Sales training ideas – 8 words and phrases to avoid when selling.

When selling, there are certain words and phrases one should avoid. While some of these are worse than others, all can slow your progress to the sale. 

8 Sales conversation hurdles 

1) To be honest with you.

Synonyms for this are honestly, frankly, and to tell you the truth. Even worse: “Well, I wasn’t going to say this, but…” or “I shouldn’t be saying this, but…” Ugh! Those are real killers. All these phrases give people the impression that you haven’t been completely upfront or you have something to hide. 

2) I think/I believe.

Both of these phrases give the impression that you’re not sure of what you’re saying. If you’re not sure, say so and make a commitment to follow up with the answer. 

3) Listen (followed by the person’s name).

The word “listen” along with a person’s name is confrontational. You can almost hear someone automatically responding with, “No, you listen!” Subconsciously, it comes across as a command and sounds more like: “Hey! Pay attention, will you?” 

4) What do you think?

Thinking is work. Instead, you always want to ask someone how something sounds, looks, or feels. You want to get the senses involved in the buying process. When you ask someone what she thinks, she immediately goes into analysis or point-counterpoint mode. Thinking is much more involved than simply using our senses to evaluate something. 

5) Buy and Sell.

Change buy or sell to invest. For example: Instead of saying, “If you were to buy this gadget today…” say, “If you were to invest in this gadget today…” 

6) But.

Generally speaking, the word but can be confrontational. Occasionally, it’s appropriate when you want to contrast two ideas, yet often but is used unnecessarily. The word but is sometimes interpreted as, “Okay, forget everything I just said. Now I’m going to tell you how I really feel.” 

When you can, try to replace the word but with and. Read the following two sentences and listen for which one sounds better: 

a) “Jim, you’ve really done some great work on this article, but I think we should make sure we have all the facts correct here.”  

b) “Jim, you’ve really done some great work on this article, and I think we should make sure we have all the facts correct here.” 

The first sentence sounds like you’re telling Jim that you’re not sure all his facts are correct. The second sentence sounds like you’re telling Jim that he’s done some great work and once you both verify that all the facts are correct, you’ll have a truly great article. While there may not be a major difference, simply changing the word but to and definitely makes the sentence less confrontational and more agreeable. 

There will be times when you deliberately want to use the word but for emphasis. For example, if you are writing a factual account of something, but serves as a good separator between two opposing thoughts. However, sometimes eliminating but from your vocabulary and replacing it with and will make the tone of your conversation more positive. 

7) No.

No is the ultimate in negative words. Avoid answering questions with a direct no and avoid asking questions which elicit a no from the prospect. Try to formulate questions that bring out a positive response—yes. For example, instead of asking: “Obviously, you don’t want higher premiums, do you Joe?” ask a question such as, “Joe, if I could substantially lower your premiums, would you be interested?” 

There will be times when you need to say the equivalent of no when responding to a prospect or customer. Just try to limit them and try to answer in a way that has a little less edge than a flat-out no. 

Nice to meet you.

This one may seem a bit confusing, so here’s an explanation. We’ve all had a situation in which we’ve met someone before and that person remembers, but we don’t. We’ve also been on the other end. 

Fortunately, there’s an easy remedy to this. Instead of saying “Nice to meet you,” say, “Nice to see you.” Whether you are meeting the person for the first time, second time, or one-hundredth time, “Nice to see you” is always appropriate. 

Keep the above words and phrases in mind when having sales conversations, and all conversations for that matter. Most will only slow the sale down a bit but others may stop the sale altogether.