In reality, for many of us, knowledge and specialized lingo are powerful — in costing us business.
Naturally, a great many new salespeople are tempted to try to impress prospects and clients by demonstrating their product knowledge and slinging their newly learned industry vocabulary around. They tend to oversell, answer questions no prospect has ever had, dazzle with words the prospect and client may not be familiar with.
They talk about the fine points of their product or service; discuss how their service or product will impact ROI; how their product or service creates a new paradigm to address the prospect's issues or needs; and the list goes on.
Some say that if you want credibility with your prospects and clients you have to speak their language. I don't have a problem with that in the least — if you're actually speaking your prospect's language. But how many prospects actually talk about creating a new paradigm to address an issue or problem? There's certainly something to be said about just talking to the prospect in plain English.
And very often new sellers butcher their newly acquired vocabulary and confound and frustrate their prospects with their enthusiastic demonstration of their knowledge of the minutiae of their product or service. Many lose more sales than they capture because of their lack of discipline and their need to impress.
Unfortunately I've noticed over the past several years that this desire to impress isn't confined to new sellers. I consistently run across experienced sellers who should know better that are making the same rookie mistakes. The only real difference between these experienced sellers and new salespeople is experienced sellers tend to have a better grasp of the industry lingo.
In the current tough selling environment even experienced sellers are falling into the trap of trying to oversell and to impress with their knowledge and "deep" understanding of the prospect's issues. We tend to pull out all the stops and often end up losing our discipline and the prospect's attention. We try to force the sale.
Rather than creating new clients, we end up alienating them.
Whether you're a relatively new seller bursting with enthusiasm and wanting to impress your prospects or an experienced seller feeling the pressure to produce, you need to step back and relax. Giving in to the pressure to oversell and force the sale is self-defeating. Address your prospect's needs and leave the unnecessary demonstration of knowledge and the impressive vocabulary at the office.
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