Sales training ideas – 4 powerful words and word phrases to include in your sales calls.

When you present your ideas to others in a sales conversation, you want to use positive words and words that spur agreement. 

4 Positive and powerful sales conversation words and phrases  

1) A person’s name.

People like to hear their names. Don’t overdo it, but try to use the person’s name at the beginning of the sales conversation, at the end, and a few times in the middle. 

2) Two of the most powerful words you can use in a sales conversation are me too.

The words me too imply “I’m just like you”; they also say, “I hear and understand you.” 

3) Use you, your, and yours as much as possible.

Keep I, me, and my to a minimum in your sales conversations. People like the focus to be on them and what they are interested in. You and your refer to the person with whom you are talking. Go through all your sales presentations, closes, answers to objections, and even sales letters and advertising, and look for places to use you or your instead of I, me, or my. Change words and phrases so the focus shifts from you to the prospect. Change statements such as the following: 

• Change “I have found…” to “you will find…”

• Change “Based upon the research, I believe…” to “The research indicates that you will find…”

• Change “I wanted to give you a call with this latest information” to “There is some new information you’re likely to be very interested in.”

Some phrases will simply need a word change from I to you while other phrases will need to be completely reworded. Some phrases will even go from a statement to a question. Shifting from “I” to “you” changes the focus. When selling, you always want the focus on the prospect. 

4) Positive words and phrases/action words.

Add words to your sales presentation that create excitement and positive feelings. Keep your overall message positive. Review all your copy and change negative words to positive ones. Think of this in terms of a political campaign. The positive message is usually better received than the one loaded with mudslinging. At the same time, don’t use million-dollar words that people have to look up in the dictionary. Liven and enlighten, don’t daze and confuse. 

Note: It’s all right to use some negative words when trying to describe a painful situation or outcome, or when trying to show the prospect what could happen if he continues on his current course of action. Overall, however, you want to keep the message upbeat and show the positive impact your product will have on the prospect’s life. 

Keep the four words and phrase above in mind and look for ways to include them in your sales presentations.

Sales training ideas – 3 key components of communication to keep in mind when selling.

When selling, keep the following statistic in mind: studies show that only 7 percent of communication is the actual words you use. In other words, no pun intended, there’s another 93 percent out there that’s up for grabs. While one could argue that words are worth more than 7 percent, there are some other key elements of communication that you want to be aware of during your sales calls and conversations. 

3 Important items to remember when having sales conversations 

When you sell, make sure that what you say and how you say it is consistent. The elements of effective communication are: 

• What you say
• How you say it
• Your body language

While the study mentioned above showed that the words you use are least important, the same study showed that how you say something was second most important, and your body language was the most important factor in determining the impression you leave someone with. 

For example, if you say the words “I love you” in a barely audible tone while staring at the floor, they will have a far different meaning than if you were to say them with feeling and passion while looking lovingly into someone’s eyes. Now say “I love you” with a Mickey Mouse voice. Now scream it. 

You get the point. In order to project the right message, your words, voice, and body language must be consistent. Nail down the right words and make sure your words, how you say them, and your body language all match when you are having sales conversations.

Sales training ideas – 5 keys to a powerful sales presentation.

A powerful sales presentation can be your strongest close. Assuming you have a qualified and interested prospect, if you do the sales presentation correctly, you will close the sale. 

5 Key items that need to be in every sales presentation

1) Interactive and keep the prospect interested and involved.

Your sales presentation should keep the prospect on the edge of her seat. Make it interactive. Ask the prospect questions and involve her in ways that make her an active member in the proposed solution.  

2) Delivered with lots of energy, enthusiasm, and emotional logic.

This ties in directly with the above item. Depending upon the personality of the prospect, you will be more laid back; or you’ll be bouncing around. In any case, you need to have lots of life, energy, and enthusiasm in your voice, and your sales presentation should make logical sense. 

3) Delivered in a clear, concise, and articulate manner. 

