First, let’s have a quick crash course in what your prospects DON’T care about:

Your product.
Your company.
You.

It’s harsh, but true.

It’s human nature to talk about ourselves, or in the case of business, our products and services. After all, it’s what we know best. It’s critical to understand that, especially in the lead generating phase. If your messaging strategy is to talk about your products and services, you’ll get nowhere fast.

So what is the one thing your prospects care about the most? Themselves.

While that answer is simple, you have to find out what those problems are specifically. How? Spend time learning about them by creating buyer personas for each prospect role. Executing campaigns before understanding your prospects’ problems is like cooking a five-course meal for someone without knowing their favorite foods.

Let’s say you’re a software company targeting CFOs. Everyone who creates content within your organization should understand:

• What are the CFO’s strategic initiatives?
• What does the CFO perceive as career success?
• What are typical CFOs afraid of?

With so much content bombarding prospects today, you have to get their attention and make an emotional connection in a very short amount of time. Once you make an emotional connection, you can connect your products and services as solutions to their problems. You have to present your products and services as a solution to their frustrating problems, help them deliver something that their boss is demanding, and/or help them be seen as more strategic within their organization.

In other words, talk about how they can be awesome and NOT about your awesome software.

Even in B2B sales that involve buying committees, prospects make emotional purchases and then they justify their purchases with facts. Your products, your company, and you can’t connect with your prospects if you don’t understand them. If you do take the time, however, and you create relevant messages that make it clear that you’ve done your homework, then and only then, will you earn a chance to talk about yourself.