Sales Blog for Sales and Sales Management

Sell the sizzle not the steak!  Well duh?  I am very confident that at some point in your sales career you have heard this expression.  What got me thinking about this fundamental sales principle was Seth Godin's post 'In the Mood'. The short version:  Music doesn't teach us how to fall in love it just creates the emotion to fall in love, be in love or look for love.  In other words music, books, theater and movies sell emotion.  Certainly there is a ton, no make that, there are tons of "how to" information on the web and in bookstores on 'how to'.  But it is amazing that with so much "how to" information people still fail to.

How come?  Lack of motivation.

And the same is true for your suspects that fail to become prospects and your prospects that fail to become qualified buyers and your qualified buyers that fail to become clients.  I am confident that you showed them exactly what they need to see or you told them exactly what they needed to hear to solve a problem that they have.  did you motivate them or did you help them motivate themselves. 

That is the key.  A great book that will help you with that aspect of selling is: Story Selling for Financial Advisors.  Forget that the title talks about financial advisors.  I promise you it will help you no matter what you are selling.  It will help you with your ability or lack there of to effectively motivate prospects to take action.  Here is my take on the 3 most important things to do to get people to take action.

1. Accurately identify the real problem or benefit.  The initial problem that someone describes to you or the 'need / want' that is being expressed isn't real.  You have to peel back the layers to get to the real motivation.
2. Once you identify what is real you must ask, 'what happens if you don't fix the problem or realize this benefit.  You must get your propsect to describe an outcome.
3. You must ask if not realizing the benefit is a compelling enough reason to invest time, money or resources to take action.  Take yourself out of the picture.  In other words don't try and self yourself, your company or your product.  None of this is important at this time.  The most important decision that the prospect has to make is: will they take action.

So contrary to the title of this post it sounds like I've avoided the sizzle.  No I haven't.  I've just transferred the responsibility of selling the sizzle to the person that can truly identify the sizzle of buying - the prospect.  If you would like some tools to help you improve your qualifying of prospects follow this link.  Have a perfect day!