Your sales presentation should be easy to understand, to the point, and it should be delivered in terms that the prospect will understand, based on her personality type. As we discussed in the cold calling section, you need to be speaking the same language as the prospect. 

4) Address the needs, desires, and concerns of the prospect, and speak to her hot buttons.

If you’ve done your work properly during the cold call, you understand what the prospect is looking for and you’ve uncovered some hot buttons. You will now educate the prospect on how your product or service fills her needs and desires. Show caring, understanding, and empathy for the prospect, and show that you are seriously interested in helping her out. 

5) Lead naturally to the close.

Your sales presentation should be designed in such a way that it walks the prospect smoothly through the presentation, addressing all needs and concerns, and flows right into the close. 

Review your presentation and make sure the five elements we have discussed here are present. With these items in place you will be on your way to a powerful sales presentation. 

Sales training ideas – Make sure you’re selling this in your sales presentations.

When you deliver a sales presentation you must focus on what the prospect is really buying. When the prospect buys your product or service, she is buying the feelings and emotions that she believes the benefits of your product or service will give her. She is not buying the features. People don’t want pieces of paper with deceased notables—otherwise known as money—they want freedom and power. People don’t want just the new boat, Corvette, or Harley, they want excitement, status, a feeling that they belong—perhaps they even want to be “cool.” A woman buys a hot new outfit because of how it will make her feel when others see her in it. As a result, you want to focus on this end product when putting together a sales presentation. While it’s sometimes important to mention the features in your sales presentation, you will tie them directly to the benefits. For example, “This car has front and side air bags; thus, your family will be twice as safe in the event of a crash.” Now, you may be thinking that your sales presentations will be different because your business is different. Perhaps you sell copiers and you’re thinking, “How can copiers create feelings or emotions?” We’re here to tell you that copiers evoke emotions too. When someone buys a copier, some of the benefits—or feelings and emotions—she might be buying are image, luxury, peace of mind, security, and a raft of other emotions. Seem far-fetched? Let’s take a closer look. Suppose she selects a copier that works only 60 percent of the time and has constant problems. What do you think that will do to her image in the eyes of her boss and co-workers? Do you think her boss will trust her with larger decisions? How do you think this will affect her peace of mind and self-image? She’ll cringe and feel about two inches tall every time she walks by that faulty copier. On the other hand, if the copier does work well, she’ll have the luxury of using a machine that makes her job easier. Now, assuming this copier really stands out and she got a good price, she knows that only good things can happen to her image. Her boss and colleagues will be impressed, may trust her with bigger decisions, and she may eventually get a promotion. All these possibilities lead to peace of mind, security, and myriad positive emotions and feelings. It’s also important to note that most of the mental pictures your prospect makes about your product or service are future pictures. The prospect sees himself driving down the road in his new car, the envy of his neighbors. The prospect sees herself in Paris standing in front of the Eiffel Tower, looking up with awe. Whether it will happen in fifteen minutes, two months, or two years, it will be future enjoyment. And it is the mental pictures, these future dreams, that make the sale happen. As a result, you want to help the prospect paint these pictures during your sales presentation. Here are some of the most common feelings and perceived benefits the prospect is buying: Peace of mind. A feeling of safety or security. In addition to physical security, this feeling is also about job security. Status or a feeling of being important. A better standard of living. The feelings of being young and energetic. The feeling of looking good or being more attractive. Longevity or longer life. Something that will be around after the buyer is gone; leaving a legacy. Fun, excitement, adventure, or thrills. Feeling better about themselves. Attention diversion. Keep these feelings in mind when developing your sales presentation. Which of the above benefits does your product or service provide? Be creative. The more you come up with the better. Through proper questioning, both in the cold call and in your sales presentation, you will know which are the most important to your prospect and where you can help. During your sales presentation, sell the benefits, sell the future, sell the dream, the big picture, and sell what the product or service will do for the prospect. Don’t spend all your time talking about the features. The more you focus on what the prospect is REALLY looking for, the more effective you’ll be with your sales presentations.

Sales training ideas – Use both the push and pull in your sales presentations.

