WHAT A 9-YEAR
OLD CAN TEACH YOU ABOUT SELLING
I recently read
a study that confirmed my suspicion that most people don't remember what we
present to them in a sales call. The data suggested that the average buyer in a
meeting will only remember one thing–one!–a week after your meeting.
Oh, and by the way:
You don't get to choose what that one thing is. Sigh.
So what have
sales professionals done about this? They have worked on "honing the
message," developing a "compelling unique advantage" and, of
course, the ultimate silver bullet: a surefire elevator pitch.
But here's what
you're fighting: A world cluttered with information, schedules, packed with
more meetings and work than a person can handle. A decision-making process with
more people involved in every choice–many of whom know little about your product
or service. No wonder so little is remembered; often your audience doesn't even
understand much about what you're offering.
What Kids Want
to Know
I have a
9-year-old daughter with spring freckles, long brown hair and blue eyes the
size of silver dollars. She asks the kinds of questions that on the surface
seem so simple:
- Daddy,
what do you do?
- Why
do people decide to hire you?
- Why
don't they hire somebody else or do it themselves?
One of the great
things about 9-year-olds: Like many buyers these days, they lack context. Any
answer that you provide has to be in a language that they can understand.
What does a
procurement specialist know about what you sell–or the IT person, or the
finance person? The challenge is this: Can you answer the three questions my
9-year-old asked, for your own business?
Hint: There are
right and wrong answers for both.
Daddy, What Do
You Do?
- Right
answer: "I help companies to grow
really fast by teaching them how to sell bigger companies much larger
orders."
- Wrong
answer: "Our company helps
develop inside of our clients a replicable and scalable process for them
to land large accounts."
Why Do People
Decide to Hire You?
- Right
answer: "We have helped lots of
companies do this before, so we are really good at it as long as they are
the right type of companies."
- Wrong
answer: "We have a proven process
for implementation that allows organizations to tailor the model to their
market, business offering and company's growth goals."
Why Don't They
Do It Themselves?
- Right
answer: "Just like when you
learned to play the piano: Mommy and I could teach a little, but we don't
know as much as your teacher, and teaching you ourselves would take a long
time and be very frustrating. Daddy is a really good teacher of how to
make bigger sales, and people want to learn how to do this as fast as they
can."
- Wrong
answer: "We are the foremost
expert in this field with over $5 billion in business that our clients
have closed using this system. Usually our clients have tried a number of
things on their own before we work together and have wanted outside help
to get better results."
In these cases,
both answers are accurate, but that doesn't make them right. In a world
in which more decisions are made with less information and context, our
responsibility is to get to as clear and memorable an answer as possible for
all of the buyers to understand.
