It’s How You Say It

You might say, “We need to be profitable. We need a win-win deal.” As much as I agree with the statement, it isn’t what you say as much as how you say it. You might be better off saying, “We want to make sure you achieve the outcomes we’ve discussed up to this point, and we don’t want you to invest more or less than you need to. Can I go back over the investments we are going to make to ensure you achieve your goals?”

When your prospect rejects your request for a meeting, the words you speak maybe, “I promise I won’t take a lot of your time.” In that statement, you have conceded that you don’t believe what you want to share is worth your dream client’s time, providing them with an easy “no.” Better might be, “What I have to share with you is valuable, even if you never do business with us. I promise I won’t waste one minute of your time, and you will find it valuable.” This addresses the prospect’s real concern.

Salespeople have been known to speak poorly of their competitors. I have heard them say, “There is no way they are profitable at their pricing, and that isn’t a sustainable business model.” And yet, they have been in business for decades and show no signs of extinction. There is a better way (and one I wrote about in Eat Their Lunch: Winning Customers Away from Your Competition): “We know them well. We have friends there. They do good work, but we have wildly different ideas about the business model. Can I share with you what makes us different?”

Win customers away from your competition. Check out Eat Their Lunch

Because sales is conversations and commitments, one should work very hard at choosing words that make those conversations valuable and useful, earning the right to go from conversation to conversation by linking together the commitments necessary to go from target to close (as found in The Lost Art of Closing: Winning the 10 Commitments That Drive Sales).