Powerful Word Combinations and Not So Much

When I was coming up, Steve Martin was the comedian to which every guy was listening. (Now, my son and his friends are equally obsessed with Dane Cook). Steve Martin made us laugh just by the way he told his stories.

"Just landed the new company vehicle at the airport last night. . .

(crowd roars)

. . . yes, it's hard to land a station wagon at the airport."

His trick wasn't always the content but the word combinations he chose. A lesson learned by Dane Cook:

"Never, ever leave your shopping cart while you are in the grocery store. Someone might walk in - see your stuff. . . 'Jackpot! This is exactly the sh** that I wanted.'"

Both comics have hand picked the right words that surprise and delight us. In the Steve Martin example, he understood that a "station wagon" is much funnier than "car". Dane Cook's use of the word "jackpot" conjures up the sense that the shopper has won Mega Millions.

While most of us will never produce a comedy album, we would do well to understand the critical importance of our word combinations. Just like an audience at a comedy club, your prospect or customer responds to the words you choose to convey your message. One expert at this subject is Tom Freese, author of Question Based Selling (http://www.qbsresearch.com/).

Tom suggests that when you reach a prospect you ask,

"Did I catch you at a bad time?"

Most people will respond that you didn't catch them at a bad time because people are inherently helpful and will try to make you feel comfortable when it appears that you aren't. If the prospect responds that you did catch them at a bad time, Tom recommends that you say,

"I'm sorry about that. When would be a good time to call?"

When the prospect tells you what time to call, you have an appointment!

Word combinations in sales have been a topic for decades, of course. We all know to say, "Would you prefer black or green?" instead of saying, "Which color would you like?" Perhaps, less discussed are the word combinations that decimate your progress and leave you stranded with nowhere to go.

In my business - radio advertising - sellers will typically submit a proposal according to specifications requested by a media buyer. Then, they will call the media buyer numerous times in an effort to make sure that their proposal is included on the "buy".

Following up on proposals that we've made is a necessary and critical part of all sales. Doing it like this is the kiss of death:

"Hi Pam, it's Tim from 105.1 The Frog! How are you?"

"Fine."

"Great, great. Listen, Pam, I was calling to follow up on the proposal that I sent for the Circuit City buy."

"Okay."

"Did you get all the pages?"

"Yeah, I think so."

"Okay, yeah, good. So, what do you think? Does it look okay?"

"I haven't spent much time with it but it looks okay."

"That's great. Okay, thanks a lot. Do you have any questions?"

"No."

"Okay, thanks a lot. Talk to you soon."

Sellers are always calling to follow up, or check in or touch base (or even touch bases here in the South). If possible, I would completely ban the use of all of these worthless word combinations. In our example above, the seller has made a phone call that has zero value to the recipient and has received nothing of value in exchange.

Here is another approach:

"Hi Pam, it's Tim with 105.1 The Frog!"

"Hi"

"I know you are busy working on the Circuit City buy and I am confident that you received my entire 6 page submission. The reason for the call is that since the time I sent the submission over I have discovered new information that indicates my radio station is even better for Circuit City than I thought!"

"Really?"

"Yes. It turns out that my listeners are 40% more likely than the market average to purchase at least $1,000 worth of electronics per year. Would you like me to send this research to you?"

"Please do. The client is really looking for this advertising schedule to impact their Father's Day sale and anything you have in the way of research will help us make the right decisions on whom to include on the buy."

"You got it. As you know, our promotional team spent quite a bit of time working out a specific program that ties in with the Father's Day plans of the client. Did you have any questions about how the promotion will work?"

"No. What you wrote seems pretty clear. Did we need to buy your proposed schedule in order to get the promotion or can we trim it back?"

"In order to get the full benefit of the promotion, the station requires a purchase of at least the amount I proposed."

"Okay. We should have this wrapped up in the next couple of days."

"Great! Thanks very much. Please call me with any other questions. This business is important to the station and to me personally."

"Okay. Thanks for the call."

In this instance, the seller has added value to the process by having "new information" that is relevant to the process. The buyer is interested in the information because she is trying to do the very best job for the client. The seller earned the right to have a meaningful conversation because of the research he has done on behalf of the client. As a result, he gets to include powerful word combinations about A) how his promotion ties in with the marketing objectives of the client, B) the required financial commitment and C) the importance of the business.

Regardless of the industry in which you sell there is never an appropriate time to call the prospect or buyer without bringing relevant information to their attention - whether it's new information, a clarification or a reminder of a deadline.

Don't be the person to whom Steve Martin was referring when he said,

"Some people have a way with words and others. . . .don't have way, I guess."

It's a Sales Blogger Universe

The very best sellers are always looking to get even better. In the not too distant past, the best way to do this was to read books about sales and join sales networking organizations. Those are still great ways, of course, but the best way to accelerate your learning is to get on the internet and start to explore the myriad sites and blogs devoted to sales.

That's what I've been doing and I am pleased to recommend Brad Trnavsky's Sales Management 2.0. Brad collects submissions from all comers, culls them down and publishes the very best ones. Check out his Carnival of Sales ( http://www.salesmanagement20.com/profiles/blog/list?pageSize=20) and find out how one blogger has uncovered the sales secrets of The Matrix!

