A company's products and services are frequently described through product brochures, ads, website copy and articles, as well as sales pitches and ordinary conversation. You should have a description ready for meeting new contacts and clients. Whatever the circumstances, describing your products and services in a compelling way can help you win business. The key to describing your company's offerings is to consider your prospect's perspective, not your own or your company's.

Craft Your Message

Focus on how your product or service will improve a prospect's life. A common mistake is to talk about yourself too much. Prospects care about themselves, not you. Think about how your service or product really helps your customer. Build your message around that point.

Read your competitors' promotional material. Note the ideas they use to sell their products and services, as well as the key elements that set your offerings apart from theirs. When crafting your own material, emphasize those differences while promoting your products and services.

Avoid overusing empty adjectives such as "amazing" and "incredible," and severely limit superlatives like "best" and "fastest." Potential customers and clients will quickly label you as too "salesy" and full of hype. Save the superlatives and adjectives for your most important selling point -- that way it will stand out.

Start any written or video content with your most important benefit. Don't make prospects search for it by burying it a long way down the page. Copywriter Drayton Bird suggests that in most cases you can improve your copy by trimming out the first paragraph of whatever you've written.

Use bullet points in sales letters or web copy to break down your benefits into easy-to-read chunks. Lead each block of bullet points with your best benefit.

Scan through your copy and remove as many instances of the words "we," "I," "us" and "our" that you can find. Try to rephrase to include the word "you." Speaking directly to the reader of his problems works better than talking about yourself.

Read your descriptions out loud. If something sounds strange when spoken, remove it. Try to sound natural and unpretentious to build a rapport with the reader.

Build your oral descriptions from those you've developed for print, the Internet, and video. If you're a sales representative, you know how important it is to practice in front of a mirror, and to involve others in your practice as much as possible. Try to develop a short and snappy description from which you can move into greater detail on key points, or answer questions.

Speak to prospects as equals, not marks. Relax and make them feel relaxed as well. Describe your products and services on a human level, and be sure to avoid jargon and stuffy language.

Tip

Work closely with your company's salespeople when developing written messages. Ask what elements of your products and services attract the most sales and what aspects cause the biggest customer objections. Include both of these elements in your copy.

Warning

Familiarize yourself with marketing and advertising regulations over what you're allowed to say about products and services. Stick to the truth and you're unlikely to get into legal trouble.