Guest post Monday and we have Dan Waldschmidt of Edgy Conversations. He has a knack for sales and because of his outstanding sales performance, was made CEO of a technology company by the time he was 25. Great wisdom in this post:
Let’s be frank.
Just about the worst way to spend the next five minutes of your life is listening to a sales dude prattle on about why you need to give him “five more minutes” to listen to the wonderments of his pitch.
It’s completely boring.
And while “being boring” might not seem like the worst business crime in the world, it’s a crushing body blow to getting buyers to listen to you.
To really listen to you. Not just to know that someone is saying something somewhere in the close proximity.
You might be the only one standing in front of the room with a Powerpoint behind them, but that doesn’t mean that you are the center of attention.
It’s likely you are putting people to sleep.
Take YouTube for example.
The top twenty videos on YouTube have over 2,000,000,000 views. People are obviously paying attention to these videos.
And what do we like to watch?
We like silly, sexy stuff — music videos, babies laughing, and dudes doing weird dance moves.
There’s no yammering on about products. No closing lines. No monotone features discussion.
It’s exciting stuff.
Let’s compare that to the types of conversations we have with our buyers. Take our prospecting for example.
Nothing silly. Nothing sexy. Completely uninspired content.
And we wonder why buyers don’t click all out links and call us rabidly inspired to do business with us.
They’re bored.
And even if they happen to be half-way engaged, they’re probably busy. Crazy busy, in fact.
In that five minutes you need so desperately from your buyer, there’s a lot going on:
- 729,166,667 emails will be sent around the world
- 329,861 tweets will be tweeted
- 10,416,666 text messages will be sent from cell phones all over the world
- 694,444 pictures will be uploaded to Facebook
- 162 marriages will take place all over the world,
- 12,432 newspapers will be available for reading (daily)
- 421 new blogs will be created from scratch all over the world
- 6,342 new articles will be added to existing websites and blogs
- 5,208,332 songs will be downloaded from iTunes
- 7.29 days of YouTube videos will be uploaded, and
- 15.7 new companies will be started by hopeful entrepreneurs (in the USA alone).
You aren’t just ignored; you’re bullied right out of your buyer’s conscience.
Boring doesn’t work.
Buyers want something more entertaining. They want silly and sexy — not sales pitches. There is a lot of discussion from business experts about sales process and sales strategy and sales alignment.
But none of that matters when you’re boring.
You having a process doesn’t mean that anyone else cares a darn about your 17 steps. They care about getting their problem solved and being inspired along the way.
There’s no sales process that cures boring.
Maybe that’s why your buyers are snoring.
Dan Waldschmidt is at war with conventional sales thinking. His Edgy Conversations have turned hundreds of companies into rock-star businesses and the Wall Street Journal calls his blog one of the “Top 7 Sales Blogs” anywhere in the world. He’s on a mission to empower millions of high-performers all over the globe. You might call him “an ordinary dude with an outrageous vision.”
To find out more about Dan, visit his blog or contact him at da*@da************.com.