When putting together sales presentations many salespeople overlook a key element which can make their sales presentations much more effective. The key to remember is that peoples’ lives are driven by pleasure and pain, the carrot (reward or pleasure), and the stick (penalty or pain). The benefits of your product or service will help the prospect either to avoid pain or to gain pleasure. Usually it is a combination of the two. Your objective in the sales presentation is to show the prospect how he or she will minimize pain and maximize pleasure by using your product or service. People buy home insurance to avoid the pain of the replacement cost should their house burn down.

People buy the newest sports car for the pleasure it brings them. They may buy a Volvo for pleasure, because they like the car, as well as to avoid the potential pain of being injured in an auto accident. 

Typically, people will do more to prevent pain than they will to gain pleasure. Think about it—would you do more to earn $100,000 or more to prevent someone from taking $100,000 away from you?  

What is the primary objective of your product or service? Does it protect something? Does it enhance something? Come up with as many “carrots” and “sticks” as you can. Having both the carrot (the reward) and the stick (the pain caused by not buying your product) in your sales presentation is important. To be completely effective, you need to include both sides of the equation. You have to talk about both the heaven the prospect will experience as a result of owning your product and the hell he’ll go through without your product. 

Try to think of as many benefits or “carrots” and as much pain or “sticks” as you can and use these in your sales presentations. Tell stories about the pleasure people have gained and the pain they have avoided by purchasing your product or service.  

The bottom line is: you want people to ultimately see all the pleasure they will gain if they own your product and the pain they will receive if they don’t. Your objective is to come up with as many product benefits as you can, and also come up with the pain or dangers of not having your product and then find a way to use all of them in your sales presentation.

Sales training ideas – Don’t forget these two important aspects in sales presentations.

Your sales presentations can be made or broken by two critical ingredients. Most salespeople include only one of these in their sales presentation and completely disregard the other.

2 Ingredients for powerful sales presentations

Your sales presentation should focus on a strong logical argument backed up with strong emotional appeal. These two ingredients, emotion and logic, more than anything, will keep the prospect listening and interested while you pave the way to closing the sale. 

Too many salespeople focus primarily on the facts, figures, and statistics of their product during the sales presentation and fail to get the prospect emotionally involved. People unequivocally do not buy on logic alone. People may look at all the logical reasons to buy and even build a logical case to buy, but ultimately they buy emotionally, using logic to justify their buying decision. In other words, people always buy on emotional logic. Keep this fact in mind when designing your sales presentations. 

Becoming emotionally involved in business might be the equivalent of becoming infatuated with a product’s bells and whistles (features). Once you get the emotional purchase home, logic will begin to enter the equation. Do the bells and whistles work properly? How effective are they at helping you do what you want to do? And when you do have a problem, how quickly can you get it resolved? If it turns out that the bells and whistles work only 50 percent of the time, and when you need service you have to wait much longer than expected, these “logical” problems will ultimately make the “emotional” purchase of this item a poor decision. 

In the short term, emotion sells. In the long term, logic will show whether the decision was a good one. If you start dating someone because he or she is drop-dead gorgeous and makes you laugh, you are buying emotionally. Once the infatuation wears off, you will now be focusing on “logical” factors such as, does this person support you? Is he or she there for you at important times? Can you have meaningful discussions? Can you work out finances equitably? What about shared interests? What about distance? If these “logical” areas are a problem, the relationship probably will not last. 

If someone gives you an emotionally charged sales presentation, but there is no logic to back up that emotion, you will not buy from that person again. If you get sold emotionally on prime rib and it turns out “logically” to be a tough cut, you won’t be back. On the other hand, if you get emotionally sold on prime rib and it turns out logically to be the best prime rib you’ve ever had, you’ll be back again and again. 

Once a decision is made, service after the sale, performance of the product, efficiency and profitability, or lack thereof, will give solid, logical proof as to whether the decision was a good or bad one. 

