So Good It Sells Itself

Your product is not so good that it sells itself. If it were, you would be unnecessary.

Your product may be far better than your competitors’ products. That improvement in quality may be felt by anyone who buys it. But that perception doesn’t happen on its own. Creating the perception of value and tying that value to someone’s needs doesn’t happen on its own.

Your product may be different from anything on the market now. Those differences may be very clear to you and the people who work in your company. You may even believe that those differences make a difference for your clients. But to everyone else, what you sell looks a lot like what your competitors sell. Your product isn’t capable of differentiating itself on its own.

Your product may produce better outcomes. Those better outcomes are almost certainly worth paying to obtain. But your prospective clients can’t see that, and they don’t know it to be true.

Your competitors believe their product is better than yours. Your competitors believe their product is different, too. Your competitors believe their outcomes are equal to—or better than—yours. Some of your prospects and your competitors believe their outcomes are equal to yours at a lower price. One or both of you are wrong.

If you go to the front for of the building where you work and there is a long line stretching around the building, then your product sells itself. If there is no one outside right now, it doesn’t.

The reason you want a product that is so good that it sells itself is so that you don’t have to sell. You want to make selling easy, and you believe—mistakenly—that your product, your service, and your solution is what is supposed to win deals. The very opposite is true: You are supposed to win deals.