In her new book SNAP Selling, my colleague, Jill Konrath, offers some simple truths that are essential to engaging with prospective buyers in today’s difficult and demanding sales environment. I’ll be sharing some of her wisdom over the next several months starting with this post. Jill has a wonderful way of going beyond sales methodologies and providing real-world, immediately usable tactics to reach, engage, and sell to busy prospects.
The first simple truth: Keep it simple.
Today’s “crazy-busy” decision makers are overwhelmed with demands on their time and have no interest in anything that will make their lives more difficult. Jill shares “Your ability to eliminate complexity and effort from your prospect’s decision-making process will improve your chances for sales success.”
I agree and often see salespeople try to pack too much – and too much irrelevant – information into their initial outreach efforts (including calls, email and voice mail messages) in the hope that something will resonate and catch the buyer’s attention. Not too long ago, long sales letters, info-rich websites, and PowerPoint presentations packed with a ton of information (death by PowerPoint, anyone?) were essential components of a successful sales process.
In this age of Twitter and short-attention spans, less is definitely more and “compelling simplicity” wins. Can you get your message across in 140 characters or in a 30 second voicemail? If not, you should highly reconsider what you’re saying.
In our work finding and developing new sales opportunities for several Fortune 500 clients, I’ve begun testing the effectiveness of the initial emails we send requesting a meeting with an executive for our clients. For each “campaign”, I’ll develop one longer email and one shorter, straight- to- the- point email. In almost every case, we’ve gotten more positive responses from the shorter emails….and I think it’s because we’ve made it an easier and quicker decision for the executive. Our “time to results” has been reduced as well, which has delivered a stronger ROI for our clients.
Bottom line: Focus on getting your point across as simply, quickly, and as effectively as possible. The less time the buyer has to give you, the more important each word becomes.