Keep in mind some of the dynamics that are at work with your prospect. At the corporate level, decision-makers are concerned with how the buying decision will move them up the corporate ladder, earn the company more money, make them look good to peers and/or superiors and, overall, how the decision will give them more power within the organization. 

On the other side of the coin, they are afraid of making a mistake that could do the opposite and decrease their power within the organization. Ultimately, the buyer will weigh the two sides and make an emotional decision based upon a preponderance of evidence and then use the evidence to logically justify the decision to others. 

Most people, when they’re buying for business, desire to look good to others so that they can experience more positive emotions. Will they be seen as intelligent, frugal, tough, and a great negotiator? Or will they be seen as someone who paid too much and got taken advantage of? Remember this when putting together your sales presentation. 

A Potential Emotional and Logical Pitfall 

Many salespeople with a superior product focus their sales presentation solely on the logical reasons to buy, believing that details, statistics, and hard facts will be enough to sell a high-quality product. While logic might be enough to initially arouse interest in a superior product, the salesperson needs to add emotion to the sales presentation to ensure the prospect will pay higher dollars for a higher-quality product. 

On the flip side, salespeople with a weaker product or service will often use an emotionally charged sales presentation, while completely disregarding logic. The salesperson may feel that unless they throw an excess of enthusiasm and emotion at the prospect, they will not have a shot. In this case, the salesperson tends to oversell the emotion. 

The bottom line: as a salesperson, you need to know your product’s strengths and weaknesses, and then sell the strengths with logical enthusiasm in your sales presentation. Stir up strong emotions and justify those emotions with logical reasoning. Sell the steak (logic) and the sizzle (emotion). Sell the logic of prime rib, but paint “juicy” emotional pictures along with it. Conversely, you can sell the butt steak emotionally, but also sell the logic of the great price or “deal” the prospect is getting. 

All products and services have strengths and weaknesses. A lower-quality product or service, or one with fewer options and less flexibility, usually has low price as a strength. On the other hand, a product with a high price as a weakness usually has options, flexibility, superior performance, or other strong features as strengths. 

Whether you have the highest-priced, highest-quality product or the lowest-priced, lesser-quality product, you can always emotionally sell the logical benefits of whatever your product and thus have a powerful sales presentation.

Sales training ideas – An important element in your sales presentations.

When delivering a sales presentation, there is, by far, a sales tool you can use which is far more powerful than any other sales tool out there. It is a tool that many new salespeople have naturally but any of us can use this to propel our sales presentations. 

A powerful tool for sales presentations

We had a situation in the investment business in which a young stockbroker became overwhelmed with emotion and excitement when a company stock he was buying for clients made a surprise announcement regarding a major new contract. The young broker hit the phone like a maniac and all of a sudden his laid-back, logical sales presentation was animated and lively. As a result, he opened three accounts in two hours. Considering he had only opened two accounts in the previous two months, it was obvious that the difference in his ability to open accounts came down to his enthusiasm and conviction. 

A high level of enthusiasm alone made three sales in two hours, while a logical sales presentation alone made two sales in two months. 

Often new salespeople are able to sell purely on enthusiasm. Typically, they have little product knowledge and know very little about the industry. Enthusiasm and excitement are all they have to offer. 

Enthusiasm is perhaps the most powerful sales tool in that it alone can make sales. Put together a powerful sales presentation where you couple enthusiasm with a well-thought-out business case and strong logical appeal and your sales will skyrocket.

Sales training ideas – Add personal information to add emotion to your sales presentation.

During the sales presentation many salespeople focus on general information that applies to everyone and lose sight of the individual. When the sales presentation is focused on information that applies to everyone, as opposed to the individual prospect, the prospect becomes detached and has no emotional involvement in the sales process. 

On the other hand, when we focus on the personal history of individuals and speak to their unique issues, they become emotionally involved in the sales presentation. Thus, you want to focus on the person you are facing and his or her unique situation. One way to do this is to bring the prospect’s family into the sales presentation.  

