so much marketing buzz, obfuscation, and things like that that there’s real value in being straightforward with people. It’s especially true if you’re in an environment where you’re building a product like ours that isn’t the coolest thing in the world. 

Many businesses fall into the trap of trying to make the unsexy sexy by using lots of cool graphics and fun buzzwords, and things like that instead of stating, ‘we know this is unsexy, but it’s really important.’ 

Here’s the thing

‘When you confuse, you lose.’ (Donald Miller, CEO of Storybrand) 

Clever words don’t sell products – they mislead at best. 

Irrespective if you have a sexy or unsexy product, the last thing you want to do is use messaging that people have to unpick and decipher to understand what the thing does. 

You want your prospects to spend as little time to get your value. 

Why? Because it builds instant credibility and trust. And in B2B SaaS, trust accelerates everything.  

Listen to the interview with Christian (the quote starts at the 5.04 mark)

 

Question for you to reflect upon

If you’d ask 100 ideal prospects to visit your website, what % would say within 10 seconds – ‘Yes! That’s for me; that’s what I need!’ What if that was 100%?

 

Be desirable

 

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