What’s wrong with many sales pitches and what to do instead … 

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Recently I've encountered a sales pitch which was trying to tell us about the 14

reasons that their product was superior.

Or maybe it was even 17 reasons, I'm not sure, and it doesn't really

matter because honestly, no one cares.

When they were at reason number seven, I didn't even recall number two anymore

because that's just not something that the human brain is good at.

And so, the more relevant question for them to ask would have been: what's the

real reason a customer would choose them?

Part of the brilliance of Apple’s “I'm a Mac” campaign was that they

made that exact shift from a plethora of good reasons to one real reason.

Make no mistake, they had a ton of good reasons.

Each of the 323 spots that had been shot for the campaign focused on

one of those good reasons for why a Mac would be better than a PC.

And 66 of those actually aired.

But none of them was about the good reasons.

For one, I'm sure that for each of those, you can find people willing to

dive into a heated discussion about whether that reason would even be valid.

Apple skipped that discussion and went straight into an

argument about the real reason.

For them, it was that Mac users are cool while PC users are not.

When you resonate with that message – which you might not,

I know a lot of cool PC guys.

But when you resonate with that message, the beauty of that approach

is that the good reasons are all there.

This is the crucial aspect.

The good reasons are never the problem.

If you've done a great job and built something that's actually

amazing, you're always going to have enough good reasons on your side.

If you don't, it's probably better to fix your product before you even

think about fixing your communication.

But any of these good reasons will always be considered in light

of the real reason that makes us choose one product over another.

If you ignore this and instead, only focus on the good reasons, even 66 good reasons

won't be enough to convince your audience.

And finally, if you need 66 reasons or even just a dozen to tell me why you are

the superior choice, you are devaluing the weight of each one of those reasons.

Give me one heavyweight reason and we're playing a totally different game.

So, what's the real reason people choose you?