Sell a story, not a feature!

How many times in the last month, have you heard this from a startup: “A blah blah feature, running on HTML5, responsive, adaptive, using blah framework”. Unless you are a geek, or a developer I am sure this doesn’t excite you much. Lets look at 2 pitches I just created:

Today we are happy to announce a new camera upload feature, which will let you take a picture and embed it inline in 3 sizes — Large, Medium and Small in your blog.

From today you’ll be able to write a richer, more beautiful blog by embedding pictures.

Which one resonates more?

People don’t really care about what a product can do with its gazillion features, what they care about is what they can do with your product.

Take few more examples:

While apple sells customers a “notebook people love”, Dell is still selling “innovative flip-hinge design — powered by 4th Gen Intel® Core™ processors and Windows 8.1. Features a 12.5" HD display and over 8 hours of battery life”

If you had an option, which one would you buy?

Apple / Dell

Think about Instagram! Using Instagram users don’t just upload pictures and become part of another social network; they capture and share their life with friends and family using beautiful pictures.

Sell your stories like street artists do

Those are stories and pitches that resonates with users. Suddenly, the focus shifts from the product to the user! If your product lets them be, what they aspire to be (creator, superhero, demigods), achieve things that they always wanted to achieve; that’s a great story and that’s what you should be selling.

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Also make sure to check out Mammoth a collaboration/ productivity tool I’m currently building.