The playwright George Bernard Shaw is said to have said, "The biggest problem in communication is the Illusion that it took place. "This quote is absolutely for sale. Since words are the tools a seller sells with, good communication is crucial. You will not complete the sale if you only have the illusion that communication has taken place.
To communicate more effectively when you sell.
One of the most important results of good communication is that both parties understand exactly what was said. When a salesperson speaks, his goal should be clear. One way to be clear is to avoid using gray or interpretable words. Gray words can be comparative words like more, less, better and worse. When you hear a customer say he wants more, do you really know how much more he wants?
Gray words can be as broad as less, much, always and never. Anything that suggests a rating against a scale is a gray word. What happens is that we interpret what has been said from our own frame of reference and often err. If you hear a gray word when selling, ask for clarification to improve communication.
DO NOT MISS: The Amazing Business Lesson I Learned From Salmon Conservationists [Business Insider]
When a salesperson speaks, they should be easy to understand. And it's much easier to understand when statements are positive or negative. Here's an example.
Read the following two sentences and determine which are easier to understand. The first is "selling is easy". The second is "selling is not difficult". Both sentences mean the same thing. I bet you thought "selling is easy" is easier to understand. What your brain needed to understand was a simpler process. The following happened.
When someone speaks negatively, the listener must first determine what the positive means. If you read, "Selling is not difficult," your brain had to first construct what "selling is heavy" means. Then there was a second step in which you had to realize that the sale was not the one. However, if you read, "Selling is easy," your brain did not have to construct a second step. It became immediately clear what "selling is easy" means.
You do not want your listener to have to work while speaking. Avoid using negatives to improve the understanding of your sales communications.
Another goal to improve communication in sales is to be credible. You want your customers to trust what you say. Unfortunately, some sales situations are stressful, which can make a seller nervous. What often happens when a salesman gets nervous is that he starts speaking faster. This can become a sales problem because a person who does not tell the truth starts talking faster – this is an unconscious way to distance yourself from the lie. As you can imagine, the perception of untruth in sales is an obstacle to effective communication.
