Subtlety sells

WhitePaperSource Newsletter contributor Ed Gandia advises against a hard-sell approach in white papers:

"Prospects today look to white papers for insights and education -- not a sales pitch. When companies ignore this expectation, they risk losing credibility and valuable sales opportunities."

In "Avoiding the Hard Sell: Improving White Papers by Exercising Restraint," Gandia says the most persuasive white papers present logical claims and strong supporting facts to educate prospects about the merits of a specific approach to solving a specific problem.

It's good to remember these words of advice when the temptation arises to put the company and/or product name up front. Always put the customers' concerns first, and write from this point of view.

If you made up a composite character -- let's call her Lucy -- based on the profile of your primary audience, what would be on that character's mind? What problems does Lucy have? What did she do to try to solve the problems? What worked, what didn't work, and why? What benefits did Lucy realize as a result? What would Lucy tell her colleagues to do, based on her experience in this situation?

As Writing White Papers author Michael Stelzner says, a white paper is not unlike a case study, but where a case study uses a specific example, a white paper uses generalizations to explore the issues and trends in solving them.