How learning what to say is killing your sales game

Need to find more room on your overflowing sales-driven bookshelf? Here’s an idea: throw away any book that says ‘what to say to get the sale over the line’. That script is killing your sales.

You know the books you need to toss. They’ll likely have been gathering dust on your shelf for some time now. Their original print will have been from the 80s or 90s and they’ll be filled with page-long scripts promising a prescribed response from the apparently none-the-wiser ‘prospect’. Yep, those ones – they need to go.

Straight into the recycling along with last week’s cereal box and yesterday’s egg carton. Understand now: they are as outdated as Myspace, newspapers and Will Smith’s hope for another Oscar all rolled into one.

The game has changed – your buyer needs to know more than ever that you are there for them, more than anything else in that moment. Knowing the ‘right’ words to say just isn’t going to cut it anymore.

How could it?

You don’t need a script

Logically, when it comes to showing them that we genuinely care, rehearsing words fails miserably in comparison to connecting emotionally. Scripts are the quickest way you’re killing your sales. Here’s how it works in three ways.

1. Give first, get second

Lets face it, we are all aiming to get something at the end of the day. There is a secondary gain to practically every behaviour we engage in, but is it the driving force at the front of our mind with each prospect? Or are we aiming to give first in the knowledge that we will also be handsomely taken care of as a result?

2. Be willing to give more than the last person

“Do you care about me as a person?” This is the key question your buyer is unconsciously asking themselves. Coupled with “what’s in it for me?” we are left with a buyer who needs to know you’re truly listening, paying attention and caring for their needs.

3. Aiming to memorise a script and ‘get it right’ is making it about yourself

People can pick up a sense of giving from those who don’t make the process all about themselves. If you’re trying to get it right you’re making it all about one person… yourself.

The key to how we actually show our buyer that we are someone to be trusted with their best intentions is not by memorising a script. It’s really about noticing the patterns that make up their buying decisions. Aiming to memorise a script and ‘get it right’ is making it about ourselves. Understanding the patterns of why people are motivated to buy or not buy allows us to craft our curiosity for their needs in a way that has them feel completely taken care of.

The why and how is more important than the what

Instead of getting a line out and killing your sales game, you are able to call the play two moves ahead and adjust accordingly. Instead of thinking about ‘what to say’, you are able to understand ‘how and why to say’ it. So instead of aiming to get, you are able to completely serve and receive in grateful fashion accordingly.

So I trust by now you’ve added to your recycling contribution for the week and are quickly searching Amazon for a new sales manual that teaches you not what to think but how to think. Your buyers sure hope that’s the case.

This article was originally published in 2016 and has been updated for 2022.

Want more? Get our newsletter delivered straight to your inbox! Follow Kochie’s Business Builders on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

Now read this: