MoneyWatch

Do You Have a Strong Field Message?

By Geoffrey James

Updated on: November 19, 2010 / 8:43 AM EST / MoneyWatch

According to Dean Schantz of Corporate Visions, one of the most common reasons that sales professionals fail to develop prospects into customers is a weak or non-existent field message.

Your field message is an essential part of your sales "bag of tricks." That bag should also contain:

Your elevator pitch -- a conversational technique that sounds out a chance encounter to see whether that person you met is a potential prospect. (See the post Craft a Killer Elevator Pitch in 6 Easy Steps for more info)
Your cold calling script -- a telephone technique to engage a lead in a conversation in order to determine whether or not they're a qualified lead and, if so, move the sale forward. (See the post A Foolproof Cold-Calling Script for more info.)

Elevator pitches and cold-calling scripts are used at the very beginning of a sales cycle. Field messages are used when you have already qualified the lead and are already involved in the sale. (That's why they're called "field messages" -- you use them when you're in the field.)

For example, suppose you've started developing an opportunity with a qualified lead and that lead invites you to speak with his boss. The field message is a clean and clear summary of why somebody would be interested in buying from you and your firm.

Novice sales pros often try to use the corporate marketing message for this purpose, but that almost never works because marketing messages are almost always ineffective because they're written by people who have no experience selling.

Schantz says that an effective field message always contains five elements:

It communicates what's unique about the offering. If the role that your firm plays could be played by any of your competitors, your sales message is only selling your product category.
It communicates why talking to the sales pro is of value. If the sales message would work with any sales rep, there's no particular reason to buy from you rather than the other guy.
It speaks to the customer's concerns. No matter how compelling your story, if the prospect isn't at the center of it, the prospect isn't going to care about the message.
It contains a "defend-able quantitative." Your sales message must be backed up with a verifiable fact that buttresses any claims that you make.
It is memorable in some way. You can't just trot out a cookie-cutter replications of ideas and terms that the customer has heard hundreds of times before.

Needless to say, good field messages are relatively rare but sales professionals who have strong ones, find it relatively easy to convert leads into prospects.

Writing a great sales message is hard, and can take the talents of a professional writer. So I thought it might be fun, and instructive as well, if I offered to do some free rewriting.

This is pretty good deal for you, because my writing services (which, alas for you, are no longer available to the public) are fairly pricey.

So leave your field message (or your marketing message) as a comment or (if you want me to keep your firm's name anonymous) send me an email by clicking on the contact button under my portrait on the right of this post.

I'll pick out the most interesting, rewrite them, and post them on this blog. I may even get Dean to take a look at them--.

I can't guarantee I'll address all of them, but at least you'll get a thank-you. And you'll know that at least one person (me) has actually read your message all the way through!

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