Salespeople memorize “thirty second commercials” or “elevator pitches”. They describe their product in complex and sometimes confusing terminology. However, they forget that complex ideas cannot be grasped easily by prospects. When describing what you do, shorter and simpler is better. Simple concepts, simple sentences and plain language is what the prospect will remember. When they think of you and your product or service they will most likely only remember snippets of what you tried to communicate. Leanne Hoagland-Smith in her recent blog takes it to the extreme in distilling your product down to one word. This is more of a marketing and branding concept than a sales concept but the idea is worthwhile.
The one word equity sales pitch is the brain child of Maurice Saatchi who believes in this digital age brevity must be pushed to its breaking point. This one word is the word you want others to think about you and your company. It can be a noun, an adjective or even a verb. Saatchi provides the example of the word “search.” Who or what comes to mind. For many that entity is Google. He contends today only brutally simple ideas get through because they “travel lighter and travel faster.”
In sales you should spend most of your time listening to your prospect. but when it is your turn to talk, deliver our message in clear and simple terms relating your solution to the prospects problem. If you get too complex or try to sound too smart , you run the grave risk of losing them and not getting your message across. The main thing you want prospect to remember is that you understand their problem and have a workable solution. Distill your message into a few simple concepts and deliver them in a simple and straight forward way and assuming you have listened to the prospect, they will remember you or your product. They may not remember the details. But they will remember that you listened and your solution sounded like it will work.