Think about the following for a moment: A child’s future, a parent being cared for in their later years, the death of a loved one. All of these are events that most of us will deal with in our lifetimes. These subjects create very strong emotional responses in most of us. Some of these, such as a college education, can be positive events; others, such as the death of a loved one or nursing home care, have negative overtones.  

What potential “family” benefits does your product address and how can you work these into your sales presentation? If you sell a product such as life insurance, the “family” impact is immense. Here is an example of bringing family into your sales presentation: “Mr. Prospect, as you know, the objective of this life insurance is to financially protect your family should something happen to you unexpectedly. Obviously, the grief is bad enough without having to worry about finances. Imagine your children going to college, your wife making the house payments, and weddings paid for all because you had the courage and foresight to protect your and your family’s dreams with the right life insurance policy.” 

Adding a statement like the one above will personalize the sales presentation and definitely add some emotion. At the same time, before you use a similar example, you need to know something about your prospect’s family. 

Following is another example of “family” emotion. Although this emotional picture was drawn with regard to an objection, it is a good example of bringing family into the sales presentation. 

One of us used to sell long-term care insurance for future use for nursing homes. A common objection during the sales presentation was: “If I become sick, my son (or daughter, granddaughter, neighbor, etc.) will take care of me so I don’t have to go into a nursing home.” 

This objection was easily handled by asking a few questions and allowing the prospect to draw his or her own conclusions. The first question was: “So if you require twenty-four-hours-a day, seven-days-a-week care, your son is going to care for you?”  

At this point, the prospect’s facial expression would start to change. The follow-up question was: “Let me ask you, with all due respect, do you think it would be fair to your son to ask him to do that?”  

Believe us, it created some emotion quickly! All at once, the prospect visualized the burden this would be on his offspring. 

In reality, people often do not picture the implications of long-term care. They don’t see it as something that might involve their relatives twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. They imagine it might involve the relative helping them out of a chair from time to time or fixing a meal or two. They rarely see the real commitment this type of intensive care usually requires. 

Having been asked the right questions, the prospect began to realize the true implications of long-term care, namely, that the caregiver may need to give up his or her life and focus completely on care giving. Once that “emotional” picture hit home, the sales presentation and the sale became much easier. This is an example of educating the prospect, which is one of your jobs as a salesperson. 

Weddings, college, a new home, not to mention family—all have plenty of emotion attached to them. So make your sales presentations personal. Learn about the family and other loved ones involved who will either be using your product or service too, or will otherwise be impacted by it, then talk about that with the prospect during the sales presentation and bring it up again when closing the sale.

Sales training ideas – Adding life to numbers in your sales presentation.

To have the most impact during your sales presentation, you want to back up your logic with emotion. Usually when you are discussing numbers in your sales presentation, you are trying to make a logical case for your product or service. This part of the sales presentation usually tends to be a bit dry. So how can you make your numbers more emotional? 

Giving logical numbers emotion during your sales presentation 

Some numbers are emotional in and of themselves. Extreme numbers can be emotional. For example, an insurance company has an advertisement stating that although they didn’t have any cute animals as mascots, they did have over six hundred billion dollars in assets. Six hundred billion is a number that catches people’s attention. 

In another example, a precision welding company talked about the welding wire they used with a diameter of three-thousandths of an inch, or the diameter of a human hair. In the welding field, that number opens peoples’ eyes. Of course, after you’ve captured the prospect’s attention with the numbers, you need to give the benefit—why the numbers are important to him or her. 

Do you have any examples like the ones above that you could add to your sales presentation? 

You also have to present your numbers the right way during your sales presentation. You want the prospect to have a clear picture of the bottom line. For example, as an investment advisor, instead of telling the prospect she will receive 7 percent on her investment, let her know that with this investment she will receive a quarterly check for $647, or whatever the number happens to be. When you mention a percentage, the prospect has to make all the calculations to get to the bottom line. In the second example, you are giving the prospect the bottom line directly and the number $647 will naturally have more emotion to it than 7 percent. When you give the bottom line number, the prospect doesn’t have to go through any confusing calculations in her head to figure out what 7 percent ultimately means to her. In other words, you want people to get the overall picture, you don’t want them in their heads making calculations.  

