CHAPTER
Buyers Must See What You Say
Zig
Somebody once said that one picture was worth a thousand words. Well, the individual who said that obviously never really read the Declaration of Independence. They’ve never read Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. They’ve never really read the Twenty-Third Psalm. All of those were words; they were just words. Think of the impact they’ve had on the lives of so many millions of people.
Charles Osgood expressed it this way: “Compared to the spoken word, the picture is a pitiful thing indeed.” Now that’s pretty strong, but that’s one reason I am always so disturbed when I hear someone, especially a salesperson, using, profane, barnyard language. I’ve never yet heard of that kind of talk creating a sale, but boy, I’ve heard of lots of cases where it cost the sale.
You see, words do paint pictures, and a picture needs to be the right one. In times gone past, I’ve been called a merchant, and to be honest, I’m kind of proud of that designation. But let me suggest that there is a danger for the professional salesperson in talking and in the use of questions and listening.
That’s a very important distinction we need to make. Interactive selling skills will help you find the right balance between painting vivid word pictures, asking those all-important questions, and listening to understand the prospect’s real objection. After you finish this, I believe you will actually look forward to your prospect’s objections. So let’s get going right now.
From time to time, I have people ask me, “How do you want me to introduce you for the program? Do you want me to introduce you as a speaker?” I always say, “No. Please tell them I am a teacher.”
You see, speakers inform people. They often inspire them. They often entertain them, but teachers give them something which they can take home and use that day, that week, that month, that year. It will have a big and different impact in their lives.
Some words are negative, and some words are positive. My friend, sales trainer Tom Norman, has put together a list of words. Some are negative, some are positive. First of all, let’s look at some of those positive words.
The first positive word, of course, is the prospect’s name. We all agree that’s a very positive word. Understand is a positive word. Proven, healthy, easy, guaranteed, money, safety, save, new, love, discovery, right, results, truth, comfort, proud, profit—oh, we like that one, don’t we, businesspeople?—deserve, happy, trust, value, fun, vital. Yale University adds a few to that list. You is a positive word, security, advantage, positive, benefits, and of course, two of the most beautiful words of all, faith and hope.
There are some negative words, and they’re the ones you want to avoid as much as is humanly possible. Deal. I can’t imagine a professional salesperson using the word deal. Cost, pay, contract, sign, try, worry, loss, lose, hurt, buy, death, bad, sell, sold, price, decision, hard, difficult, obligation, liable, fail, liability, failure. One of my least favorite of all words in the sales vernacular is pitch. I, again, cannot imagine a professional using that word. Of course, profanity is an absolute no-no. The worst of all is God’s name taken in vain.
It’s important to use the right words, the positive motivating ones, and eliminate the negative, demotivating ones. We need to build our presentation around the positive records so that you can be certain not to use “You know what I mean?” A lot of times the salesman gets to talking, and you know everything he says after you’ve been listening to him a minute or two: “You know what I’m saying when I’m talking about this, don’t you?”
Have you ever been around somebody who had you climbing the wall in about nine seconds flat when they keep saying the same thing over and over? “Understand what I’m saying? Understand what I’m saying? I mean, do you understand what I’m saying? You know what I mean? You know what I mean? You know what I mean?” You go bananas.
Then occasionally I’ve been around somebody who has just been told you’re supposed to use the prospect’s name all the time, so what do they do? They use the name. “Well, Mr. Jones, here’s the thing, Mr. Jones. Mr. Jones, if you’ll follow this, Mr. Jones. Mr. Jones, what you’ll find, Mr. Jones, Mr. Jones, is this, Mr. Jones,” and in a couple of minutes, again it’s driving you out of your gourd.
That’s the reason we need to be aware of those words. It’s the reason we need to regularly record our presentations and listen back to hear what we’re saying. Words can make a dramatic difference. I became aware of this several years ago when I was in Indianapolis, Indiana, having a meal there at the Hyatt Hotel.
They brought that menu out, and when I looked at it, I thought to myself, “Oh, brother, we have a salesperson with a verbal paintbrush who really knows how to use words.” I read it, and listen to this: “Spanish Supreme, a tumultuous arrangement of fresh spinach leaves mingled with enoki mushrooms.” Do you know what enoki mushrooms are? Tell me the truth. Don’t they sound good? “Crisp chips of bacon and ripe tomato with our superb, hot bacon dressing.”
