Make Every Word Count in Your Sales Presentations

When making sales presentations, every word counts. That’s because most sales are lost when your lips are moving, not when you’re listening.

That means that when you’re in face-to-face (or phone-to-phone) interactions with prospects and customers, you have to carefully choose every word you use.

I fall victim to wasting words, too. I say “sort of” too much. I guess it’s a way for me to soften my recommendations.

“Our approach is to begin by sort of working to understand your process.”

That sort of adds nothing to the conversation. It’s wasteful and (probably) distracting to some people. I’m working to stop it. We don’t sort of understand your process. We do it. Plain and simple.

I’ve also kept my ears open for the phrases that other salespeople use. Here’s a list of the most common ones I’ve heard during recent observations:

• Stuff: We have addressed stuff like that for clients in many cases.
• Right: The problem you’ve discussed is fairly common among companies like yours. Right?
• At the end of the day: At the end of the day, our solution will fix this problem.
• The Bottom Line: Bottom line is this: We’ll fix the problem you’re facing.
• Key: The key to the problem you’re facing is to do this.
• Like: It’s like almost the same as this other situation I ran across.
• So: So, if you were to describe this, how would you do that?
• Does that make sense?: Here’s a great article about not using that one. As well as some others that waste space.

Are you using these phrases? Or others that waste space? Try recording yourself, or begin paying more attention to what you say. By doing that, you may pick up on some “throw-away” phrases you’ve been using that distract from your message.

The takeaway? Carefully consider the words you use.

@JebBrooks