“Selling Bad Breath” repulses the people we are trying to reach. Somehow when we open our mouths or send an email or do an outreach, all it accomplishes is driving our prospects and customers away. No amount of “mouthwash” disguises selling bad breath. Prospects and customers can always sniff it out, regardless how we try to cover it up.
What is Selling Bad Breath? (Hold your noses as you read…..)
- The thousands of outreaches inflicted on all of us, “Let me tell you about how great we are and all the impressive brands that have bought from us…..”
- Add to those, thousands more, “Let me tell you about our products and how great they are, when can we schedule a demo?” These are sent despite the fact the product is probably irrelevant to our priorities.
- The misplaced ego and bragging, “We have the very best solutions in the world, look at all our awards…..”
- The misplaced claims, “We can save you millions of dollars…..”
All these are selfish and self centered. It is all about them and has little to do with the customer.
Then there are those that are thinly disguised as being issues or customer focused, but are really all about them:
- “Let us tell you how our products solve these problems….. [Insert prospecting, pipeline quality, revenue generation, to name a few.]” They are presumptuous, assuming we have the problem that would drive interest in their product. But they really don’t want to talk about the problem they want to talk about their product.
- “Let us tell you how other customers are solving these problems by using our products…..” Same thing, slightly different words.”
- Or the veiled threats,”Don’t let your competitors beat you, let us show you how we help you beat your competition….”
None of these is about the customer. They continue to be all about us.
Or then, a level up, but still something that customers know is covered with “Sales Bad Breath…..”
- “What are your challenges…..” Whenever someone sends me a note with this, I know they really don’t care, regardless of the challenges I identify, they will pitch their product. They’ve done no research to understand what our challenges might be. They think they are being customer focused asking the question and we all know it.
The business world reeks of “Sales Bad Breath!”
And it’s so easy to change things—but so few sellers do, they just double down with more of this stuff and it stinks.
What’s the secret to changing this?
Drum roll please……
What if we talked about what customers want to talk about? What if we focused on what they are interested in?
When I suggest this, too often I get the response, “Dave, how are we supposed to know that? Plus, we care about is our products, we have to make our quotas.” (Too often, I listen, while holding my nose because things reek.)
I usually reply, “Well, what problems do your products/offerings solve? Who has those problems (That’s called an ICP)? What are the things you need to understand to see if they are having the problem now and how serious the problem might be?”
But too many don’t understand how to do this. And, in fairness, they have never been trained or coached in how to do this. Everything has been all about their products.
Then I go on, “Now you know what to focus on and with who, do your homework and research to see if they might be facing the problem right now.”
When you’ve identified those, then reach out, “We are seeing this….. as a huge issue for organizations like yours, how is it impacting you….” “How are you addressing this issue in your business?” “What would it mean if this were not something you need to worry about?” And when they respond, don’t suffer from premature pitching. Keep talking to them about the issues, what they mean, how it’s impacting them, what they’ve considered in addressing it, whether they really understand the issue/how they might better understand the issue…….”
These are important discussions for the customer. This is where they learn, discover, reflect, gain better understanding. And then, they say, “What can we do about this? How can you help?” That’s your cue to start talking about solutions.
I know, some of you are thinking, “Dave, that’s too much work, it takes too long……”
Frankly, I’m bewildered by this response. I ask, “What you are currently doing isn’t working. You aren’t getting the responses you need, you are spending a lot of time producing fewer and few results. Why not consider changing?” As far as how much time it takes, from our work with clients implementing this approach, time to results is profoundly shorter. We see people executing this approach reducing sales cycles by 30-40%!
Our customers/prospects detect “Sales Bad Breath” very quickly. They may not have to open the email, respond to the social media outreach, pick up the phone call. The odor has preceded it.
We need to change
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