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Morning Column
Communication Tips to Click with Your Client
By Dianna Booher
Prospects size you up personally while making their buying decision. "Are
you credible?" "Competent?" "Interested in their situation?" The
following tips will help you avoid the blank stare of disengagement.
1) Consider Your Demeanor-Don't Confuse Boring for Sincere
Create flair and drama as you present a new idea, product, or service.
Wanting to shed the huckster image of 40 or 50 years ago, some sales
professionals have gone to the other extreme, and removed all animation,
inflection, and energy from their delivery style in an effort to come across
as more "sincere."
Instead of sincere, the result is lackluster and boring.
If you're not passionate about your proposal, neither will your buyers.
Never confuse genuine enthusiasm for lack of professionalism. If you want to
see the passion and power to move a world to action, watch the delivery
styles of world leaders. Don't let a passionless demeanor destroy your
prospect's confidence in your offering.
2) Distinguish Between Agreeing and Understanding
Agreeing and understanding have similar "symptoms" - smiling, nodding head,
supportive statements. Make sure your buyer knows that you're communicating
that you understand as opposed to agree with a viewpoint or issue. Not
recognizing this difference can lead to opposite conclusions - and big
disappointments and misunderstandings.
3) Use a Positioning Structure Rather Than a Pitch
Canned and formula presentations primarily make a product pitch. That is,
they "tell all" about your organization and summarize one or a few key
products or services (or product or service lines).
A positioning presentation, on the other hand, focuses on how your
organization and your product or service differs from others - how it
uniquely meets the buyer's needs or situation. It focuses on targeted areas
of interest where your unique core strength meets the buyer's criteria, and
then compares that strength to what the competitor offers.
Unless you present the same product or service to the same prospect base
with the same needs, it's best to use the positioning structure for your
presentations.
4) Never Just "Walk Through" Your Proposal - Give a Guided Tour
Your buyers will beat you to the end every time. While you're still on page
two, your buyers will be on page eight, checking out the pricing section.
In fact, your proposal will compete with you for attention. Instead,
carefully select which parts of your proposal to present orally. Then refer
buyers to a specific page only after you make your key point about that
page.
5) Ask What Your Buyer Knows Rather Than Tell What You Know
"What do you know about my organization?" allows your buyers to give their
perceptions. You then can fill in the gaps, clarifying and correcting, if
necessary. When you lead with, "Let me tell you a little about our
organization," you're at a distinct disadvantage for several reasons:
You're doing all the talking and setting yourself up in lecture mode as the
person with all the answers. You may be providing information already
known, or you may be elaborating on what the buyer doesn't care about
knowing. And you have no way of knowing if the customer really understands
what you've said - and most important - what your organization offers.
6) Tell Failure Stories
There is power in telling case histories about clients who didn't have
stellar success with your product or service-if the reason for their lack of
success was due to their own decision making, not your product or service.
It underscores what other customers did wrong (for example, waiting too long
to buy, not using your design team to install and customize their product,
not buying a warranty) and helps the current prospect not repeat the
mistake. Telling about failures of other product users adds credibility to
your success stories.
One caution: Don't use names with failure stories, because prospects may
fear you'll tell others of their own mistakes later if they buy.
7) Make Statistics and Facts Experiential
People digest numbers with great difficulty. Yes, pie charts and bar graphs
help. But if you can go beyond that, do so. For example, randomly survey
your committee of buyers by asking them to raise their hands in response to
a few questions; then equate those findings to the random survey you did
previously of their entire organization. Are they typical of the rest of
the employee population? How so?
Supporting statistics lend credibility to what you say. Be sure, however,
to do all you can to help your buyers digest them.
8) Prefer Understatement to Overstatement
After a teenager came home from his first summer job interview as a grocery
stocker, his mom asked how it went. "I don't know," he said. "They gave me
one of those honesty tests, where they asked if I'd ever cheated on an exam,
if I'd ever stolen money from my parents, if I'd ever shoplifted - things
like that." He paused, looked a little concerned, then added, "I was
answering no to all those things and then I got a little worried that maybe
I wouldn't get the job - that I sounded too good to be true."
He did get the job, but it was an astute observation about human nature.
It's always more effective to let your prospect "add to" what you've
promised rather than "discount it" because it seems too good to be
believable. Present the range of results you have achieved and can
document. Generally, it is better to promise only the minimum gains.
Otherwise, you set up your client to be disappointed. If the minimum gains
are worthwhile to them, maximum gains will be the "extra" that makes them
long-term fans.
So to avoid that same blank look of disengagement in a buyer's eye, keep
these communication keys in mind. You'll be clicking with your customers in
no time.
Author of more than 40 books, Dianna Booher is CEO of Booher Consultants, a
communications training firm, offering programs in persuasive sales
presentations, winning sales proposals, strategic writing, and executive
presence. Her latest book is The Voice of Authority: 10 Communication
Strategies Every Leader Needs to Know. www.booher.com 800-342-6621.
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