Think times are getting tougher for sellers? Colin Wilson agrees and offers some tips on differentiating oneself from the pack in his blog (http://www.firstborder.com/sales-blog/2008/05/20/time-to-differentiate-yourself/).

Sales is about human interaction - the art of finding those who might be interested in your products and services, getting in front of them and persuading them to your point of view. As society shifts and evolves, the challenges for sellers change and the approach needs to change, too. Staying on top of the latest thinking is not a luxury for today's top sellers, it is a necessity.

Building Relationships

Ask anybody and they will tell you that the ability to build relationships with key decision makers is a critical sales skill. Regretably, sellers hide behind this concept more than any other to disguise the fact that they are either wasting time or have no idea how to move a sale forward.

More time is wasted in the alleged pursuit of "building relationships" than any other sales step.

"Why are we making this sales call, Bill?"

"We're going to find out a little about their needs for next year and take the time to build the relationship a little."

"Certainly, there's value in building the relationship. Can you describe for me how we are going to do that on this call?"

"I thought we would spend some time talking about his family and invite him to play some golf with us."

"And this will build a relationship with him?"

"Well, it's a start. I mean, in order to build a relationship we are going to have to spend quite a bit of time with him and get to know him."

"What if we spend all this time building a relationship with him and it turns out he doesn't like either one of us? What if he likes us but doesn't really want to do business with us? In what way can we be assured that building a relationship with this guy is going to make a difference to our company?"

Don't get me wrong. It's true that people do business with people they like. When everything is equal, a buyer is going to buy from someone that has established themselves as a trusted resource.

To me, the relationship that you want to be building is one that indicates that "everything" is not equal and there is no need for a tie breaker. The way to do that? Establish a value for your product that exceeds the value the prospect assigns to your competition. I guarantee that this will trump the occasional golf game or tickets to Seinfeld.

To establish a value for your products you must start doing business with a prospect as soon in the relationship as possible. This has multiple advantages:

1) The relationship that you are building is focused from the beginning on the business that you do together. Relationships built on this foundation are stronger and more long lasting. (This may seem counterintuitive until you consider that companies almost always do business with your customers long after you leave the company)

2) You always have a reason to call or get together and build the relationship because of the business you do together. Who wants to keep getting calls from strangers asking them to get together for drinks or lunch or the ball game?

3) The business you do together automatically gives you permission to build relationships throughout the organization. If you didn't do business, the only relationship you would be working on would be the one with the key decision maker. Sounds okay until the key decision maker is transferred and the junior executive, whom you have never met, becomes the key decision maker.

While it's not always possible to do business right away, it often is. Find something small that you can do together that won't require sixteen proposals and four meetings in the executive boardroom. Still not possible? Maybe you are committed to a charity and you can find a way for your prospect to get involved. They could use the project as a way to put their company in a favorable light while you use it to start the critical relationship building.

Worst case scenario? You become a customer of the prospect in some small way.

By all means, let's build relationships with all of our best prospects and let's keep in mind that the reason we want the relationship in the first place is because we want to do business!

Best Characteristic of a Seller

An interesting discussion broke out the other day about the characteristics of great account managers. Many traits were listed during a brainstorming session and then the group voted as individuals for those traits each thought was most important to being a successful account manager. In the end, we tallied up the votes to see which characteristics were named most often.

Interestingly, being smart or savvy didn't end up getting enough votes to make it a Top 5 candidate. This struck me as odd and I had to spend some time contemplating it before deciding if the group was correct or if they didn't recognize the trait in themselves and therefore decided it lacked importance. After all, if one thought of oneself as being a great account manager but knew from experience that one was more likely to get a call from Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader than from Jeopardy!, one might not want to agree that smarts plays an important role in selling.

Perhaps, being smart is more important in some sales jobs than in others. The group with whom I had the discussion sells advertising and although product knowledge can be complicated in the advertising business, its understanding doesn't require a mensa candidate. A friend of mine sells pharmaceuticals and I think he is smarter than your average bear and probably needs to be smarter than an advertising account manager. Maybe, the amount of intelligence a seller needs is directly proportionate to the smartness of his prospects. If you call on doctors, you need to be able to keep up your end of the conversation!

The characteristics the group thought were most important included the ability to be social/friendly or a good networker, strong product knowledge, understanding client's needs, high degree of honesty/integrity, persuasiveness, determination and passion. Of these, the one characteristic that I believe is the best indicator of an account manager's likely success is passion.

Nobody persuades like the passionate story teller. Take the television evangelist, for example. He whispers and he rants and he cries and he invokes and people send him money. The purpose of the money? So that he can afford to continue to appear on television and persuade viewers to send him more money.

Another great example of a passionate story teller is the politician. They need your vote and your money in order to make the world a better place! Without your support, the people will not have the advantage of their wonderfulness.

