Being able to clearly articulate why a prospect should buy from you rather than your competitors in a way that creates emotion and motivates them to action is the master skill of marketing.

People respond much more to a fear of loss than a prospect of gain.

purchasing decisions are made with emotions and justified with logic after the fact.

So how do you effectively communicate these three components in the space of about thirty seconds? The best formula I’ve seen is “You know [problem]? Well, what we do is [solution]. In fact, [proof].”

Bad marketing is highly product-focused and self-focused. Good marketing is always customer- and problem-focused, and that’s exactly how we want our elevator pitch to be. We want to be remembered for the problems we solve rather than for some impressive but incomprehensible title or line of business.

As counterintuitive as it may seem, higher-spending affluent customers tend to be far less demanding and far more pleasant to work with than low-ticket, price-driven ones.

A large part of sales and marketing is transferring your conviction to your prospects.

If I had to give you only one piece of advice regarding effective messaging, it would be this: If you confuse them, you lose them.

What is the unique advantage you are offering? The uniqueness doesn’t have to be in the product itself. In fact, it’s fair to say that there are very few truly unique products. The uniqueness may be in the way it is packaged, delivered, supported, or even sold.