Five seconds, and fifteen

A person deciding whether to keep paying attention gives you about five seconds. A person who has decided to consider you gives you about fifteen before they decide again.

These are not precise numbers and treating them as precise is a mistake. What they capture is a real discontinuity: the job at first contact is not a smaller version of the job at consideration, it is a different job.

At five seconds the only question being answered is "is this for someone like me". Not what you do, not why you are better. Whether the reader recognizes themselves. Material that leads with capability fails here, because capability is an answer to a question the reader has not asked yet.

At fifteen seconds the question changes to "is this better than what I would otherwise do", and the honest competitor is usually not another vendor. It is doing nothing, or continuing to cope. Material that compares itself only to named competitors never addresses the option most buyers actually take.

The test is mechanical and you can run it this week. Show the asset to five people outside the team for five seconds, take it away, and ask what it was for and who it was for. Then show it to five more for fifteen and ask what it beats.

The failure is nearly always the same: people can describe what you do and cannot say who it is for.