When you travel, why do you prefer a particular hotel chain? Why do you lean towards a specific restaurant? Human beings buy promises. The Sheraton (or Marriott, Hilton, Ritz) promise you a certain set of standard comfort elements and quality. The Buca or Il Fornaio promise a certain menu and food. Services industry competitors sell you promise–not rooms, or menu cards, or cars. They promise you comfort, extra time to check-out, ambience, and so on.

What, my dear IT services vendor, is your promise?

Clients–humans–seek to find your promise to solve their problem. Your technology, team, expertise, experience are ALL exactly the same as the next vendor’s. So putting up a laundry list is simply worth nothing.

Instead, have you focused on what you can promise them? For instance, can you promise them that your expertise in a middleware domain will help the client company achieve a 100% welding of all their distributed data silos into a real-time intelligence source? Can you promise a guarantee?

If you notice, this is what most clients seek: Your promise to help solve their problem.

The next time you haul out your slideware, check to see if you have a promise to sell. Because other vendors have already sold your client enough laundry lists.