What are you selling?

My toothpaste shocked me the other day

I was brushing my teeth and, for the first time ever, I read the text on the toothpaste tube

It had a shocking promise.

“Up to 2x deeper clean feeling”

That last word surprised me. Feeling.

Not a promise about cleaner teeth. Not a promise for fewer cavities. No guarantees about a better smile.

Cleaner feeling.

When the megacorp branding department put together the marketing for this toothpaste they decided to sell a feeling. My hunch is all toothpastes provide a similar quality of cleaning your teeth (and preventing cavities). It’s hard to make distinctive claims about actually clean teeth.

So they chose to sell a feeling. And it works.

What I really want when I brush my teeth is for my teeth to feel clean.

What are you selling?

Data teams that provide reports and data products to business teams are selling. They aren’t exchanging money for the data, but you need them to buy in.

You could sell them a dashboard, report, or database. And then listen to the yawns and watch the cobwebs grow on your reports.

Or you can sell a feeling.

Confidence in the marketing campaign results.

Trust that the product inventory is sufficient to handle the busy season.

Excitement about the sales opportunities from your account analytics.

What feeling are you selling?

Is your business team buying?

I’m here,

Sawyer