Listen to this one. “For protein lovers, Mr. Chopped Sirloin conducts an orchestra of fresh vegetables, fruits, and eggs to an audience of shredded lettuce, with an accompaniment of frozen yogurt and cottage cheese.” Can you imagine a better use of words?
The professional takes that verbal paintbrush and paints his prospect right into the picture, giving them the satisfaction and gratification of visualizing the use and enjoyment of what they are selling—one of the most fascinating little incidents of life. A blurb is all it really is, and yet it says so much.
Several years ago, The New York Times ran a story about a Mr. and Mrs. Lowe, a New Jersey couple who were having to sell their home. The real-estate people ran an ad, and the ad was beautifully written. It was factual, and it read like this. “Cozy, six-room home. Ranch-style with fireplace. Garage. Tile baths, all hot water heat. Convenient to Rutgers campus, stadium, and golf courses, and a primary school.”
Those are facts, but we as professional salespeople need to clearly understand that people do not buy facts. They don’t even buy benefits for that matter, unless they can see those benefits translated into their own personal use.
That ad ran for three months, and that house still had not sold. Mrs. Lowe decided to take matters into her own hands. Headlines were, “We’ll miss our home. We’ve been happy in it, but two bedrooms are not enough for us, so we must move. If you like to be cozy by a fire while you admire autumn woods through wide windows, protected from the street, a shady yard in the summer, a clear view of winter sunsets, and quiet enough to hear frogs in the spring but prefer city utilities and conveniences, you might like to buy our home. We hope so. We don’t want it to be empty and alone at Christmas.” The next day she had six calls and sold the house to one of the callers.
Let’s look back at that ad and explore the pictures there. First of all, “we’ll miss our home.” When you think about that picture, you get a feeling of sadness. Here this couple is: they love their home.
“We’ve been happy in it.” You see the second picture there, but “two bedrooms”—you see, that’s not negative about the house. All it says is it’s not big enough for us, and it also is factual. It’s telling them how much room there is. “Two bedrooms is not enough for us. So we must move.”
“If you like to be cozy by a fire”—and who doesn’t, really?—“while you admire autumn woods through wide windows.” Can’t you see that picture? Looking out of those wide windows in the autumn and seeing all of the color, but “protected from the street.” You see, it’s safe. It’s secluded. It gives you and your family privacy. “A shady yard in the summer, cool, and enjoyable. A clear view of winter sunsets.” Now that’s romance, and “quiet enough to hear frogs in the spring.” I don’t know what you think about frogs, but all of a sudden, I thought they were pretty nice.
“If you prefer city utilities and conveniences, you might like to buy our home. We hope so. We don’t want it to be empty and alone at Christmas.” You almost felt sorry for the house, didn’t you? I mean, you don’t want that house to be alone like that.
Word pictures sell because they appeal to the heart, and people buy with the heart. Everybody is a salesperson, as you’ve heard me say, and everybody sells. So selling words are extremely important.
One of the greatest salespeople I have ever met is a dentist. His name is Tom McDougall. I’ll never forget when I went to see Tom for the first time professionally. I’d been hearing about him. Members of our staff had been over to him, and so I went over to see Tom. I had to have some teeth capped, and I was really impressed with several things.
First of all, three people worked on me before I ever got to Dr. McDougall, and each one of the three smilingly said exactly the same thing. “Mr. Ziglar, Dr. McDougall suggests that you only floss those teeth you want to keep.” Now that really said something to me. It says here’s a man who is interested in preventive dentistry. He wants me to keep my teeth. I really got a charge out of that.
Dentist consultant Gladys Cook compiled the words that they used at Dr. McDougall’s office and other offices, of course. Over there they talk about restoration, not filling. People don’t want to have their teeth filled. They talk about a change in schedule. They never use the word cancellation. I was in their reception room, not their waiting room.
When I got ready to go, they wanted to know how I was going to take care of, not pay for the services. They called to confirm the appointment, not to remind me. They wanted me to empty my mouth, not spit. They prepared my teeth. They didn’t grind on them. I received an injection, not a needle or a shot. I did feel a little pressure, but not pain.
Any professional has a moral obligation to sell his services, if they’re good. For example, I have a close friend who went to another dentist at about the same time. This friend had nine teeth he needed to have capped. He also was fully covered with insurance, but when he looked at the bill for nine teeth, he just saw, “That’s so much money, I’m not going to ask that insurance company to pay that.”
