I was interested in a Tweet last week from Gerhard Geschwandtner (@gerhard20 in twitter parlance). Gerhard’s the founder and publisher of Selling Power, and a key voice in the world of sales professionals. His tweet was important: @gerhard20 Ditch the pitch. We are in a conversation economy. The sales pitch is dead.
I couldn’t agree with him more. The pitch is dead, professional selling is all about a meaningful dialogue or conversation with the customer. At least that’s what I’d like to believe. Except the evidence all points to the contrary.
Being a curious type, I decided to go to the authorities: Google and Amazon. In each I made some queries. I wasn’t looking for scientific evidence, but just some rough orders of magnitude.
|
Google Count |
Amazon Count |
|
| “Sales Dialogue” |
8,650,000 |
993* |
| “Sales Conversation” |
34,300,000 |
2359 |
| “Listening In Sales” |
35,200,000 |
1688 |
| “Sales Presentations” |
48,200,000 |
9011 |
| “Sales Pitches” |
180,000,000 |
22,895 |
*It is disconcerting the title of the first entry for this query is: Power Sales Presentations: Complete Sales Dialogues for Each Critical Step of the Sales Cycle.
It seems we like talking and reading about talking, pitching, presentations. Both in Google and Amazon, Sales Pitches is more than 20 times more popular than Sales Dialogues.
- Customers have a different point of view. While I don’t have the type of data presented above, over the years, I’ve spoken to 1000’s of customers and surveyed thousands more. Common issues that they raise:
- Sales people don’t really listen to me. Most of the time they are thinking about what they are going to say and not paying attention to what I am saying.
- Sales people don’t understand me, my company, or my industry.
- I don’t like to see sales people, all they do is come in and pitch their products, they never ask me about my business or what I want to achieve.
- Most of them are clueless, they start talking and never stop.
- And the inevitable, “How do you tell when a sales person is lying? His lips are moving!”
The list can go on. Read what people think of sales people in LinkedIn or any number of blogs. Customers don’t see us listening or in conversations.
We get lots of calls on helping develop sales skills. I’ve lost track of the number of people saying “we need to have better presentation skills.” I can count on a little more than 2 hands the number of queries on “we need to develop better listening skills, better conversational skills.” (Though in our conversation we usually help them understand the importance and they end up asking for it).
Unfortunately, as much as I want Gerhard to be right. As much as I want to see the sales pitch being dead and to see sales people truly engaging in a dialogue and conversation with customers, I’m reminded of Mark Twain’s comment: “Rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated.” Unfortunately, for some time, I think this is still true of sales pitches.
Am I being too pessimistic or tough? What are your thoughts?