The bottom line: during your sales presentation you want to make it easy to understand, and give the final picture as opposed to pieces of the puzzle that need to be put together. Deliver the numbers in a way that they will have the most impact, and deliver them with energy and enthusiasm. 

Note: If you are presenting “cost” numbers, such as how much your product costs to own, you want to break those down to the smallest amount possible, usually the daily investment, so that they have the least impact on the prospect. 

Presented the right way, your numbers can have impact. Use the ideas above and add life to the numbers in your sales presentation.

Sales training ideas – Showing how investing in your product may actually save the prospect money.

First let’s start with a basic sales presentation premise: During your presentation, your objective is to show the prospect that he or she will be better off with your product or service and worse off without it. You want to use both pleasure and pain (carrot and the stick). If you have a prospect who sees a need for what you’re selling, you’re halfway there. If, on the other hand, the prospect does not necessarily see a need for what you’re selling, you have to change his or her perspective. One way to change perspective during the sales presentation is to show the cost (pain) of not owning your product. 

For example, if the prospect believes your product costs too much, you need to change her perspective to the point where she understands that it is costing more not to have your product. If she is spending $1.00 a day for something because she doesn’t have your product and your product costs $100, then after one hundred days she’s making money with your product. Then the point of your sales presentation will be to shift her thinking from up-front cost to long-term cost. 

How about lifestyle? Does your product provide a better way of life? If so, what is it costing mentally and emotionally not to have your product? You simply must work these into your sales presentation. Once you build value to the point where it outweighs cost, you’ve got a sale (assuming the prospect is qualified to buy). 

Here is another way to look at this: Once you shift the cost from the prospect’s “hang on to my money” side of the ledger to the “buy your product and save money” side, the sale is made. In addition to comparing long-term and short-term costs, what other cost factors can you use in your sales presentation? 

1) Cost of labor.

How many working hours, and thus dollars, are being spent—daily, weekly, monthly, annually—by NOT having your product or service? 

2) Cost of maintenance and materials.

If the business has an old copier, how much more expensive is the service contract? How many hours is the machine costing in lost production when it’s down? How many more hours do office personnel spend fixing the current machine? How about the number of ink cartridges and their cost compared with the newer, longer lasting ones? 

3) Longevity.

How long does your machine last compared with the competition’s? If the competition’s machine lasts ten years and yours lasts fifteen, the prospect will have to buy three machines for every two of yours. Point this out. Give the prospect a “per year” price as opposed to a total price, and have numbers ready to support your claim of the lifespan of your machines versus the competition’s. 

Your challenge is to find as many cost factors associated with your product as possible and work them into the sales presentation. Show your prospect what it is costing him or her not to own your product or service and make the evidence so overwhelming that the prospect is compelled to buy. Some of these factors are easier to put into numbers. 

Let’s look at a few examples in which we take some otherwise intangible items and make them tangible. 

Let’s suppose your prospect has an old, outdated piece of equipment. From experience you know that an old machine will require company personnel to spend time repairing, using another machine, waiting for another machine, or working on various other activities as a result of problems with the current machine. The prospect may realize this or he may not, so your first step is to discover whether he is aware of this, and then encourage him to take ownership of these “costs.” 

Your side of the conversation during the sales presentation might go as follows: “Mr. Prospect, obviously your old equipment is costing you man hours as your employees spend time repairing it, using another machine, waiting for another machine, or doing various other activities because of problems with the current machine. Am I correct in that assumption?” 

Once your prospect agrees, present him with the number of manpower hours the old equipment is most likely costing him (based on your experience). Next, have the prospect himself figure out the number of manpower hours the failing equipment is costing him. Say something like following: “Mr. Prospect, in my experience the old equipment is probably costing you about ten man hours per week. But from your end, if you had to guess how many hours it’s actually costing you, what would you guess?”

