I read at the weekend about a British firm who legally acquired the souls of thousands of their online shoppers. How bizarre?
The online store, Gamestation, put a clause in their Terms and Conditions stating “By placing an order via this website, you agree to grant us a non-transferrable option to claim, for now and for ever more, your immortal soul”
It was all a joke but it proves that most of us just don’t read the small print or detail.
And I think they’re right. The internet age has made us scanners of information. We don’t have the patience anymore to trawl through pages of order. How many of us turn the page on websites or emails (this means scrolling down). We click away onto the next site as quickly as you can say “boo“. We inspect subject lines of emails before reading, deleting at a drop of a hat.
We scan the multitude of TV Channels with one remote control in our hand, we speed read as much as we can get away with. We even attend quantum reading classes to read quicker. We just have too much information around us. We wallow in features and it pushes us into submission.
“Detail, detail, detail…don’t give me detail”, shout our customers.
The message to salespeople and sales managers? Strip out the detail in everything you can get away with since customers don’t read it anyway. Those long-winded sales proposals, brochures, webpages, sales aids.
- Cut back on your sales meeting times, if you can, if you can’t then challenge Head Office to let you. Break them down into shorter chunks if you have to, but rid the world of those 1½ hour sales meetings.
- Do 45 minute coaching sessions rather than half days. Cut your sales meetings down by 50%, you’d be surprised how much you can squeeze in. Parkinson’s Law comes in here and states that the “job fits the time available”
- Cut your prospecting calls down to size. Make your sound bite last 4 seconds rather than 15 seconds, it can be done. Get to the point quicker. Ask for the meeting earlier.
- Banish for ever more PowerPoint slides with bullets on them.
- Close earlier. Trial close more.
- Focus on one maybe two benefits of your product, not four or five.
- And insert a little clause at the end of the sales contract explaining that you have a hold over their immortal…
No not this one.
Seriously though, think about the modern consumer and how you can adapt, they just don’t do detail like they used to.
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