Art
Siegel

The Standard Scripted Sales Pitch Died Last Millennium

Many sales reps talk about giving a "standard sales presentation" that works best for them. For most of us, the more calls we make, more likely we are to open every call using one of our standard, proven openers. But it may be time to put a little variety into your sales talks, because The Standard Scripted Sales Pitch Died Last Millennium. 

A young man in a neat suit came into the reception area of our small office. He asked to speak with the person who buys office equipment. I said that was me.

The salesman smiled and said, "Good morning. My name is Ralph Peters with Acme Copier. (The names have been changed, but the rest of the story is true.) I am going around to the various offices in this area to introduce myself."

"Uh-huh," I responded.

Ralph continued, "We offer a full line of copiers, faxes and printers."

"Uh-huh," I repeated.

"Are you in the market for a copier at this time?"

"No, we are all set in that area," I answered.

"What about faxes? We have a new line of plain paper fax machines. They make very good copies, and you don't have to use that special roll paper."

"No, we are satisfied there, too."

"That's OK," said Ralph. "I mainly came by to introduce myself and to see if you needed anything. Let me leave you my card and if anything comes up, please give me a call."

"OK," I said, taking Ralph's card and shaking his hand.

Earlier, I said this same basic situation comes up in our office almost every week. There are plenty of variations on the theme, of course. The salespeople are male and female. Some come with their managers. Some talk to the first person they see rather than find out who does the buying. And some ask a few smart questions such as: "Do you use a laser printer now? What kind? How is it working out for you?" or "What brand of photocopier do you have? How long have you had it?"

What Is Ralph Trying To Do?

Questions like these are certainly more effective than Ralph's approach of introducing himself, but they are still not as effective as they could be. And I am not particularly motivated to buy from salespeople like these. Why not?

Let's begin with Ralph. His major thrust is to "introduce" himself and his company and to offer its services if I have a need they can fulfill. But why would I call Ralph instead of anyone else? I'm not looking for a new friend, and I already deal with more vendors than I like.

Further, the kinds of products sold by Ralph are also offered by dozens of other companies, including the Web, discount office supply companies and any of the other salespeople who regularly call on me. I can even get many of them at Sears or Costco. So I have to conclude that Ralph's sales approach is ineffective because he offers no unique benefits of buying from him.

Given the number of Ralph-like people who call on me week after week and year after year, I have to assume that their approach must work often enough to justify all of the people who make cold calls this way. How do they manage to sell anything at all? I can think of a few reasons.

Suppose Ralph had called just a few hours after our fax machine had broken, or our workload was increasing and the staff was complaining that we did not have enough laser printers, or the copier service contract was up for renewal and we were fed up with the service we were receiving from the current vendor.

In one of these cases, my bored "Uh-huh" response might have turned into something more like, "As a matter of fact, we were just talking about our clunky old fax today. As long as we have to replace it, we were thinking of looking into a plain paper type. Show me what you've got." You see, although there are many places to buy these products, shopping around takes time. So if Ralph just happens to call on me on the same day I need to buy something, he has a fair chance of selling me something.

The Ralph salespeople of the world are able to scrape out a basic living by relying on volume and timing. Out of every 100 cold calls they make, some percentage will occur on days when the prospect is thinking of making a purchase. The next salesman in the door then has a good chance of getting the deal. In addition, some of the people who take the salesperson's card will have a need shortly after the call and will contact the person they have spoken with most recently. Ralph makes a subsistence living by knocking on every door, 30 to 50 every day, hoping to find people who are ready to buy.

Why Ralph Can't Sell To Me Or Most Other Business Owners

Here is the premise: As a business owner and user of complex products such as office machines, I have a good general understanding of such products. I know how I use them, and I occasionally read about them in catalogs and various publications. But my knowledge of these products is a small fraction of what even a novice salesperson knows. Someone who sells these products every day knows many things I don't. Just a few of them are:

• The full range of each type of product that are available.
• The standard features and options that are available on each.
• The "going price" for each model in today's market.
• Their relative reliability and the long-term costs of ownership of each model.
• How each of these products is designed to be used.
• Which models incorporate newer, superior technology.
• Which products have the most flexibility to adapt to future requirements.

In other words, I don't know nearly as much as I really should before buying a piece of office equipment, and I don't have the time to figure all of this out on my own.

There are two types of sales people who seldom get me to buy anything. Ralph is one type, the person who mostly focuses on introducing himself and his company and throws out a few trial balloons to see if I am interested. The other type I don't often buy from is the aggressive type who feels I "owe him" a few minutes of my time to hear his pitch.

How Ralph Could Sell To Me

Both of these types ought to spend a little time learning from another salesperson who came into our office on a cold call. We'll call her Sue Ellman.

Sue walked in like Ralph, wearing a neat suit and a smile. She introduced herself to me as I happened to walk through the reception area on the way to refilling my coffee cup. I had planned to ignore her, but before I could put up my blockade of sales resistance, Sue did something very smart. She looked at the walls of our reception area, which are filled with framed samples of work we have done, and said, "These are beautiful. What kind of work do you do here?"

I stopped in my tracks, always willing to brag about the wonderful things my company does. So, I explained, "We write sales training courses. These are samples of some of the work we have done for various corporations." Sue continued to scan the walls, eyes widening, "You did all of these?" she asked, naming some of the major corporations whose logos graced our walls.

Sue had set the hook. She had gotten me involved in a topic I enjoy talking about -- my company. Over the next half hour, I described our business and our values. She continued to ask me open-ended questions that led to my explaining the importance of strict high quality in the work we do, and how I demand top performance from the tools we use. I did most of the talking; Sue did most of the listening.

Only when Sue had a very good grasp of our business did she ask if I would be interested in a new photocopier. I still wasn't particularly interested in a new copier. But given the investment she had made in me, asking me to describe my business, it seemed only fair to switch to her agenda for a while.

Sue presented to me a copier model that prints in up to four colors and which allows the user to selectively print parts of a page in different colors. To help me understand the advantages, she referred to samples I had shown her of work we do. She described how we could more economically do small runs of similar, multi-color materials in-house rather than pay printer set-up charges. We could also try out new ideas to see how they look. Well, as you have probably guessed, Sue eventually sold us that machine by using her superior product knowledge.

Let's review how she did it:

1. She started the sales conversation by asking about us. Rather than using closed-ended questions about office machines, she got me to talk about our business and our values.
   
   
2. She continually asked follow-up questions. She did not try to steer me to any particular product. She just encouraged me to talk about how we did our work.
   
   
3. After she had earned the right to talk about herself, she offered to present something she had to sell.
   
   
4. She waited to present until she had a fairly good idea of what my needs were. Then she selected a product to talk about that fit my needs.
   
   
5. Since she had taken the time to learn about what we do, she was able to present the product directly in terms of my needs. By doing so, she helped me visualize what it would be like to own the new machine - a type of photocopier I was not previously aware of - and she helped me understand the business advantages that would justify the purchase.
   
   
6. When presenting the product, she focused on the features that were most relevant to our business. The machine we bought does a lot of things we never plan to use, and Sue wisely avoided overpresenting the technology.
   
   
7. Finally, Sue closed that first call by scheduling a meeting at her office for a demonstration. She asked me to bring samples of the kinds of work I might do on the machine in order to verify that it would do the intended job.

After this call, Sue knew I was going to buy that machine, and I knew I was going to buy it. The rest was just mechanics.

SeaBird Associates Inc
3011 NE 7th Drive
Boca Raton, FL 33431
Phone: 561-750-9233
E-mail: Art Siegel

About Art Siegel