How to make your b2b tech offerings fly off the shelves

People shop for tech offerings or consulting services like they shop for anything else that's going to be a big investment.

They weigh the options.

They do their homework.

They compare solutions.

They read the reviews.

They look at the materials they can find. Always comparing, contrasting, and in the end picking the one they want.

People do this for TVs, refrigerators, washing machines, cars, beverages, and yes...consulting or tech offerings as well.

If there’s one thing I have learned about why people choose one thing over anothers it’s this...

It’s the same reason why Liquid Death is worth 700 million of dollars.

It’s just sparkling water isn’t it? Or is it more than that...

I’m talking about the power of packaging design.

Dressing for the job you want is packaging design.

Staging a house to be sold by a realtor is packaging design.

Making your resume say the right things and look a certain way so that you get called for an interview is packaging design.

I fundamentally believe that everything is packaging design.

Just look at Liquid Death. They have taken something that costs nothing, and added emotion and personality to it. They have sprinkled audacity, boldness, and utter disregard for being nice into their product.

They have simply put care an intention into the packaging of sparkling water and are disrupting an entire market because of it.

But Brandon, how do you package a technology offering? That's not the same as sparkling water.”

When I say, “Packaging” I am not referring to just colors and fonts. I mean the entire way that an offering is pieced together and presented to the world. Just like Liquid Death, it’s all about how you package it.

How to package a winning offering

Think of the your market like a shelf in a grocery store.

Next to your offering are all kinds of similar offerings.

They all have the same standard fonts. They all have the same colors. They all say the same things in the same technical, lifeless, tone.

Shoppers are walking up and down the aisles of the store and walking past the shelf where your offering sits right next to a whole row of competing products.

How do you get a CTO, CIO, CEO, CISO, or anyone else to stop, pick yours up, and walk to the cash register?

It’s simple. Have better packaging.

When it comes to selling your offering and standing out on a really crowded shelf, your "packaging design" for your offering needs these four ingredients:

It needs to be different
It needs to be clear
It needs to be compelling
It needs to be memorable

Going to market with great offering package design

The first step is to get marketing and product teams in the same room. If you're not doing this, you're already behind. Offering Package Design is NOT just graphic design for marketing efforts to sell an offering. It’s all about the core DNA of the offering and how it will be presented to the world. You need product and marketing experts to work together on this. Once you’ve got the right people in the room, you can roll up you sleeves.

Come up with a compelling name for the offering–something memorable that stands out while also hinting at what the tool does. This is where you can use strategic workshops to pull this gold out of the product team. They usually have it...you just have to find it. Try and keep the name as short as possible. Due your legal due diligence and make sure you are allowed to use the same. Then, secure your URLS and hashtags accordingly.
Make it different by creating a visual guide for the offering that looks and feels like a 9-figure tech product. Most tech partners just slap their parent logo and some text on a landing page but you have to remember that everything is packaging design. Use colors, fonts, and design elements that competitors aren’t using in theirs. Try and do this in a way that doesn’t contrast too heavily from your parent brand.
Make it clear by carefully crafting messaging framework for the offering that resonates with each persona you are trying to reach. Do careful discovery work to make sure we you talking about it the right way on all the sales enablement assets, etc. Build out persona frameworks and a narrative script for your offering that both marketing and sales can pull from. This is how you build sales materials and marketing assets quickly that are really high quality. This should be the foundation for all your sales enablement stuff as well.
Get your product on the shelves! Building out the right strategy to get your offering into the right channels is key. Make sure you have campaigns that touch your audience at all the right stages of awareness. Some aren’t ready to buy and many others are still completely unaware they even have a problem, so be sure that you have educational and valuable content that moves them from unaware to aware.

Make your offering different, clear, compelling, and memorable!

Let’s Package an Offering Right Now!

You are now the proud owner of an enterprise technology consultancy who has a large HR practice.

