Nobody Cares About Your "Why."

In the words of entrepreneur and investor Damon John, if you go out there and start making noise and making sales, people will find you. Sales cure all. You can talk about how great your business plan is and how well you're going to do. You can make up your own opinions, but you cannot make up your own facts. Sales cure all.

Before you spend even more time and money on your website, your marketing materials, and pitch decks that tell your dream clients all about your business and what you care about. Take a pause and let's talk about what your clients care about. I'm Howard Mann, and this is the Business Brickyard Podcast. With my sincere apologies to Simon Sinek, nobody really cares about your why. They want you to care about theirs.

Almost every business owner I talk to these days has figured out their why and they can't wait to tell me all about it. The problem is that stating and broadcasting their why has not helped their ability to clearly articulate why someone should actually buy their product or service. Even worse, knowing their why has not helped them win new clients. The reason is quite simple. Nobody cares about your why.

They care about theirs. If you cannot explain how you will help those you hope to win as new clients realize their why, you will lose new business you could have won. I know, I know, we've all watched Simon Sinek's TED talk where he explains how Apple uses their why to rule the world. Then we have all had tons of meetings so we could throw away those past mission statements so we could replace them with our awesome shiny new whys. If only it was so simple to win the hearts, minds and dollars of the customers and clients we crave.

Back in the real world, the rubber meets the road when you pitch your product or service and your words hit your audience in the ears in an attempt to convince their hearts and minds. How effectively you can do this matters far more to the future of your business than your why. Uber and Lyft, for example, can talk all they want about their why to solve transportation for the entire world. It doesn't matter. Just think about it.

Do you give a shit about Uber and Lyft's mission? What matters to you and me is when we hit the I want a car right now button on their apps, a car shows up and takes us where we want to go. Full stop. Whoever is the best at doing that reliably within some pricing constraints wins. So let's jump into your next big pitch to a customer or client.

I will bet that your main pitch deck currently starts off with an about us slide, which is then followed by fifteen to twenty minutes that is all about you. Then a few more slides about your past work, your past clients, and then maybe even org chart to show off your staff. Somewhere in there, you explain your purpose, mission or maybe even your why. You, you and you. Please stop.

Before you make another pitch to a client you want to win, just start with this simple question. What is their why? What buyers want from you in that moment is to make them ridiculously confident that you can solve their problem and accelerate their mission with the least amount of effort on their part. The more you are talking about anything else, the less they care. Side note, if it takes you more than 10 slides to do all of this, you need to do more editing.

When I say you will solve their problem, I am talking about solving it all the way until the results show up in their bank account. Said another way, nobody really cares how the sausage is made, they just care how it tastes and how it fixes their hunger. If I could design the perfect pitch meeting, I would walk into the room, have no slides up on the wall, and simply state the following: Nobody is better at and insert whatever it is that you do better than anyone else so that you can insert the measurable benefit they will realize and how it accelerates their why. Then I would drop a fat printed book filled with 100 past customers or clients attesting to how you rock their world and are worth 20 times whatever it is that you charge. I would then field as many questions as they have about how they can get started working with you, the costs, and how much time you need to deliver the 20 times results you promised.

Drop the mic and then walk out. You've won. The challenge for you is how perfectly you can complete the blanks in that opening statement about what you do best and the specific results they will see in their bank account. Not in that cold corporate jargon that only serves to make you feel good about yourself, but in plain English so anyone will understand how powerful it will be for them and their mission right after the words have left your mouth. If you are not the best at whatever niche you are looking to sell to, you now know what you have to get to work on.

If you cannot clearly articulate how your ideal client will realize a measurable benefit that is a large multiple of your fees, then you need to figure it out now. Save your why for your internal meetings or your cozy off sites. Instead, just follow these three steps. One, understand what your business is the best at doing and who will value it the most. Two, know precisely how your customers and clients realize insane value from it and how you will make it happen with the least amount of effort on their part.

Three, be relentless about building momentum around points one and two. It's the end of my rant. Go cut out the first 75% of your pitch decks, and then watch what happens. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

Hey there. Just a few quick notes before you get back to work. My goal is to make this podcast as useful as it can be for entrepreneurs who are not fulfilled by the businesses that they own. Your feedback, questions, and comments are not just welcome, they're encouraged. So please feel free to email me at h@howardMann.com.

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