So he asked the dentist, “Do I really need to get all nine of them done right now?” The dentist said, “No. Five of them you need to do right now, but the other four can wait.” Now he prepared those five teeth. He never said another word, didn’t even ask him about insurance, didn’t ask when he was going to do it, and though my friend has been back to that dentist two or three times since then, he still has not completed the job with the other four.
I say that dentist did not perform the services that he should have performed as a professional. There are several factors involved. First of all, when my friend goes back, the chances are they’re not going to be able to cosmetically match the new caps with the old ones. They can get close, but they won’t be cosmetically as attractive.
Number two, there’s going to be another investment of several hours, and there will be some additional pain involved. Number three, there will be some additional expense involved, and number four, and probably the most serious of all, is the fact that my friend stands a chance of losing one of those teeth. I believe the professional needs to look it at from the prospect’s best interest.
Everybody sells. I never will forget when the pastor of our church sent a couple of men out to see me to ask if I would teach the Sunday School class in the auditorium. Well, that’s quite a responsibility, and it was something I was not certain I was qualified to handle because that’s a rather conservative church. Of course, I’m conservative, but it was a very big class, and I didn’t know if I was ready to tackle it.
“I’m flattered that you’ve asked,” I said. “I really do not know. I will certainly carefully consider it, and then I will pray about what I should do.”
The next day I got a letter from the pastor saying, “Thank you for agreeing to teach this class.” Now you’re talking about the assumptive attitude. All of us are in the world of selling.
When my oldest daughter was three years old, we were up in Knoxville, Tennessee. We had our brand-new baby there at home, and when the baby was about four or five days old, not long after the wife had brought her home, I was caught out on the mountainside and spent the night on the road. Fortunately, I was trapped next to a Greyhound bus, and I had a chance to go in and enjoy some comfortable heat there.
I came home reasonably comfortable, but when I walked in, it was snowing again, and it was cold, and I was absolutely exhausted. I walked in and immediately started pulling my coat off. My wife said, “Honey. Wait a minute, don’t take your stuff off yet. We have to go back to the store and get something for the baby.” I said, “Oh, OK.”
So I started putting the clothing back on, a big topcoat and all, and my three-year-old daughter, Suzie, came up to me and said, “Daddy, I want to go.” I said, “Oh, Suzie, the weather’s too bad. I’ll be back in just a few minutes.” But, she said, “Daddy, I’ll be so lonely.” I said, “Oh, Suzie, you’re not going to be lonely. Your mother is here. The maid’s here. Your little sister is here.”
She looked at me, and she said, “Yes, Daddy, but I’ll be lonely for you.” Everything is selling. I don’t think I need to tell you that she went with me to that grocery store to get whatever it was we had to get.
As a salesperson, you should capitalize on the natural things that you have, the obvious things which are yours to work with. If you’re a lady, for example, have you ever shown up all of a sudden in a beautiful dress that your husband did not know you had gotten, and he backs away, looks at it, and says, “Ooh” or “Ahh”?
Why is it that salesladies sometimes set aside those very special garments for their special customers,? “Oh, Mrs. Jones, this is our ooh dress. When you show up with this at home, your husband is going to take one look and say ooh.” If that’s not picture selling, I don’t know what is.
I’m a golf enthusiast. I love to hit golf balls. We’ve done some work with the PING Manufacturing Company. Actually, they have the set of clubs that I’m using. I think they’re fantastic. If I were selling golf clubs, you know the line I would use from time to time for these avid golfers. I’d say to them, “Now this is our set of ooh and ahh clubs, because when you step up to that tee and bust that ball right down the middle, your friends are going to say ooh or ahh.”
I’ve been amazed at the number of times I have overheard conversations between ladies. One of them will say, “You know, my husband bought me a dress. I wear a size 13, and he came home with an 8. I cannot believe that he did such a dumb thing.” Or “he showed up with green, and he knows I look terrible in green.”
I’ve been married now for well over forty years. I’ve bought my wife dozens and dozens of gifts, and I’m delighted to be able to say I have never made a mistake, not even once. I always get the right size, I always get the right color, I always get exactly what she was dreaming and hoping that I was going to get.
I’ll be the very first to admit that frequently I never see it again, because she has taken it down and gotten something that did fit and that she did want, but what is she doing? She is giving me all the encouragement I possibly could use.
That’s selling. That’s selling of the highest order, where you paint the pictures, where you use the words, where you paint that prospect into the picture, where you give hope and encouragement.
