I’ve been working on a new seminar offering that I’ve tentatively titled, “The Language of the Sale” and out of this work has come a few interesting ideas about managing language to help you sell more.
Here are a few of them:
- Overcoming Objections: Language allows us to use more powerful language to overcome the objections that people offer up to our asks. One important thing about language is that it also allows us to get fewer objections because we are qualifying more effectively.
- Stronger Vocabulary: Gives us power in the sales process because we come off as peers or leaders, not as order takers.
- Questions Are Key: Questioning effectively is a key skill of creating need and understanding of the challenges a prospect faces.
- Internal Language: This is where the language of the sale begins. If you don’t talk to yourself effectively, you won’t sell effectively.
- The Written Word: Is a key differentiator in the sales process. Don’t buy the idea that writing properly isn’t an important skill…it is.
- Spontaneity Rules: Scripts are great, but they only take you so far. You need to have a finely honed skill at using language effectively, especially at the drop of a dime. Because the ability to think on your feet can be the difference between a sale and no sale.
- Framing: Every person you meet is going to come to the world with their own ideas, worldview, and prejudices…there’s not a lot you can do about that. Trying to get around or through a worldview is time-consuming, expensive, and, typically, fruitless. Your only hope is to use a create a frame that allows you to take your idea and put it into the context of something your prospects will understand and accept.
If I had to tell you where to start, I’d suggest you begin by building a stronger vocabulary because it makes everything else possible.