Too often I see writing from salespeople and teams that prevents effective and efficient selling.

Typically, this shows up in three areas;

Prospecting Emails
Follow up emails
Proposals

The cardinal errors that I see in prospecting emails and letters are:

They are clearly “mass” template emails and not written to an individual
Lack any personalization or basic research on the individual being written to
Are all about your company – your solution, your position as a ‘leader in your space, how long you’ve been in business (Who cares! Your prospective customer certainly doesn’t)
No evidence on the impact or results that others achieve – and that the recipient would care about NOW
No use of social proof – other customers that the recipient would admire or aspire to be
Multiple calls to action – links, attachments, time to meet suggestions

That’s why it can takes 7-15 touches and several weeks (follow up emails, vmails, LinkedIn connecting, letters, fax, carrier pigeon etc …ok the last two I’m joking about) for salespeople to book a meeting.

Filling their calendar every week is a HUGE problem for most salespeople who need to generate their own leads (top salespeople have 5 or more in their weekly calendar).

Follow Up emails;

The obvious one – salespeople neglect to follow up at all (customers won’t care about your company until they see how much you care and that is a free sample of what your company is like to do business with)
Salespeople don’t succinctly capture and playback to the prospective customer what was discussed, covered and agreed upon as next step in the discovery call (they pass control over to the customer…long sales cycle ahead)
Salespeople rush – they don’t think where the customer is in their decision process and thereby communicate THEIR unconscious bias towards getting to close/win as quickly as possible and this causes dissonance and pushback from the client (“another pushy salesperson who hasn’t listened”)
Did I mention setting next steps…always

Proposals

Proposal Title: “Proposal for [Insert Product, Service Solution]” is just plain weak. The desired Impact or Outcome makes for a much more persuasive and effective proposal title, e.g. “$20M by 2021” or “The Confidence To Grow Sales by 30%” are much better, paint a picture of the future transformation the customer can expect, wants or needs.
Customer testimonials, if used at all are at the back of the proposal. A wasted opportunity. Stick 3 to 5 outcome focused testimonials on your cover page. I guarantee that they will be paid attention to.
No summary of what the “job to be done” is supposed to be. The job to be done is the future condition or the transformation that the client wants, built out from what you captured in your proposal title and in clear contrast to their current and undesired condition.
No business case…from the customer’s perspective. Let me be clear. The customer will not believe the business case that you or your salespeople tell them they can or will expect. They will believe what others have said, hence the importance of social proof from your cover page testimonials. And, they will believe their own numbers – what they share with you/your salesperson in terms of “if we were to implement/achieve this then I think we could expect X% revenue or cost decrease, Y% faster time to market/reduction in defects etc.” You/your salespeople need to be able to guide the conversation and ask/elicit from the customer their beliefs about what their return and outcomes will be. They need to be coached how to do this as it is not part of a usual sales discovery call. It’s a business conversation.
A single price option with no breakouts of what the customer is getting is weak. Itemising, but not individually pricing each item, is a powerful convincing strategy. Even better, provide two to three scoped pricing options from highest value to lowest value. That way you don’t offer and risk a single “take it or leave it” offer and reaction.
Nonexistent or unclear next steps and call to action on how to start working together.
Proposals should be walked/talked through, not sent over for review – as you will miss opportunities to resolve questions and handle objections = faster sales cycle.

So, there you have it.

3 critical and overlooked areas of how writing can negatively impact your sales performance.

And, here is a dirty little secret.

Your salespeople aren’t taught how to write these critical communications in school. Or at University.

And if they weren’t taught these important writing skills, neither was your sales leader…

That means your sales leaders and salespeople are making it up as they go along.

Is that an intentional and predictable approach to growing your business?

Give your sales leader and salespeople a gift during these challenging times. Invest in them.

Hire me as their Mentor and Coach. You’ll be glad you did.

Don’t take my word for it.

“Retain Matt as your Advisor - Mentor and Coach to your Sales Leaders and Salespeople if you want hockey stick growth. Matt always provides unique and uncommon advice on how to dramatically accelerate growth – advice that you won’t find amongst the mainstream herd of sales experts. Matt’s engagements with me, my sales leaders, inside sales, field sales and account management functions have always yielded immediate results.” Ross Kramer, CEO Listrak

“Matt changed my/our approach to Sales. He brings out a level of awareness in the linguistics and psychological realm that will change your techniques and make you a better communicator. Within 3 months of deploying his methods, I hit 153% of my quota in the middle of an economic crisis.” Adam Cowperthwait, VP Sales, Avkin

“Hire Matt as your sales advisor if you’re looking to improve and accelerate new business sales growth. He is an excellent sounding board on all matters go-to-market strategy and new business sales. He quickly dissects for root cause issues that negatively impact sales performance and provides unique and counterintuitive insights, advice and recommendations that provide immediate improvements for leadership, team and individual salespeople.” Rick Makos, CEO, Callisto Integration

Call me.