Broadcasting on WII-FM

Everybody has a favorite radio station, don't they?

Sure they do. And it's the same one: WII-FM. Never heard of it? Well, it's probably the one station you tune into more than any other. And it's definitely your customers' favorite.

In this issue we talk about how to broadcast your message on the one channel that's always clear.

Regards,

Tom Sant

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Broadcasting on WII-FM

The CEO of a data processing company addressed a group of sales people. "I'm the person who signs the contracts and writes the checks. So let me tell you how to sell to me. It'll save us both a lot of time. To get me to buy, you need to address the two things I wake up worrying about every morning: cycle time and net profitability. Show me how you can help me improve either area, and I'll buy from you. And I don't particularly care what you're selling."

Sometimes we forget this basic principle. People buy to meet their needs or solve their problems. To get them to buy from us, we need to clearly address whatever matters the most to them. In other words, we need to broadcast a clear value proposition over a channel they'll be sure to hear: WII-FM.

In case you were wondering, WII-FM isn't a radio station. It's a receiver located inside every customer's head that guides the decision making process. WII-FM stands for What's in it for Me?

In considering your offer, customers typically want to see positive business impact. They may be looking for improved financial performance, increased market share, higher customer retention, improved technical position, automation of a labor-intensive process, regulatory compliance, or any of dozens of other goals. But it's important to identify these goals--the things your customer wakes up worrying about each morning--and link your sales message to them throughout the sales process.

Ineffective sales messages focus on information about your company, your products, and your services. Effective messages provide information that answer the four basic questions decision makers always ask:

1. Is this really what we need?
2. Will it have a positive impact on our business?
3. Can this vendor deliver the products or services on time and on budget?
4. Are we getting good value for our money, particularly considering the probable impact on our business?

By consistently returning to these core concerns as you deliver your sales message--by delivering your message over channel WII-FM--you can guarantee that the audience stays tuned in.

Don't make the mistake of selling a solution that your customer ends up buying from your competitor. Give the customer a reason to buy specifically from you.

That means building your value proposition on the things that make you unique. For example, the U.S. Postal Service might show a potential customer how much that customer will save in delivery charges based on the fact that the Post Service delivers on Saturday for no additional charge. That's a unique, quantifiable advantage that can be translated into savings.

To learn more about delivering messages your customers will hear and understand, visit us at www.santcorp.com

The KISS Principle

Let's pretend you received two proposals. One of them is 25 pages long. The other is 100 pages long. Which one will you read first?

Exactly. That's why this message focuses on the KISS principle--Keep It Short and Simple.

Simplicity is a good thing. I've never heard anyone complain that a proposal wasn't complicated enough. And keeping it short makes sense, because people are more likely to read it if it's short.

This message contains eight ideas to keep your sales letters and proposals simple and short.

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The KISS Principle

For people of a certain age, the KISS Principle conjures up visions of guys in face paint with huge amps.

But KISS is actually an acronym that embodies guidelines for writing clearly. Sometimes it's spelled out as "Keep It Simple, Stupid." But a better definition--and one that's less offensive--is "Keep It Short and Simple."

Short?

As a general rule, keep your sentences about 15-18 words long. That's an average sentence length that most readers can decode easily.

Use short words. As Churchill once said, "Short words are the best words." Why? Because they're the words people use every day, the words they understand easily. On average, 90% of your words should be one or two syllables long.

And keep your paragraphs short, too. Three or four lines of text are plenty. You don't have to write paragraphs that fill up the whole page. In fact, most people would prefer it if you don't.

Finally, whenever possible, use bullet points:

• They're easier to read
• They add emphasis
• They make the page more appealing to the eye

Simple?

Avoid jargon--yours, that is. And don't forget that product names are jargon. In spite of all that advertising and marketing, outside your company most people don't know what the "Turboencabulator 2000" is.

If you use acronyms, don't assume that spelling out the acronym in words makes it clear. One telecommunications company recently wrote, "DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) is an option for your high-bandwidth applications." Huh? What's a digital subscriber line? How complicated is it to install? What's a "high-bandwidth application?"

Use everyday language. You're better off writing it the way you would say it, especially if you were explaining it to a bright kid or your mother-in-law.

