Revenue Journal®

All day long, salespeople talk.

They're supposed to be selling. In other words, they are supposed to be making it easy for the customer to understand what they have to offer, to get their questions answered, and to make a buying decision.

But, unfortunately, as good as many of them think they are - and as good as you may think they are - what they are saying actually makes it difficult for the customer to understand what your company has to offer, and make a buying decision. The answers raise more questions than they answer - while leaving the original questions unanswered. And, they force the customer, who had been almost ready to buy, to back away from buying because of all the new doubts that the salesperson raised during the call. If you listened in on the calls - you would be shocked by what you heard.

Some time ago, I wrote an article about how software buyers were mired in the "skepticism swamp." It's even worse now.

If you're selling software, you have to be able to overcome the massive amount of disbelief that has built up in buyers' minds, thanks to all the promises that have been made to them - and broken. Everyone promised higher productivity, increased efficiency, and plug-and-play. HA.

What everyone delivered was installation headaches, integration nightmares, missing-in-action service, and navigation that required that you know the program intimately before you could do anything useful with it.

Today, software buyers and users consider each purchase an investment - of time and grief, as well as the money.

John Smith is a typical customer in the market for a fairly high-end product, one that requires a salesperson to finalize the deal. He has done his research on the web - he's spent hours, in fact, researching. Now he has a couple of questions for the salesperson to answer. Otherwise, he is ready to buy. He decides that the best way to get the answers he needs is to go to an industry tradeshow.

I've been interviewing "John Smiths" for a client, and one of them described what happened next, using these words:

"I had to defend my wallet and my family against The Pitch."

He was there with his wife, and as he was trying to get answers to his questions, the salesperson kept trying to close the sale.

From the customer's perspective, this is irritating. Sleazy. Totally inappropriate. You're just asking someone questions, and the whole time, they keep trying to sneak around to the side of you and grab your wallet out of your back pocket.

The phone rings. I answer it, the way I always answer it: "This is Kristin Zhivago. Can I help you?"

There is a bit of silence, then suddenly the line is alive with the sounds of a busy telemarketing boiler room. Many voices can be heard in the background, pleading, sympathizing, pushing, lying. I know exactly what is going to happen next, but because I am a professional revenue coach, dedicated to improving how people sell their products and services, I stay on the line. The person on the other end has a very thick Indian accent. So we know who is calling and where they're calling from.

"Hello, I'd like to speak to...um...Mrs. Cheerago."

Sigh. "This is Kristin Zhivago," I say agai

I'm in the midst of rewriting about 50 "sales plays" for a client. These are intranet-based instructions for salespeople making outgoing calls to potential clients. Each "sales play" describes the product or product combination being sold (the "offering"), the target audience for that offering, what's included in the offering, why the client should be interested, and suggested voicemail, phone call, and email copy that the salesperson can use when pitching the offering to a client.

Rewriting these sales plays is reminding me how impossible it is to be a salesperson who is depending on copy written by copywriters who have never had to make a cold call. The plays I'm changing, although each one is written about a different product, all use the same language. They all talk about the customer's need and the product's benefits.

Kimberley Deane makes beautiful, reasonably priced jewelry. Her photography skills are top-notch. Her website and printed materials are stunning.

The only problem is, Kimberley hates to sell. She'd rather spend most of her day creating her wares, not "selling." Most artisan entrepreneurs, especially those who open up one-person shops in order to sell what they love to create, hate to sell. Selling is a distasteful, intrusive activity. It grosses them out and causes them to break out in a cold sweat.

Kimberley wants to increase her sales, but she didn't want to have to sell in order to do it. Once I understood her problem, I was able to tell her that she doesn't need to "sell" in order to increase her sales. She just has to make it easy for people to buy from her. That was a comforting thought for Kimberley. Then we started working on exactly how she would do this.

Every day, potential buyers are calling your company for the first time. They are also calling competing companies. This is the "first contact test."

If you are like most companies, your first-time callers will be confronted with a recorded voice that tells them to "select from the following options."

They must then pay careful attention to the options presented. As the voice rattles off the choices, #2 may sound hopeful, but not quite right. They try to remember #2 while they listen to all the other options, still hoping that one of them will lead to what they need. When the voice finally gets to #9, then says "press pound to hear the menu again," they realize that none of the options were appropriate and they are not going to be able to get human help by pressing zero.

If this is how your company's current system works, and you'd like to grow your sales, scrap your system.