“Don’t Talk About Yourself” is the theme of today’s newsletter.
Consider this: If you talk about yourself, there’s something like a 1% chance your customer will care about what you’re saying. But if you talk about your customer, there’s a 100% chance your customer will care about it.
Hmmm… tough choice… talk about yourself, or talk about your customer?
Read the newsletter – Sales Rule #1: Don’t Talk About Yourself
A sales pitch is written ahead of time, before you meet with your customer, but when you Ditch the Pitch, the story is created as you engage in conversation with your customer.
As the sales conversation unfolds, you’re not exactly sure what the story will be, and things are said that don’t seem to fit into any story. But as the story takes shape, you start to notice that many of the things said earlier in the conversation now do fit into a story. You are writing your sales story backwards.
Please have a look at this weeks newsletter, and please share your comments.
No one listens to long, drawn out sales pitches, yet so many salespeople still use this odious practice (You’ve probably hung up on a telemarketer before he could come up for air within the last week, right?). Don’t be part of this problem! Break off your monologuing by learning the One-Paragraph Rule.
Steve writes about the rule in this week’s newsletter, It’s time for a break (The one-paragraph rule).
We can all thank Steve’s brother for developing the One-Paragraph Rule – Thanks, Phil! And, more importantly, we can all use it to improve our sales conversations.
“The quieter you become, the more you can hear.”
– Ram Dass
Every second you are talking in a sales conversation is a second you are not listening to your customer. You are listening to yourself. Use words sparingly, returning to “input mode” as quickly as possible, giving yourself the chance to be alert and notice things that can drive your reactions.
I’m always impressed by how infrequently stage improvisers interrupt each other. One reason for this is that these actors are much more focused on listening and observing than on talking. Their mouths wait for their ears and eyes, and this extra focus on input makes it easier for them to exchange the focus of the scene between themselves.
Contrast this with business meetings where people are more interested in getting their points out than they are interested in listening to others. People are constantly starting sentences in the middle of other people’s sentences, and people are not alert to cues from colleagues that could help communication.
Sell like the stage improviser, not like that obnoxious guy you work with who is always interrupting people in meetings. The quieter you become, the more you can hear.
Imagine you are in a conversation with a customer, and there is something you really want to say, but you can’t find a way to fit it in the conversation.
What should you do?
Change the subject so you can say it?
Raise your hand to get your customer’s attention?
Write it on your palm so you don’t forget it?
My answer: Leave it in your pocket. Don’t say it, because your customer won’t hear it anyway.
Have a look at today’s newsletter, Sales tip – Leave things in your pocket.
One of the most telling differences between a sales pitch and a sales conversation is this: With a sales pitch you write your story ahead of time, even before you meet with your customer. When you ditch the pitch and create a sales conversation, you let the story emerge as you gather input and create a collaborative dialogue.
Talking about this, a friend said, “Giving a sales pitch is like exhaling without inhaling.” I loved that. We can’t breathe without inhaling first, and we can’t have a real sales conversation unless we let input from our customers affect what we say.
Consider also that exhaling is known as expiration, and inhaling is known as inspiration. Ditch the pitch, and let your customers words, actions and situation inspire you to create an engaging, productive sales conversation that brings you and your customer closer together.
P.S. Here’s a post of mine published yesterday on tompeters.com. Is super-targeted, personalized web marketing making people want to buy, or is it making them feel like they’re being stalked?
Sales people will benefit greatly if they can employ the most fundamental rule of stage improvisation: Saying yes
Actors are able to improvise scenes collaboratively because they continually affirm what the other person says or does. They don’t always literally say, “Yes,” but they build on each other, never fighting each other.
The amazing thing about saying yes, affirming and building what another says in a conversation, is that it creates fluidity in the scene. There are no roadblocks, only clear avenues.
If you think about what your customer senses in a sales conversation, one of the things he senses is the rhythm and the fluidity of the conversation. He many not consciously sense it, but much the same way that someone could be sitting in a restaurant with friends, completely engaged in conversation but still tapping his foot to music on in the background, your customer feels the flow of the conversation.
People sense pace, tempo, and what jazz players call the groove, very naturally. When the groove is off, or the pace is stilted, we sense it. Imagine what happens if, while the guy is tapping his foot in the restaurant, the band messes up the timing of the song and the rhythm gets off track. A shiver would run through his body, because he has been feeling the flow, and the flow just tripped.
