|
Lately I’ve shifted my reading from the newer, hot off the presses, sales books to the old school classics. Two of my favorite authors from this “old guard” are Charlie “Tremendous” Jones and Elmer Wheeler. These were amazing men and have done more for the profession of sales than I ever knew. Imagine that you are in 1930’s America and running an oil company called Texaco. The economy is in the depths of a depression. Every extra cent that you can make by topping up your customers oil counts more than ever before. (Yes, we are talking about the days of full-service gas stations) If only you could get your attendants under more hoods. But how? Let’s start by looking at what the attendants were asking their customers at the time. They would walk up to your window and ask you; “Check your oil today?” A very simple closed question that did little to compel the customer to say “yes”. In fact, the customer really didn’t even have to think to reply. Most just automatically said “no thanks.” No wonder not enough customers were topping up their oil. Knowing they were missing an opportunity for more sales, Texaco brought in one of the pioneers of salesmanship and persuasion sales expert Elmer Wheeler to turn things around. Wheeler identified that the “check your oil” question being asked was the problem. And he quickly developed the solution. He suggested the question the attendants needed to ask was: “Is your oil at the correct level today?” This open question made customers stop, pause, and think. The correct level? Who knows what that is? Better to get it checked while you’re here and the attendant’s offering. Texaco paid Wheeler $5,000 dollars for developing this sentence in the 1930′s. To put that into context that’s approximately $70,000 dollars in 2014 money. Not a bad days pay for just one simple sentence. But what a sentence it was! After sharing it with each of their stations and all attendants, Texaco was literally blown away to learn that they were getting under 250,000 extra hoods in just the first week. Never had anything so simple led to such a dramatic and immediate increase in oil sales. Elmer Wheeler famously wrote the sales classic “Tested Sentences That Sell.” In this book Wheeler gives many other examples of how to structure simple sentences to sell more products. It’s one of those Wheeler Points that he’s most famous for, and it’s this phrase “Don’t sell the steak, sell the sizzle.” Wheeler managed to distill the very essence of selling into this one simple sentence. Wheeler himself summed it up this way: “Don’t think so much about what you want to say as about what the prospect wants to hear.” When you’re in the market to buy a vacation you want to hear all about fun, adventure, sunshine! Not the kind of aircraft that you’ll be flying in. Think about that. Are we telling our prospects too much about our aircraft? Are be boring them with technical “nuts and bolts” that they really don’t care a thing about? In other words it’s not about what your service does, it’s what it does for your clients that matters. And different clients will benefit from your service in different ways. Or to paraphrase Wheeler, tell your customer what they want to hear about. Do they really need to hear you tell them about every little aspect of your service? No! They need to hear only those aspects that directly relate to their wants and needs. If you think about Wheeler’s Steak sizzling away on the barbecue it conjures up fantastic images of a wonderful meal. Whereas if you just think “steak” then all you have is a lump of cold meat. Simply choosing the right words can change the game completely! So while Wheelers concept of thinking about the best way to turn a phrase may be old school, it’s as valid today as ever… maybe more so! There are so many theories about selling and they range from complex to simple. But there is good in all of them. We just need to never stop looking, learning and caring. Because Sales is the greatest job in the world! O&U! |