When a prospect has been qualified, only the passionate believer will have the drive to get an appointment with the decision maker despite multiple setbacks. Only the passionate believer will then have the courage to stand on the prospect's desk and shout, "Wrong!" when the prospect foolishly attempts to suggest that the seller's product isn't right for them. Only the passionate believer relives his failed sales calls with his wife and children at the dinner table and only the passionate believer wakes up in the middle of the night with an idea that gives him another valid business reason to call the prospect.

Yes, give me the passionate believer and watch us blaze across the sky in a flaming chariot of success!

Don't be incredible

Sellers expect that the credibility they seek originates with complete knowledge about their own products. Many times, they think that a great elevator pitch or the ability to wax poetic about the features and benefits of their products will cause a prospect to swoon. While a lack of knowledge about one's own products would certainly deem you not credible (incredible?), the opposite doesn't build credibility so much as it keeps you in the game.

The only way to build credibility with a prospect or customer is to demonstrate knowledge about their products and services. The days of asking for and receiving an appointment for the purpose of doing a Customer Needs Analysis are over. Prospects and customers expect you to know about their business before you walk in the door.

This doesn't mean that you have to be as expert as they are and it doesn't mean that you need to do a 100 hours of research to get up to speed. What it does mean is that you shouldn't be surprised by information that was available to you in a news story or that is detailed in a press release on the customer's website.

The modern sales call begins with the seller double checking his research for accuracy.

"This is what I learned while doing my research. Are these initiatives your most important?"

This approach takes one's credibility from zero to something and has the added benefit of kickstarting a series of questions that serves as one's Customer Needs Analysis.

Do you want to take your credibility up another notch in the same meeting? Brainstorm a couple of ideas before you get to the meeting. If you get the answers you're looking for from the prospect regarding their most important initiatives, go ahead and let them know what you're thinking. Always couch the idea as "half-baked" or "partially formed" so if the prospect doesn't think it's for them, they don't a) dismiss you entirely and b) think that the idea you're mentioning is your best possible work.

Sellers always start from a position of zero credibility with prospects. At the first possible opportunity the professional account manager must move that needle at least one tick in the upward direction.

Persistence without Value

There is a lot of data available for sales people to justify their persistence. Sales trainers quote facts such as: Most sales are made during the fifth or sixth sales call but most sales people give up after three. When sales managers interview they want to hear candidates describe themselves as persistent and determined.

"I never give up."

"I am relentless."

"My persistence is more persistent than your persistence."

But, what is it like to be on the other side of that equation. How does the prospect feel when a sales person keeps coming after them like a bull in the streets Pamplona? Maybe my experience can shed a little light.

I was selling radio advertising in Charlotte for an Oldies station. We did a great job of reaching adults 30-60 years old. Most of our listeners were homeowners in the acquisition stage of life. We knew that they bought furniture, electronics, children's clothing, etc. I was monitoring one of the other stations in town when I heard Eastside Lawn and Patio advertising their outdoor furniture and accessories. I decided to drop in while I was out seeing other customers.

Upon arriving, I took a quick tour around the store to familiarize myself with the merchandise. When a sales person approached, I asked the name of the manager. Bob was the answer and yes he was in charge of making the advertising decisions. While I had a salesperson handy, I confirmed my suspicions about the target market and asked if they were happy with the current advertising on my competitor. The salesperson wasn't sure but Bob was right over there and good luck.

Bob disappeared around a corner before I could get to him and his administrative assistant told me that he was too busy to see me right now but go ahead and drop off any information I would like to leave. I left a basic media kit that described our station and the audience it delivered and left. Later, at the station, I called to speak with Bob so that I could get an appointment. Bob was not available.

Bob wasn't available the day after that or the day after that. The tricks of the trade started to make their appearance. I called early and late hoping to catch Bob answering his own phone. I stopped leaving messages so that it wouldn't appear that I was calling every day. I dropped in at least once a week. Many times, I saw Bob just out of reach but he always instructed the gate keepers to give me a stiff arm in the chest.

Apparently, Bob just didn't get that I could help him grow his business. I knew it as well as I knew anything. He was a qualified prospect that was already convinced that radio advertising worked. All of my training told me that I must never give up on this guy.

Then, one day Bob is on the showroom floor and he is all alone. Before he knew what was happening, I had snuck up on him, "Hi, Bob, Tim Rohrer with Magic 96 radio. I would love to speak with you about ways that we can help your business grow."

I couldn't believe it! Bob was inviting me back to his office. This was it. I was going to tell Bob all about my station and the dozens of clients that we had helped achieve their marketing goals. I would do a needs analysis and customize a program for Eastside Lawn and Patio! I sit down where Bob indicates and he says,

"You know, you're getting to be a real pain in the ass."

Uh, this wasn't going as I envisioned.

Back at the station, Chuck told me that it was a good thing that the prospect called me a pain in the ass. But, even then, I knew it wasn't good. Unfortunately, I didn't know exactly why until many years later.

Prospects don't always want or need to change vendors. A qualified prospect may meet your criteria, but your company may not meet theirs. That is true whether you are selling advertising or furniture or envelopes or computer networks. When a prospect perceives no reason to choose you, it means that you have not established the value of your product or service.

While it doesn't feel good to admit it, persistence without value equals "pain in the ass".