If the prospect gives you a number, whatever number it is, use that number in your calculations. If the prospect says no, he has no idea how many hours, say, “I’ll tell you what. My experience says it’s probably about ten hours. To be conservative, let’s use half that, or five hours. Will you agree that between repairs, waiting, and other activities it’s taking at least five hours per week?” 

Using whatever number he gave you or, based upon the five hours, do your calculations and put a “cost” on the old machine and then work this into the sales presentation. 

Note: It’s important for your prospect to give you a number—that way he can’t argue with it later. You’ll also need to get the salary in dollars per hour of the employee who is wasting her time. Your prospect may not want to reveal it, but you’ve got to question until you get a ballpark figure that he’s comfortable giving out. 

Now, do the math. Five hours a week at the hourly rate of the person wasting his or her time. Say, “So five hours at $15 an hour is $75 per week, or $750 for ten weeks, or roughly $3,750 per year. Is my math right? So, in personnel hours alone you’re losing $3,750 per year by not having our new machine. In addition, you’re losing the added productivity of that energy, or 250 working hours a year that could be put into doing more profitable work elsewhere—isn’t that correct? But that would be a little difficult to calculate, so we’ll leave it out for now. Just realize that there is some ‘real’ added cost there, okay?” 

Next, jump to the price of a service contract. “Joe, you’re currently paying $800 per year for a service contract on your present equipment correct? The service contract on a new machine is only $550. That equals another $250 per year, so now we’re up to $4,000 per year that the old machine is costing you. Correct?” 

Now, jump to other maintenance and supply issues such as toner cartridges. During your sales presentation, continue to build the “cost” in each area until you have overwhelmingly shown that it is less expensive to buy the new machine than it is to keep the old one. Your ultimate goal it to show that it is much less expensive, but if you can at least show it is less expensive by any amount, and the prospect trusts all your numbers, you’ll be in a good position to close the sale. 

Note: Again, you want to be using the prospect’s numbers. If you help him come up with the numbers, make sure he “owns” them. If you use your numbers, they are open for debate. If you use the prospect’s numbers, they are law. 

You can also work more difficult intangibles such as: quality of life, sick days, safety issues, longer life, less stress, and getting more enjoyment and happiness out of life into your sales presentation. These are more difficult factors to put dollar amounts on, but you want to use them where possible. 

Some companies, including many insurance companies, do put dollar values on these more difficult intangibles. They have numbers on obscure things such as how much one extra year of life is worth or how much an arm or a leg is worth. You may find it helpful to refer to some of their statistics as “evidence” when making your case in the sales presentation. 

In legal disputes, dollar amounts must to be assigned to almost everything, including intangibles. You can gather numbers from court judgments, insurance claims, and so on, or you can build a psychological case and ask the prospect how much factors are really worth. An example: 

“Mr. Prospect, studies have shown that this therapy can add years to your life. Suppose it only added one year, or six months, or even only one month. Would you agree with me that one month would be a conservative number? 

“Mr. Prospect, the insurance companies and other industries can actually put a dollar amount on one extra month of life. But let me ask you, what is one more month of sunsets, one more month with the ones you love, one more month of enjoying life really worth? 

“If someone told you that you had to leave this world today, and let that sit with you for a while, and returned ten minutes later saying, ‘Okay, I’m giving you one more month,’ what would that extra month be worth then?” 

Let the prospect come up with the “priceless” psychological value. In a case such as this, the prospect doesn’t have to put a specific dollar number on it. The psychological number will always be higher. 

Ultimately, you need to build as much real and psychological cost as you can of not owning your product or service into your sales presentation. At the same time, this will build your product’s value. 

Note: In competitive situations, you want to show how it will cost the prospect more money to own the competition’s product than yours. Equate the intangible—headaches, lack of peace of mind—and the tangible issues, such as the documented life of your machines versus the competition’s and the “real” cost involved. We will look at this in depth in the Competition Section. 

Use the ideas above to really hammer home the pain (stick) of not owning your product or service. The more pain you can associate to non-ownership, the more effective you’ll be during your sales presentations.

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