John Wall: So coming up with a product brochure is a great exercise. It’s changed a lot over the years. It used to be pretty cut and dry that you would make some kind of handout, a catalog or a single page sheet or a white paper that talked about your product and what it does. And an important part of this is it’s very different from the pitch deck, right? The purpose of this is not to talk about the business or what the product does. You’re really storytelling. This is where empathy comes in. Again, you want to put together some kind of one sheet or multiple sheet that’s telling the story of your product, and so the person reading it can put themselves in the position and get an idea for what it would feel like using this product. And ultimately, what are they going to get out of it? You know, how is their life going to be better by going this way versus whatever the existing thing that they’re doing is, or it’s painting a picture of what their life is like with this new thing, because it’s not like anything they’ve seen before. That’s another more of an evangelical sale, where you’re introducing new concepts, which is more challenging than just talking about something that they already understand, but just that it has a new you know, there’s a new lever, there’s a new knob, there’s somewhere new to go, at least if they understand the system. That’s an easier pitch. So you’ve got basically a storyboard, right? You’ve used your empathy to come up with a good pitch. The challenge now is, what format do you go with this? Because basically everything is digital. Now the easiest way to start with this is either think about a web page or a PDF. So either just from day one, think about it as being a page on your website so that it works on desktop and on a phone. You know, they can get through it digitally, even mobile, or go back to more of an old school paper format. In fact, you can even sketch it out on paper to get started, but of a PDF if you need to get there, usually complicated concepts need to go over towards the PDF side, just because you’ll be doing a lot of explaining. But having something digital is usually the way to go, because anytime you have anything on paper, somebody has to digitize it anyway. There is something else to think about. Though, in marketing, there’s two very different sets of activities. There are things that make you remarkable, and those are things that you need to capture attention, right? That’s a critical point. If somebody doesn’t, if you don’t manage to catch their attention, you don’t get to talk to them at all. So if you don’t do something to break through, and a paper brochure at an event, or some kind of handout, some kind of physical object at an event, can attract attention, you can use that to break through to get you the right to have a bigger conversation. And even if it’s this, and this is where you see all the time, people giving away all kinds of random things because they use that to open the door to then say, Okay, if you want this, give me your email. I can send you a digital product brochure, but you can get the right to have further discussion on where to go, some things that go into it. It’s got to be easily readable. Unfortunately, if you can’t capture somebody’s attention in about 100 words or two minutes, you’re never going to get it. But the thing is, again, to use your empathy to think about the purchasing process. Think about what else that person’s going to need, because for a lot of organizations, they’ll probably need pricing. They’ll probably need a full description of what it’s going to do, how long it takes, and what the return on their investment is going to be. And so having all of those things in some kind of product brochure or digital asset can speed up the purchase process. People can self serve and download those things and learn about the process, and that way, by the time they call you, hopefully they’re 80, 90% of the way through the sales cycle, and it’s easier for you to just get the business done and start working

Are you working to find community and opportunity as a Massachusetts startup founder? Join MFN and get access to experts, networking opportunities, and connections within the statewide entrepreneur ecosystem.