Positive Yarn

One of the platitudes in sales and marketing is “sell the sizzle, not the steak” — or perhaps in honor of St. Patrick’s Day, “the corned beef.” While the product quality should be good enough to stand on its own, it’s the selling of its benefits, not just its features, that can cinch the sale.

I bring this up because my husband and I, finding our schedules kid-free for exactly 60 minutes last night, decided to shop for a new mattress. Talk about an industry that’s 90% sizzle! I mean, say all you want about coils and wire gauge and space-age technology, but there was not a whole heckuva lot of difference among the eight or so mattresses he and I gingerly tested in our allotted time. There is a hilarious Slate article here that pretty much summarizes our experience last night.

In that hour, I was reminded of at least three tenets of good salesmanship that are perhaps in need of review. I’m sure that our salesman, “Ken,” thought he was doing the right approach — but he wasn’t. Read on, and see whether you or any of your employees might be guilty of these on occasion:

1. Don’t insult the customer. We were looking for a double (full-sized) bed, plain and simple. Yes, I realize we’re neither particularly skinny nor still in college, but we like our headboard and we like the placement of the bed between the two front windows. A queen-sized mattress just wouldn’t fit in the space. Ken seemed to find it ludicrous that we didn’t want a queen or king like other grown-ups, and actions like shaking his head and making snarky comments like “Well, this one’s a bit taller so you’ll have to break down and buy ‘real’ sheets” wore thin quickly. When I said I didn’t particularly like pillow-top mattresses either, he just looked at me like I had just confessed I was a Communist.

People have different tastes, and a salesperson must respect that (or at least keep opinions to him or herself). Trying to guilt or tease customers into a different point of view is only going to put them on the defensive. In fact, about midway through I had to fight the feeling of running out the doors and finding someone, anyone, who would be polite to us. My husband felt much the same way, I later learned, but just doesn’t get as agitated about it as I do.

Negative: “Are you seriously thinking of using those colors together?”

Positive: “Let me know if I can be of any help. One of my specialties is pulling together color schemes for that kind of project.”

There’s a great article by Sales Consultant Jeff Tull that, while it’s geared more to industrial sales than retail, expands on the “don’t patronize the patron” theme.

2. Information overload. Your customers likely choose you over your competition because they perceive that you not only have a great selection and a welcoming environment, but that you’re more knowledgeable and experienced. There’s absolutely no shame in throwing around little reminders like “Celebrating 20 years in business” on your marketing materials or announcing in your newsletter who just became certified; in fact, it’s tidbits like this that can set you apart. It’s when that information-sharing becomes boasting, and you talk more about the features than the benefits, that it can all start to sour.

Ken’s long-winded monologue to us is probably something that corporate taught him to do. His spiel covered everything from being made in the USA to having a 20-year warranty to his company being the best in the business for 33 years running. These are all important, good things to know. The problem was he barely took a breath in the entire process. We hadn’t asked one question, because we weren’t given time to think of any. We were bombarded with information when really all we wanted to do was lie down on a mattress and see how it felt. The experience was uncomfortable, because we felt we were getting the hard-sell right away. As someone commented on the Slate article I mentioned earlier, salespeople like Ken make the stereotypical used-car salesperson “look like a Boy Scout.”

Negative: “This is the best yarn EVER. It won 15 awards and is currently being used by royalty and comes from the wool of the very rare… hey, where are you going?”

Positive: “This is one of my favorite yarns to use. I learned a lot about it when I was at Market. Do you have any questions about it?” (Note that this technique empowers customers. They feel that they have the upper hand because you are deferring to what questions they may have, even though you also have established that you possess the knowledge and experience that they seek. Starting the “other” spiel above is acceptable if they respond with something like “We know nothing about it. What can you tell us?” It’s not as acceptable if they’re just idly minding their business, examining the product, and you start spouting off.)

The Bridge Group recently blogged about asking great sales questions.

3. Don’t knock the competition. As tempting as it may be, especially in an economy where sales may be less than robust, this trap makes you look like a mudslinger. Why even bring the competition into the sale? Why acknowledge that you have competition? It’s much more professional to focus on your own merits.

This is a lesson I wish Ken would learn, because his little tirade about the “guy down the street and on the left” sounded like a well-worn part of his spiel. It would have made more sense in context, like had we brought up the competition and he felt compelled to respond. Instead, it just bubbled up like paragraph six in the sales pitch in his head, carefully worded to make the competitor sound like a shyster without calling him one outright. All it really succeeded in doing was getting us back in the car, down the street and to our left, just to see for ourselves. We found there was a night-and-day difference in the sales approach at the second store, to boot.

Negative: “You’ll find that we do a lot of things differently than the big box down the street. We have more selection, better classes, blah blah blah…”

Positive: “What can I help you find today?”

Kevin Sasser, author of The Sales Wars blog, puts a lot into perspective in this post, “How to Trash Talk Your Competition.” He advocates that it’s OK to get in a jab here and there — just as long as you go about it in an intelligent way.

I’d love to hear your insights. Please email me or post a comment below. And if you’re curious, we ran out of time in the second mattress store before we made an actual purchase. Rest assured, though, we’ll be back tonight.

Tags: Bridge Group, business, competition, economy, Jeff Tull, Kevin Sasser, marketing, sales, sizzle, Slate, yarn

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 17th, 2009 at 8:49 am and is filed under Business marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.