“What's in it for them?” is in my top three of most misleading speaking advice.

It sounds perfectly reasonable.

Of course, our audience wants to know what's in it for them.

What could possibly be wrong about that stance?

I tell you what's wrong.

It encourages an attitude that I call lazy empathy.

The question “what's in it for them?” is easily satisfied by

some bullet points on a slide.

Too often, I have seen the arguments stop at.

“It has more features than before” or “it works in a million different conditions”

or “it's for 10 different scenarios” when in fact the customer only needs

that specific feature under that specific condition in that specific scenario.

The worst probably is “what's in it for them?” often stops at: “Well, I told

you, didn't I?” “What's in it for them?” too often barely scratches the surface.

I believe that's because it's the wrong perspective.

It starts with us.

It assumes that we built something primarily to make us a profit.

And now we need to go hunting for a reason that makes people want to buy the thing.

It assumes that we need to extract something.

Often it even leads to making up some reason of what's in it for them.

Here's a crucial difference: when you start with them,

there's no need to specifically address what's in it for them.

Because the whole thing is.

It is for them, you built it for them.

You started from the question.

So you don't need to make anything up.

It's built in.

And that's why this kind of product with this kind of story resonates

so much better than the default way of coming up with reasons to care.