salespodder: sales blog with musings and tips from inside sales

Two valuable learning experiences I gained in the mid-90s alerted me to the over-formality of sales letter writing.  The first involved a sales manager of mine commenting that I was too formal at the beginning of a letter and kept saying things that didn’t need saying.  As a result, I altered my approach.  Then a year or so later, doing some freelance work for the owner of a software house, I applied these principles, only for him to moan that what I’d written by way of intro, was too formal and wasn’t something he himself would say.

It’s not easy to get straight to the point, and not fall into the trap of flippancy.  The English education I received means I am aware of grammar and writing proper, like yet there are words and phrases that simply must be jettisoned from your lexicon.

I was reminded of this looking for some killer phrases to bang into an email trying to re-ignite two particular prospects of mine through googling, and came across ten phrases to cut from sales letters.

In general, I’ve found nothing new in my (albeit) short search, but a new resolve to only say what’s needed.  Typically on such correspondence as my current task:

we can really help, here’s how to investigate further, I’m excited about helping, and here’s another reminder of where we can help you personally, etc

I’ve suffered the displacing emotion of buying a few things recently.  For most categories of service/product I’m after, I can run a beauty parade.  One such pagent led me to a young fella called ‘Kev’ on England’s south coast.

I called him up first, he confirmed it was indeed he that could help with my enquiry, then he suggested sending some further info over to him.  Once he received this, he emailed me back with this astonishing reply:

“Thank you for your enquiry, unfortunately to give you an accurate quote we need all your specific requirements if possible”, then he listed some items, at least one of which I already supplied, before signing off with “Any further questions please call or email”

Incredible.  I fired a mail back saying I’d put something together before mentioning “looks like you don’t work too hard for you money ”.  The message is clearly that Kev is unlikely to progress to the pagent’s podium.  If he really did give a monkey’s about his clients (and consider this; he’s no idea of how big a client I could be) then he’d have asked for my mobile straight away and asked all the questions one-to-one.

Incidentally of the four firms initially engaged for this procurement, only one (’Daniella’) has called me, yet even she has yet to send me the mail she promised!  Crazy.  Does anybody want money?

A customer of mine’s just distributed one of their smaller, niche competitor’s price list around their sales team.  The guy who obtained it got all excited and thought it’d help them beat up the young whipper-snappers more.

I’ve never been able to see this.  These people operate in a ’solution sales’ environment, meaning what they sell is far removed from a commodity, and several (innumerable even?) bells and whistles and approaches exist that can distinguish competing vendor’s offerings.

So why do so many people get so wound up about their competitors prices?  Maybe it’s because whenever a rep wins a deal, it was solely because they were the best salesperson on the bid, with silkily superior skills.  Yet when they lose a deal, it’s invariably down to the fact the ‘product’ didn’t quite fit, or the price was wrong.

To my mind, intimate knowledge of another’s pricing just makes you lowest-price obsessed, and engineers a Dutch Auction, so everyone losses.

These happenings have always got my goat a bit.  I always always always prefer pitching when they are cheaper bidders.  It lets you focus the prospect’s mind on why they pay that little bit more for the massive extras you provide, and typically it’s this sizzle, not the sausage, that tempts them to select you.