Improvising sales conversations – ditching the pitch – isn’t difficult, if you form the right habits. In today’s newsletter, The Seven Ditch the Pitch Habits, I share an overview of those habits.
Like the rest of our lives, practice and continued use is the key to creating great habits. The best time to start practicing these habits? Now!
Read the newsletter: The Seven Ditch the Pitch Habits
My newsletter today is a 90-second video. Here’s the message:
Ditching the pitch requires you to improvise, but don’t worry: You are an awesome improviser.
In fact, it’s much more natural for you to improvise than it is for you to deliver a sales pitch. You’ve been improvising for your entire life.
Link to the video: You Are an Awesome Improviser
Enjoy the video!
Want to sell more? Don’t Think So Much is the topic of today’s newsletter.
And … you’ll see how the director of comedy studies at Second City and a professor of otolaryngology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine arrive at the same conclusions.
Today’s newsletter, Everything your customer says is true, reminds us that the customer is not always right, but even when the customer is wrong we need to figure out how to deal with it.
You can get frustrated, you can try to tell the customer he is wrong, or you can recognize his reality and then work from there. Guess which works better …
I recently ran a sales workshop for lawyers from a successful Chicago firm. One of the attorneys said, “I have a hard time explaining what I do. It’s pretty technical, and by the time I finish describing it I’ve usually confused the person.”
In response, a more senior lawyer, who also happens to be one of the biggest ‘rainmakers’ at the firm, said, “If someone asks me what I do, I just say that I’m a lawyer. I don’t offer any details. Then, they usually ask me to tell them more. At that point, they’re interested, so I can give them some more information.”
The Second City Almanac of Improvisation says “the more you tell the audience, the less they can imagine.” (page 160) This is a wonderful maxim for sales and marketing. Brochures stuffed with copy, hour-long fact-filled presentations, massive PowerPoint decks … they’re all based on the idea that the job of sales and marketing is to explain a story to customers.
But explaining a story is usually not best the best way to communicate that story. In order to communicate successfully, it is important for the customer to become engaged in the story, and a monologue won’t engage her. A dialogue in which she participates has a much better chance of engaging her and creating successful communication.
Resist the temptation to explain. Remember that your customer isn’t all that interested in your story, and so a detailed explanation is likely to lose her attention. Make it easy for her to participate in the conversation.
View your sales and marketing interactions not as opportunities to explain your story but as opportunities to engage your customers deeper. Don’t over explain … and give your customers a chance to imagine.
Did you ever notice how some salespeople are really quick on their feet? Like seasoned improvisational actors, they always know exactly what to say. They react in the moment, but it never seems forced or nervous. It always feels natural.
One of the best ways to be quick on your feet is to think “input before output.” One of the reasons that the actors improvising at venues like The Second City are so good is that they are completely alert and awake to everything going on around them. As The Second City Almanac of Improvisation says, “everything each character does or says should affect the other characters onstage.” Every new piece of information has the chance of influencing the scene, so the actors don’t want to miss anything.
This is also the secret to a sales person being quick on her feet. It’s not that she’s wittier, or smarter than other people … it’s that she’s more alert. She notices every nuance of what her customers say, and considers every relevant piece of information in her environment.
The key to being quick on your feet isn’t in your feet, or your mouth. It’s in your eyes and ears. Pay attention, focusing on input before output, and you’ll be surprised at the amazing things you say.
(This also true in the world of marketing. Most marketing departments spend much more time on what they are going to say than on what their customers say to them)
I was having lunch with my friend Hoh Kim, a PR professional from Korea who specializes in crisis management.
As we were talking about ditching the pitch, we started to explore the question of “talking points” … in order to Ditch the Pitch, do business people needed to abandon the concept of talking points, whether they are executives dealing with crisis management, sales people selling a product, or anyone else who needs to communicate a message?
The answer is a clear “no.” As I wrote in this newsletter, Tear Up Your Elevator Pitch, you don’t need to throw away every part of your story, you just need to avoid delivering it as pre-scripted monologue that it not adapted to the specific nuances of the conversation you are in. The trick with talking points, as with all the little pieces of your elevator pitch once you’ve torn it up, is to weave them into the conversation at appropriate times and in appropriate ways.
Improvising actors call this “hitting the beats.” They may have certain ideas they want to put into a scene, but they have to do it in a way where the timing and delivery seem spontaneous and extemporaneous. A perfect place to see this idea in action is HBO’s show Curb Your Enthusiasm, which is largely improvised. The cast agrees on certain events, lines or turning points in the scene, and they improvise their words, actions and emotions to hit those “beats.” In one classic scene, Larry David and Rosie O’Donnell have decided that they will argue over a check in a restaurant. Watch how beautifully they improvise on this “talking point,” making it seem like “it just happened.”
Crisis managers and sales people, of course, don’t want to get beat up by Rosie O’Donnell on the floor of a restaurant! What they want to do is bring their talking points into a conversation without seeming forced, pre-scripted or insensitive to the conversation they are participating in at that moment.
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)
I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about improvisation as I’ve been writing my new book, Ditch the Pitch. As part of this process, I recently interviewed Douglas R.Ewart, a creative musician, who is also a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
His ensemble, Douglas Ewart and the Inventions, plays completely improvised concerts, with no prior conversation among the players about what they are going to play. When I interviewed Douglas, the first thing he said was, “improvisation is a daily activity. Crossing the street requires improvisation. Even when you cross with the light, you have to be alert, and you have to judge if the person driving a car is being mindful of you. If not, you have to adjust. You improvise.”
Douglas Ewart’s point: Your life, even your business life, is filled each day with situations that may not seem novel, but are. You will not be able to deal with those situations unless you are able to see each situation as the unique, one-of-a-kind situation that it is, and act in a unique, one-of-a-kind way.
Ditch the Pitch. Every time you interact with a customer, even if you had interacted with this customer 100 times before, and even if you have talked about this subject 1000 times before, is a chance to improvise a new, fresh, spontaneous, one-of-a-kind experience for you and your customer. Don’t miss the opportunity!
Let’s face it, life can be unpredictable. So can selling.
Randomness rules our lives, but if we are ready to improvise, and ditch the pitch, we can “ride the randomness” and adjust to whatever life (or a sales conversation) throws at us.
Have a look at today’s newsetter, Improvisation: The Cure for Unpredictability. And then share your random thoughts with comments below!
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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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