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“What's in it for them?” is in my top three of most misleading speaking advice.
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It sounds perfectly reasonable.
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Of course, our audience wants to know what's in it for them.
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What could possibly be wrong about that stance?
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I tell you what's wrong.
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It encourages an attitude that I call lazy empathy.
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The question “what's in it for them?” is easily satisfied by
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some bullet points on a slide.
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Too often, I have seen the arguments stop at.
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“It has more features than before” or “it works in a million different conditions”
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or “it's for 10 different scenarios” when in fact the customer only needs
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that specific feature under that specific condition in that specific scenario.
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The worst probably is “what's in it for them?” often stops at: “Well, I told
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you, didn't I?” “What's in it for them?” too often barely scratches the surface.
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I believe that's because it's the wrong perspective.
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It starts with us.
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It assumes that we built something primarily to make us a profit.
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And now we need to go hunting for a reason that makes people want to buy the thing.
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It assumes that we need to extract something.
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Often it even leads to making up some reason of what's in it for them.
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Here's a crucial difference: when you start with them,
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there's no need to specifically address what's in it for them.
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Because the whole thing is.
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It is for them, you built it for them.
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You started from the question.
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So you don't need to make anything up.
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It's built in.
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And that's why this kind of product with this kind of story resonates
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so much better than the default way of coming up with reasons to care.
