Certain sales phrases can turn some buyers off, according to an article at Forbes.com. Columnist Ian Altman points to a few of the biggest offenders when it comes to speaking sales: “Creating urgency” and “cold calling.”
“Creating urgency is a truly ridiculous sales strategy,” Altman writes. “Creating urgency relies on you creating a motivation for your client that doesn’t already exist, and expecting them to give that fake motivation the time of day. News flash: Your client is already a person with motivations, so use them!”
Altman says there’s no need to rely on tactics of threats to motivate your customers to act, but instead do some research on your customer and relate to them for their specific situation. What does your client want out of homeownership? What’s going on in their life that might make a new home extra valuable to them?
Altman also points to “cold calling” as an overused sales tactic that may be losing its effectiveness with today’s customers. A cold call is when you reach out to someone and try to sell them without knowing much about them, he explains.
“Not only is this inefficient (you can’t expect to have a great success rate in sales if you’re taking wild guesses at what drives your potential clients), but it’s almost laughably unrealistic in 2018,” Altman notes. “Considering the broad research of social media, it’s most likely that your ideal client exists within the network of someone you already know.”
Altman says sales professionals may have better luck by finding ways to reach out to their contacts to find recommendations of potential customers before they resort to calling complete strangers.
Source: “3 Selling Phrases That Lead to Failure,” Forbes.com (March 20, 2018)