Saying yes keeps a conversation fluid. Imagine what your customer feels like if you continually affirm the direction he wants to go in during a conversation, or if you continually acknowledge the topics he wants to focus on and the things he wants to say. He’ll feel the flow.
You don’t literally need to say, “Yes” to everything your customer says. That, of course, would sound stupid. What you want to do if affirm and honor what he says, and not try to resist him or deny anything he brings to the table.
Because if you do resist or deny, he’ll feel the song jump, as if the needle on a turntable got bumped. And he’ll notice that.
Yes, that’s the title of this week’s newsletter: Get rid of your but
Curious? Check it out. (And then come back here and leave a comment)
It’s hard to be in business and not find yourself frequently frustrated by things that customers say. Customers misunderstand your product after speaking with you for ten minutes about it. They reap great benefits from your product, but then report that it is “ok.” You go out of your way to help customers, and in the next conversation they say everything but “thanks.”
Our natural inclination is to focus on how our customer is “wrong” or “doesn’t get it.” Well, yes, your customer is often wrong, and often doesn’t get it. But, as far as your customer is concerned, everything she says is true.
The only response you can have when your customer says something “wrong” is to accept that, although it may be wrong, it is true. It is tempting to fight you customer’s truth, denying it, arguing against it, resisting it, but that won’t get you anywhere.
If you focus on denying and resisting your customer’s truth, you won’t be able to see a clear way out of this truth to a better truth. Let’s imagine that a customer says that she thinks a competitor’s product is as good as yours, but you know, with 100% certainty, that your product will work better for her than the competitor’s. Should you focus on the fact that she is wrong, or focus on understanding her version of the truth? Which will make it easier for you to deal with the situation? Which will make it easier for her to deal with you?
When your customer says something you don’t like, recognize the new reality. Recognize your customer’s truth. Then, you will be in a much better position to help your customer shift from her current idea of what is true to a different truth.
Yoga practice is filled with balance poses. As you first learn these poses your concentration is focused 100% on the physical requirements of balancing. You find yourself moving your arms around and tensing your muscles, trying to keep only 50% of your weight on each side of the mid-line.
Then, you eventually learn to see balance in a new way. The physical requirements of balancing never go away, but you begin to see that mindfulness is the most important, overriding key to your balance. You begin to notice that you wobble and fall not because your leg lost its strength, but because your mind did. Your balance feels different every time you practice – some days you’re not very “balancy,” to quote one of my teachers – but you begin to realize that your readiness to be focused and present on a given day are what most influence your balance.
Tree pose (know as “vrksasana” in Sanskrit) is one of the most common balancing poses in yoga. You stand on one leg, driving it down to the ground while your head reaches to the sky. The heel of your raised leg pushes into your standing thigh which, in turn, pushes back on your heel. Your eyes focus on one point in front of you. You breathe. And your ability to hold this pose with grace and calm depends on how well you stay present in all of this. Almost every time I start to fall out of a simple balancing posture like tree pose, I realize that my mind has wandered. But I have also learned that I can usually regain my balance once if I am able to regain my mindfulness.
A sales conversation is like tree pose. There are many ways you can fall, and you are often challenged to stay in balance. You are constantly alert to new information from your customer and the environment around you, requiring constant micro-adjustments. Distractions can enter your mind, at any time and from any place, challenging your focus. But at any point in a sales conversation, no matter what happens, you can always improve your balance with mindfulness. The best way to hold your balance a sales conversation successfully is stay focused and present, aware of everything, not distracted by anything.
So, in your next sales conversation, be in tree pose. Stay present, and you will not only keep your conversational balance, you will have a more productive relationship-building encounter with your customer.
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In addition to writing, I spend most of my work time helping companies unleash their potential by creating better connections with their customers. This happens through my speaking events and through Yastrow & Company consulting engagements, where my team and I help companies figure out who they intend to be in the future, and then engage the entire company in creating that future through strong "We" customer relationships.
Before starting Yastrow & Company in the mid-90s I was vice-president of resort marketing for Hyatt Hotels. My experiences in the hotel business showed me clearly that most marketing doesn’t happen in the marketing department. Customers are paying attention to all interactions with a company, not just the promises made in traditional "marketing communications."
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