Episode #167: Sales And Showmanship

Tricky area in sales, showmanship. The word has a certain odor about it that reeks of fake, duplicity, con game, spruker, carnival barker, etc. Yet, like storytelling, this is an important part of the sales professional’s repertoire. Clients are card carrying members of the Great Guild Of Skeptics. They are highly doubtful about salespeople’s claims. We need to bring some powerful persuasion techniques to the fore.

Just making a statement is not going to do it. “This widget will improve your revenue by 15%”, is a statement whose veracity buyers question or worse, just ignore as fluff from salespeople. Having a need and doing something about it, are not the same thing for buyers. Everyone would welcome a 15% increase in revenues, but that doesn’t mean clients are going to take up our widget to enjoy the gain.

They have to be convinced and how do we convince them? We might offer a trial or a demonstration. We might marshal testimonials from satisfied buyers. We might provide data from independent studies, that back up our claims and assertions. All good stuff, but how do we make sure we can break through the wall of disinterest, doubt and distraction. This is where showmanship comes in.

This isn’t making up information to snow the buyer or doing a bait and switch, between what they think they are getting and what we actually deliver. This means using our communication skills to highlight the key points that will persuade the buyer, that what we are offering will help them and is in their best interests. What we say has to be true, but we don’t need to say it in a flat, lifeless, mundane or boring way.

When we offer to sell something, it has a cost associated with it. There is a difference between cost and price though, which may not be apparent to the buyer. They use the terms interchangeably. We as sales professionals should never use either word if possible. We should be talking about the investment. If price as a term comes up, we need to show the difference between price, a one time exchange and cost, which is a long term calculation.

If you buy something today with a cheaper price, how do you judge the value when you have to keep replacing it, because of some fault or defect? The real cost is the money you paid, plus the time you have lost, plus the opportunity cost of not being able to do something more beneficial with your lost time, plus the transportation impost required to go back and get a new one, plus the frustration and stress incurred. Now we salespeople know this, but are we communicating this to the buyer in an effective manner? Are we using showmanship to pile on the elements of the real costs of making a mistake by buying our competitor’s item, because it seems cheaper than ours?

Showmanship would involve using persuasive word pictures to draw out the scene of the client becoming frustrated when the cheaper model broke down, destroying the moment at hand or the lost opportunity it should have provided. It would include talking about having to lug the item back to where it was purchased and then wasting valuable time hanging around to get served.

Maybe describing the annoyance of having to line up to take a number or sit on a hard, uncomfortable bench or getting tired legs, because you have to stand. It would mean describing the opportunity cost of how that irreplaceable time was being spent on a totally unnecessary, useless task, at the expense of higher priority, more valuable items. We should be raising pertinent questions about how costly their time and focus are and mention the complete irritation of the interruption to their day.

Showmanship may involve the use of mathematics to reduce a cost down to a comparison where the purchase amount isn’t that substantial, when amortised over time. The price consideration is in the now, but the cost can be strung out across years. This makes the additional cost of our widget seem reasonable and more convincing as a wise decision. If our purchase price is three times the competitors, but because of the value we provide, the financial returns will be better by ten times when measured over the next five years, then the original price objection becomes weaker in the mind of the buyer. Clients can understand investing for the future, but we have to use the right word pictures to draw that out, so that it is pertinent and relevant to the buyer.

A favourite example of showmanship is the car tyre puncture repair story. This is used to illustrate to salespeople the importance of showmanship, when explaining choices of action versus no-action to clients. As mentioned before having a need to buy and buying are not always well paired together in the mind of the client. The example of the gas stand is used, where the service attendant notices the front left hand tyre of the car has a slow leak and offers to fix the puncture in 10 minutes. The client refuses the offer, because they are in a hurry and drive off.

The same scenario is used again, but this time the attendant employs some word pictures and showmanship. Now let me make a very key point here. In the case of your own product or service, the example must be a true and not some fiction dreamed up by the sales manager to con clients to get more sales.

So the attendant says:

“Mr. Customer, I notice your front left hand tyre has a slow leak. We can repair that puncture in 10 minutes”.

The client refuses, because they are too busy to spend the ten minutes repairing the leaking tyre. At this point the attendant doesn’t simply let the buyer leave, but says instead:

“Previously, we had another customer here with the same issue – a slow leak in their tyre. Unfortunately they were also too busy to fix it. We saw a report later on the nightly news about a terrible accident.

Apparently that same car tyre blew out while they were on the highway. It caused the car to flip and roll over three times. We saw the tangled mess of what was left of the car from the television station’s helicopter video. It was total tragedy.

The television reporter said the whole family of four, including the two young kids, died in that accident. When we heard that, we all felt really bad, because we didn’t get them to fix the leak when we had the chance.

We could have prevented that accident…. It will take us ten minutes to fix your puncture, let’s do it now, so we will all feel a lot better and safer”.

I don’t know if that example is an urban myth, but it does illustrate to us the importance of helping the buyer to see the full ramifications of the decisions they are going to take, both positive and negative. Notice the use of very emotive language to drive home the cost of no action. The tone is subdued but still powerful. We need to be looking for ways in which we can contrast the plus of using our solution, against the minus of doing nothing or using our competitor’s solution.

Think about what you sell and what are some ways you can illustrate to the buyer that there are opportunity costs to not buying from you and buying now. Look for powerful word pictures to draw this out for the buyer. This is showmanship and we must become masters of communicating value to the client.