Hi was reading this article by Mark Suster:
But here’s the magic. With Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, Jon Huntsman and Ron Paul all in the race nobody should even be talking about Herman Cain. You have the fringe candidate in Ron Paul. You have the red meat social candidate in Michelle Bachman. You have the groomed and polished candidates like Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman. You have the “anybody but Mitt” candidate Rick Perry. You even have the old guard Newt Gingrich.
But we’re all talking about Herman Cain.
He makes the point that software companies have a hard time articulating their value proposition to potential customers in a clear and understandable way. That's an issue I'm faced with daily as a software sales guy: how do you convey both the breadth and depth of your offering while at the same time keeping your prospects interested and engaged in the conversation? You have to walk a fine line between oversimplifying and showing the value for your potential customer's specific use case.
The key takeover from Mark's article, though, is that if you want to get to stage 2 ("here's why my product is great for you") you have to start by a simple message that you'll repeat over and over again. It might sound boring or inefficient to you, but you have to keep in mind that your prospects are coming from an different perspective entirely. They do not have your experience nor your domain knowledge - that's why they're coming to see you in the first place!
I have a tendency to forget this again and again and the post was a nice reminder to keep it simple.