Your firm, FakeTech Consulting is really good at self service HR portals. You’ve done hundreds of them for different industries. Your CMO and product team have put their heads together and you’ve made a business case for putting a focused effort towards selling HR portal consulting as an offering. Now, marketing and product will work together to package up a self service portal offering that flies off the shelf.

There’s just one problem...

You have two other competitors who also do all kinds of HR service delivery, consulting, and portal building.

Meet Client A: Fake & McFake Consulting.

They have an HR practice and your buyers found them on google. Sadly most b2b tech offering pages look like this. Very general. Corny background image. Nothing unique. Nothing compelling.

Here’s their landing page...

That’s not the only problem.

Right next to them, on the same shelf, is competitor B: Faux Partners, a team of experienced HR consultants who also build self service portals as an offering.

Similar to competitor A, this is the page for their “offering” around self service portals.

You have to market and sell your offering next to these guys alongside maybe 45 others who look and sound just like you.

Your offering is going to come up in the same search results.
Your offering is going to be recommended, potentially by reps or others you’ve worked with.
Your offering and its marketing materials are going to get weighed against Faux Partners and Fake & McFake in real time...maybe by the HR leaders shopping for a solution.

Let’s Make FakeTech’s Offering Fly Off The Shelf!

Imagine the experience that potential customers would have with your offering during their digital shopping experience if you took its packaging design seriously?

What if you came up with name that was compelling and memorable? What if you sold an emotion, not just a service or offering? What if the messaging was clear and people knew exactly what the offering did within seconds of researching it?

Introducing, Happy Portals. Custom, self service portals designed to keep smiles big and turnover small.

(This is not a real offering or a real business.)

See what FakeTech did to make their offering stand out?

They came up with an emotion-packed and memorable name "Happy Portals"
They used photos of real (smiling) humans experiencing the positive emotions their portals create for people and HR departments
They used colors that stand out from their competition
Their messaging is crystal clear and uses no b2b jargon.
The CTA is super specific. They don't have a gated demo. You can watch a demo of the product for free and you know exactly what they want you to click.

(What else do you know notice? Feel free to add your thoughts in the comments.)

FakeTech consulting now has a compelling offering that's radically different from their competitors, solves a clear problem, and stands out on the digital shelf they live on.

Because product and marketing teams worked together, they now have a library of sales assets for BDR’s to use, as well as their internal marketing team. They even made a sales deck for their BDR’s to use when meeting with specific industries like HR leaders at healthcare organizations:

They even created 2 minute demo videos for how Happy Portals works for HR departments in different industries...

Happy Portals for Manufacturing demo video

You might not be in the HR consulting world at all, but the principal still applies. If you want your offerings to stand out and fly off the shelves you have to take seriously how they are presented to the world. It’s not just graphics, fonts and colors that make Happy Portals packaging radically better than its competition. It’s the careful positioning, essence, emotion, and strategic messaging working together that give it the 4 key ingredients of great offering packaging.

What can we learn from Liquid Death and Happy Portals?

You might not be selling sparkling water or HR self service portals, but you are selling offerings or services that sit on the same shelf as your competitor’s.

Great packaging design can be a cheat code for winning demos, deals, and dear friends for life.

If you package your offerings the right way, they will fly off the shelves. Whether the product is actually good or not...well...that’s up to your team 😉.

Your Homework

The next time you go to the grocery store look at the packaging of the products.

My favorite place to do this is the coffee aisle. Look at the specialty coffees. Notice how beautiful and bold some of the labels and bags are.

Do you think this is because some hipsters simply wanted them to look nice? Do you think this is because they subjectively or randomly had big budgets for marketing?

No way José!

This is because great builders of great products (regardless of the industry) understand that everything comes down to packaging design.

Who will be the b2b tech leaders bold enough to build the Liquid Death of enterprise tech products?

Is it you? Call me. I have some ideas 😎

How to make tech offerings fly off the shelves