Stop Pitching Features When They Need Solutions

"We do this, this, and this" isn't a presentation — it's a feature list that puts people to sleep. Your audience doesn't care about your capabilities until they understand how you solve their specific pain. Here's how to flip from inside-out thinking to outside-in impact.

Transcript

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Welcome to Lee with Confidence. I'm JP Warren. Every episode we take a theme from our Monday morning leadership call and apply it to real life scenarios. So you can build your confidence, crush your imposter syndrome, and step into the leader you actually want to be. Short, real, straight to the point. Let's get into it. Welcome back to Lead with Confidence. I'm your host, JP Warren. We are wrapping up the series on how to make your presentations a little bit more effective for your target audience. Hey, listen, in the next five to 10 minutes, I'm going to give you some frameworks to actually help you land and communicate better with your target audience. And all I ask in return is for 15 seconds. If you could just like, comment, review, or even share this and tag me. We're over on Instagram, lead with confidence with JP Warren. But again, we're going to dive into today. We're talking about stop pitching, stop leading with features and start leading with a problem. All right. Stop leading with features when they're looking for solutions. Okay. So diving in this, let's talk about this. Your capability, I mean, we, we, as a founder, I'm guilty of this. You know, for the first couple of years of my career, I was so focused on talking about what I did, the process that I did, uh the output that I did versus the outcome. And a lot of people suffer this. And when I work with teams, when I work with groups, and I work and have seminars and all this stuff, people live, whether you're a service company, whether you're a founder, whether you're a leader, we live in the feature side of our business. Why? Because it's all we talk about. That's where we live, eat, breathe. That's our world. So of course we focus on the features because that's what we're developing, right? But whenever we're stepping out of our office, whenever we're stepping away and getting in front of an audience to have an opportunity to do a product demo, to have an opportunity to give a presentation, we need to move away from the features. Why? Because nobody really cares. We talked about, we touched on this yesterday. We talked about, you know, ATT. At the end of the day, I don't care about ATT's features, uh, the bandwidth, the router box, size and dimensions, where they operate, uh, how many teams they have, the data. I care about fast. I care about the outcome. Am I able to hook up the internet? Am I able to surf the web, all that stuff very, you know, free without any disturbances or stuff like that. So we're going to dive into how to not lead with features and actually how to lead with the outcome. Most and think about this. Whenever you do go to a presentation, whenever you do go to a conference, most presentations, start watching this. They're good, the first several slides will be very feature heavy. Actually, the majority of the slides is very feature heavy. You know, we talked about the opening the first 90 seconds yesterday and then diving into your uh the story, right? A lot of people stay on that features, right? I've seen it nonstop. We do this, we operate here. This is our process, this is our statistics, this is our results, this is us, this is us, this. You, what happens is you turn very centric to your story versus allowing the person that you're trying to impact, your target audience, your customer, to be the hero of your story, right? People think that listening capabilities, people think that listening features uh proves, you know, your worth, you know, but it actually only proves self-focus. Remember, you are not the hero of your story. There was a time in my career where I would spend, you know, the first three years of, you know, building my business, I would put myself as the hero. Hey, you come to this, like, or you join this, like this is, you know, you know, what we do here, like, you know, we're gonna we're gonna get you here, we're gonna get you those contacts, we're gonna get you connected, we're gonna do this. It was very we focused. Once I started shifting the message and saying, hey, listen, all we're doing, we're just a tool to help you succeed. We're just a tool to help you go out there and do better. Like all we are is a tool. You're the hero. We're just a tool to get you where you're at. That actually changed and the not only the retention, but the interest and the customer count only went up because I put them as the hero, not myself. Okay. We don't want our audience thinking, so what? Right? Or like, okay, well, so what if you do this? So what if you have this many uh uh features or widgets or all that stuff? We want to get them to say, okay, well, I'm interested. Tell me more. And that's how we're gonna do this right now. That's what we're gonna dive into today. So let's give you some frameworks on actually how to lead more uh with solutions over features. All right. The first thing we have to do, let's put the pain in front of the product. We talked about kicking off yesterday with that first 90 seconds, right? Let's talk about the pain that your target audience, that your customer, is experiencing before you even introduce your product, before you even start talking about your company, before we even start talking about how you can solve their issues and problem, what's keeping them up at night? Let's talk about the pain first. What is that pain that people are experiencing and how are you going to solve that pain, right? The next thing we have to do is talk about the output, uh, what is it called? The the outcome over the output. So what does that look like? Rather than walking the room full, the, you know, the room you're in, whether it's a pitch, whether it's a demo, whether it is a conference that you're at, rather than walking through your 47-step process, why don't we just talk about the outcomes, right? Through our process, your downtime will be 30% less month over month. Or per utilizing our process, you're gonna get X uh results uh within a month, right? Versus we take you through this process, then we go this, then we take this, then after this, we go over here, we circle this. That gets very dry, that gets very boring at the end of the day. Who cares? I don't care how my internet's hooked up to the wall and how it gets internet, you know, Wi-Fi, you know, to my computer, to my phone, all that stuff. I just care that it works. I want the outcome. I don't care about the process. And your target audience doesn't either. Now, if they do, that is a great way to further that conversation. That is a great way to sync up with them after and just continue building that rapport, continue building those conversations. But in a product demo, in a presentation to a room full of your peers, lead with the outcome, not lead with the outcome, not your output. Yeah, the outcome, not your output. Okay. And the third thing is, and this is what we touched on before, position your target audience as the hero. If you're looking to accomplish X, Y, Z, the tool that we have can help you do that. If you're looking to do this in your career, we can help you do that. So rather than make you the hero of the story, like without us, we do this, we do all that stuff, you're really putting your target audience as the hero, and you're just merely a tool to help them slay the beast. I always say, always compare the, you know, the story, the art of storytelling like this. Um, you know, we have the the main the main character, the main hero, the knight, right? The knight is not you. I used to think the knight was me uh when I started my companies. The knight is never me. All right. So we have the your target audience is the knight. That main problem they're all trying to solve, to slay and all that stuff, that's the dragon, right? You are merely the sword to slay that dragon. That's a great way to, that's a great framework to kind of put that in. So the next time you present, wrapping it up, the next time you present, do this. Spend twice as long describing their problem versus your solution, okay? And then stop leading uh with a French uh centric, we do this, we do this, we have these, we do this. This is our process. Lead with them with the outcome that they're gonna get, okay? And ask yourself this week if someone walked away remembering what you do, have them remember that the problem you solve versus the features or the outcomes or the processes that your company does. Because at the end of the day, no one really cares about that. And if they do care about that, that's a great conversation to have further down the road. So thank you for tuning in for a lead with confidence. And again, if you are enjoying this, share. If you have some uh teammate that might be presenting that has a lot of nerves, share with them this whole thing. I think that we covered this this whole week on how to step up and present better. Better. So thank you for tuning in again. I'm JP Warren, and we'll see you soon on Lead with Confidence. That's your framework for the day. Go lead with it. I'm JP Warren, lead with confidence.