Are you putting things in the way of your relationship with your customer?
I don’t have a ghostwriter. Until I listened to another author’s Webinar yesterday, I didn’t know how uncommon that is; an incredible amount of well-known authors (Tom Clancy was mentioned, for instance) have ghostwriters. Even more have ghost bloggers, Tweeters, etc. I suppose my Twitter account would have a lot more activity if I did, but I don’t, and there’s one simple reason. I don’t want anyone else getting in the way of the relationship I have with you. My words, my thoughts, my ideas, straight from me to you. That may not always be pretty, but rest assured that when you read something with my name on it, I wrote it.
I feel the same way about what I call “Sales words.” Sales words are words, or phrases, that you never hear outside of the sales conversation, that are usually spoken by salespeople who don’t know anything else to say, and that can come between you and your customer – just like a ghostwriter could come between you and me. They come between you and your customer because a good sales call feels like a normal conversation with a friend – and then the sales words jump in and remind the customer, “Hey, you’re dealing with a salesperson here!” I’ll never forget the first time I learned this lesson.
I was 22 years old and selling cars. I had a customer come in looking at new Thunderbirds. He was a car guy, I was a car guy, and we immediately established a great rapport. The sale was going great – he test drove the car, loved it. We got back to the dealership and I whipped out one of those handy-dandy phrases I’d been taught in car selling school: “So, Mr. Customer, how can I earn your business today?”
The customer looked like I’d just whacked him with a wet towel. He said, “Thanks.” I asked him what for, and he said, “For reminding me that I was dealing with a car salesman. I thought I was just talking to a regular guy like me.” His defenses went up, and he girded for a fight in the closing office. Well, a fight it was, and it ended without a victory – he went away without buying, and I lost the sale. To this day, I’m convinced that if I’d just asked him to buy the damn car, he’d have bought easily.
You see, “earn your business” is one of those cheesy phrases that is essentially meaningless, is only heard in conversation with salespeople, and is designed to mask the real meaning – “do you want to buy?” It’s a fear based phrase used when salespeople are scared to ask the real question. And customers have been trained to recognize it. The only times I’ve used that phrase since are when I’m training people on what NOT to do. But it’s far from the only “sales word” combination that is used in selling – and take it from me, if you’re using them, they’re hurting you.
Earn Your Business means that I want you to buy, I’m probably willing to discount to beat the band, and I’m too chicken to ask you to buy.
Substituting Paperwork or Agreement for Contract means that I’m just insulting my customer’s intelligence. They know a contract when they see it.
Same with substituting Investment for Cost or Price. That’s not just cheese; that’s moldy Cheez Whiz.
I want the last shot at the price means that the price I just gave you means nothing; it also calls into question the credibility of everything that I’ve just said.
Bid means that I expect you to have multiple vendors, even if you haven’t thought of that.
All of these phrases interrupt, and worse, get between, a natural comfortable dialogue between you and your customer. That’s bad. There are more, of course; I covered a lot of them in my book, Sell Like You Mean It!, and I’ll be covering a bunch more in my new book. Here are a couple of general rules, though, if you want to eliminate sales words from your vocabulary:
Any word or phrase designed to disguise the true meaning of what you’re saying is something you shouldn’t say. Euphemisms are deadly in sales.
Any word or phrase that doesn’t feel like part of natural conversation should be eliminated. If it doesn’t feel natural to you, it won’t feel natural to the customer.
Once upon a time, in the industrial laundry business, I had a sales manager who was convinced that there was a magic list of words that, if he taught them to us, would win every sale. Debriefs with this guy were frustrating because if you lost the sale, you first had to go through the ‘word interrogation’ – “Did you say this? Did you say that?”
The truth is that there are no magic words in sales that will win the sale, and don’t let anyone tell you that there are. Learning the customer’s needs, matching your products with those needs in a comfortable and natural dialogue, and asking (and yes, even persuading) the customer to buy, are the things that lead to sales success.
