Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Is Politeness Unraveling Your Sale?

It happened again today. I received a follow-up email from a vendor containing not one, but two, uses of the phrase "should you choose to go forward." Very nice, very polite, also potentially hazardous to this sale.

Why?

I already told the salesperson that we wanted to move forward and the email was supposed to tell me what we needed to do now. In effect, the salesperson was ignoring that decision and putting the deal up for grabs again.

Before you say,"Oh, I would never do that," realize I see this with alarming frequency, particularly from sellers of services. "Should you choose to go forward" is second cousin to, "If you decide to use our services." Both are equally effective at unraveling a sale when written to a customer who is already sold.

How can you safeguard your emails from this deal nullifier? Take a good, hard look at your standard emails. And, before you hit the send button on your next email, carefully read it over to see if every word applies to this particular prospect. If the prospect is already sold, you need to replace the "should you choose" and "if you decide." This buyer would not object to being told, "Let's get started. Just fill out the attached forms and I'll get you scheduled."

--Tina LoSasso is Managing Editor of SalesDog.com and a contributor to Top Dog Sales Secrets.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Interesting to know.