The Secret to Selling Your Brand
With One Sentence
You believe in the importance of your vision, but how do
you get others to stop and listen to you? There will be
many instances when you don’t have a lot of time to grab
someone’s attention, be it a potential investor or a licensee.
That’s why you need to be able to summarize the benefit
of your business idea in a single, powerful sentence -- a
sentence that is so direct and compelling, it stops whoever
reads or hears it dead in their tracks. A good one-line benefit
statement should make someone think: “I want to know more
about that.”
I’ve learned that if I craft just the right sentence, it’s all I
need to get people to listen to my pitch, open my emails and
answer my calls. I still remember the day the iPod launched
and Steve Jobs called it “a thousand songs in your pocket.”
Wow. That’s captivating. He didn’t have to explain any further.
We wanted it already!
People don’t care about how something works.They want to
know what it’s going to do for them.
Newspapers, tabloids, and these days, Twitter have been
making use of the headline for years. How often do you
find yourself on a webpage you never intended to visit, all
because a headline was so tempting, you had to click on
it? That should give you an idea of what I’m talking about.
Creating excellent one-line benefit statements isn’t an easy
skill, but it’s an important one, because it can be used to
explain your idea in so many different kinds of situations in
an attractive, successful way.
Sometimes, you only get one chance to make an impression.
Cut through the clutter to make it count! Here three ways to
create an awesome one-line benefit statement:
1. Make it emotional.
Why should people care about what you have to say? Grab
them with something they can relate to. Benefits sell ideas, not
facts. What is your idea going to do for the consumer or the
world? Don’t be afraid to use emotion. People are motivated
Stephen Key
by their emotions more often than they are motivated by
reason. Emotion also evokes visual imagery -- if people can
begin to see your idea, that’s a good thing. Some emotional
words include: “free”, “incredible” and “unbelievable.”
2. Keep it short.
Like -- really short. I’m talking no more than 10 to 12 words,
ideally less. Remember, you don’t have much time. If your
statement is too long, people may move on before they’ve
even finished reading or hearing it. Don’t be intimidated by
using fewer words. This is a really good exercise in general.
Too often, I ask an inventor or entrepreneur to tell me about
his or her idea and I’m overwhelmed with a five-minute
speech. “What is he talking about again?” I find myself
thinking. I’m not even sure. Brevity forces clarity.
3. Use numbers.
Numbers convey specificity. Look around you. Headlines
with numbers dominate our world. One has only to look at
Buzzfeed to understand the power of numbers.
Here are some examples of one-line benefit statements my
students and I have used with gre