It continues to amaze and amuse me watching sales people operate in selling environment. So what are they doing that amazes and amuses me? Sales people are complicating their offers with all types of complexity.
Okay, yes, I admit it – I have done it too! Sometimes we get too smart for our good and think we need to add all kind of information, variations, variables, formulas, and other mind-numbing ideas for our prospects and customers. This is just a bad move. I know I have lost sales opportunities due to complexity of ideas or solutions.
The key to more success is to keep things simple. Simple influences the sale more than any form of complexity. Simple offerings, simple presentations, simple pricing, and simple understanding of situations all have a positive influence on the sale. Stop with the complexity already! Here are five areas you can add simple and win more sales.
Five Areas Needing Simple
- Simple Presentations – This is critical if you want to get any business. People – not PhD’s or machines – make buying decisions and they need to understand what you are offering. Simple solutions are highly valued by the decision makers, since they can explain it to others.
- Getting the Appointment – This one is a bit tricky. You have to get the attention of the decision maker with something provocative yet, simple enough for them to ask…”How do you do that?” You must practice your phone interview / cold call technique and have it down cold.
- Simple Offers – Here we have a serious need for compliance. Many sales people have a tendency of offering everything in their bag hoping to get a bite or a contract. The truth is when we put too many things in the offering, we confuse the customer. Look, the customer does not know or understand everything you have to offer, so narrow the field with sensible offerings that solve their problem and can be explained as a benefit rather than product or service.
- Pricing – Here is where some “smart” person (usually an internally focused individual) decided to use a math formula with multiple variables in the pricing sheet of the proposal. This is complex to the customer, unless they are math professors or math majors in school. Make the pricing simple and easy to understand. Simple gets more business “yes’s” than complex.
- Words and Jargon – I know two people who thought it was more important to use every word in the dictionary rather than connect their communication to people. While they enjoyed talking above everyone they met – it was no surprise their performance suffered due to their inability to relate to others very well. Use words others can understand and use to create their own scripts of success using your solutions. Simple wins in communication too.
There you have my experience on making things simple for your customer to understand, make decisions, recommend to a buying committee, influence others to buy, make ROI easy to calculate and simple for a customer to say yes.
Voss Graham
Latest posts by Voss Graham (see all)
- Help Me Target my Content for You – March 22, 2016
- Six Steps to Seven Figures – January 3, 2016
- Play a Bigger Game in 2016 – December 29, 2015
- Improve Your Success Using Clear Communication – September 14, 2015
- Seven Keys When Handling Objections – July 12, 2015