I never will forget that Friday evening when the redhead met me out at the airport. I’d been gone all week, and she met me there. She was dressed in one of those ooh and ahh dresses. Had on some of that good, sweet-smelling stuff. While we were waiting for my bag to come down, she snuggled up real close, slipped her hand into mine; she’s powerful friendly anyhow.
She looked up at me and said, “Honey, you know, I was just thinking. You’ve been gone all week. I know you’ve been in five different cities. You have to be tired having done all these seminars. If you would like, on the way home, we’ll stop by the store, and we’ll pick up some fish, some seafood, or maybe a nice steak, and when we get home—Tom’s spending the night down the street—and it’ll just be the two of us.
“It won’t take me long to prepare us a really nice dinner, and the two of us will sit there and just really enjoy the meal. I know you don’t want to get involved in washing a whole bunch of dirty, greasy pots and pans and dishes and cleaning up. It shouldn’t take me more than an hour, hour and a half, two hours at the most.”
But, she said, “The thought occurred to me that you would probably be far more comfortable if I were free to devote the entire evening just paying attention to you. I could do that, of course, at a really nice restaurant.”
Everything is selling. Everything is persuasion, and so long as you understand the concepts that I’m talking about here, you can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.
I close with these two thoughts. The professional salesperson doesn’t smoke or drink on sales calls. Now I know what you’re thinking: “Suppose the other person is smoking.” But I’m going to tell you that you’re going to miss some sales. I don’t know which one or when it will take place, but over a period of time, I’m here to tell you that you will miss some sales because you’re smoking on the call.
It takes time to light up. It takes time to take a drag off that cigarette. You have to put the fire out and give it enough time. The day’s going to come when you’re going to get excited and lay that cigarette down carelessly, and you’re going to end up burning a credenza or a desk or a sofa. You also will offend some people. It simply is not worth it. Do not smoke on sales calls.
A lot of times people say, “You said something about not taking a drink. You mean you don’t take a drink with your clients?” Yes, I’m absolutely convinced that you make a mistake when you take a drink with a client. What do you do when they offer you one? You say no. You simply say no.
Suppose they insist? In all the years of my career, I have never had as many as ten people absolutely insist, and when they insist, I always just quietly say, “No, I just don’t drink.” Of the ten, if I’m not mistaken, at least five of them said, “Man, I wish I didn’t.” It did not cost me a sale. In a lot of cases, it made me a friend, and I end up getting more business.
I’ve seen a lot of business lost even after it is gained when somebody cannot handle their booze. In too many cases, the booze eventually ends up handling you. Sales come unglued because a person got a little tight, got too familiar with a prospect.
I’ve had salespeople say to me, “When I take a drink, it relaxes me.” If that’s what it does to the other person, you’re still even. Some people say, “It sharpens me up.” If it does that for you, that’s what it does for the other person, and you’re still even.
But I challenge you as to whether it really does sharpen you up. If you really believe that, let me ask you a question: if you were faced with major surgery, you would want the surgeon to be at his best and sharpest. Are you going to insist that he has a little nip just before he opens you up? I don’t think so.
I’m talking about selling more. Overall, over a period of time, I’m convinced beyond any doubt that, yes, you can sell more with no smoking and no drinking.
Finally, the professional is health-conscious. I cannot believe that we, as salespeople, do not take better care of our health. A lot of times people say, “I don’t have time.” Let me share this with you. When I got involved in an exercise program some fifteen or sixteen years ago, that question was on my mind. When am I going to have time?
I discovered that I have so much to do that I do not have time not to take care of my health. At lunch, for example, if it were practical and convenient for you to take a good fifteen or twenty-minute workout, you’d be amazed at how much more productive you would be that afternoon.
There’s a physiological, not just psychological, reason for that. When you exercise, you activate the pituitary gland. The pituitary gland floods the system with endorphins over 200 times as powerful as morphine. For the next two to five hours, you are on a natural chemical high. Your energy level is higher. Your creativity is higher.
Remember—the last hour of the day is when you should be at your best and most effective. That’s when you can do your best selling. The last prospect you see deserves just as much energy, just as much enthusiasm, just as much professionalism as the first one you saw that morning. And because his or her energy level is beginning to run down a little, if you’re in great physical, mental, emotional condition, your chances of having that extra bit of enthusiasm and energy necessary to make the sale will be greatly enhanced.
I’m convinced. No question about it—when you’re taking care of yourself, you’ll be more effective in the sales process. You bet you. That’s one of the most important secrets of successful selling.