It also helps to use language from the customer's area of expertise. If you're selling to a school board, talk about students, faculty, staff, and the campus--not customers, users, or the physical plant. It'll make more sense to them.

So forget the face paint and the huge amplifiers. Just "Keep It Short and Simple" and you'll be a hit.

For more short and simple ideas to improve your sales results, visit us at www.santcorp.com,

How to start your sales presentation

Lots of nerve wracking activities aren't so bad once we get going. That's why it's important to have a clear idea of how to start when you are making a sales presentation.

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How to Start your Sales Presentation

There are few places where first impressions matter more than in a sales presentation. The overall impact you create during the first two minutes will shade the audience's overall reaction to everything you say in the body of your presentation.

Here are some things you should NEVER do:

Don'ts

1. Don't apologize.
Starting with an apology creates a negative tone, if the apology is for your lack of preparation, qualifications, substance, and so forth. Never say something like, "I'm glad to be here with you. I just wish that I had had more time to pull together the material, because we're doing some very creative things in this area. But I'll just go ahead and share with you what I've got..." On the other hand, if you got caught in traffic and arrived late, go ahead and apologize.

2. Don't be long-winded.
Greet your audience, tell them who you are, why you are there, and why they should care. Then get on with. You don't have to tell jokes, act folksy, or try to impress them.

3. Don't antagonize or offend your audience.
I heard a saleswoman start a presentation to a group of managers from AT&T with the following joke: "When I was a little girl, I loved everything to do with Disney, so I asked my parents for a Mickey Mouse outfit for my birthday. So my dad bought me ten shares of AT&T." Needless to say, her audience was not very receptive to the rest of her message and the whole presentation became a debacle.

4. Don't use irrelevant material.

5. Don't start with "Today, I'm going to talk about. . . " or other clichés.

6. Don't lead the audience to take a negative attitude toward your subject.

On the other hand, here are some things you should ALWAYS do:

Do's

1. Do get the attention of the audience first.
Start with a ho-hum crasher, something to get them focused on you and your message.
Some possibilities: A startling statistic. A quote from their CEO. A brief, dramatic anecdote. A compelling question.

2. Do act confident. Step up with confidence. Smile. Speak out firmly and clearly. Move with assurance. Sound authoritative, yet pleasant. Imagine yourself radiating positive energy.

3. Do get set before you start to speak. Once you've begun, you don't want to arrange your notes, adjust the projector, fool around with your computer, move the lectern, adjust the screen, look for water, or anything else. You want to speak

4. Do tie your attention-getter to the remarks of the previous speakers, other parts of the program, or the person who introduces you.

This may seem like a lot to accomplish with an introduction that comprises no more than 10-15% of your total speech. However, the introduction is critical. Your first job, when you begin your presentation, is to turn that daydreaming, distracted, diverse group of individuals into a concentrating, stimulated, involved, thinking, participating audience.

Most Important!Tell the audience what's in it for them. If you are looking for a way to start writing better proposals and RFP responses, check out our ProposalMaster and RFPMaster products. You can see and listen to an interactive, Web-based demo of them at our site, http://www.santcorp.com/.

Clear, Compelling and Concise - Writing for Impact

Ever watch a commercial and ask yourself, "What was that all about?" Ever get a sales letter and wonder, "So what? Why should I care?" Ever get a proposal and groan at the thought of reading the whole thing?

Persuasive messages are characterized by the three C's: Clear, Compelling, and Concise.

Attached are our best tips for helping you achieve those qualities in your persuasive documents.

Regards,

Tom Sant

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Clear, Compelling, and Concise: Writing for Impact

Here are three tips to help you write more persuasively.

1. Don't write like a bureaucrat
Bureaucrats use pompous, unnecessarily obscure, or pretentious language to impress or intimidate the reader rather than to communicate clearly.

Here are three warning signals that you or someone you love may be producing text that sounds like the braying of a pompous donkey:
(a) lots of big, pretentious words: 90% of your words should have one or two syllables
b) lots of long or overly complex sentence patterns: keep your average sentence length around 15-17 words per sentence for maximum readability
(c) too much passive voice: we normally use passive voice only about 10% of the time; that's a good percentage for your writing, too

Here's an actual example of a sentence that violates every one of those guidelines. It actually appeared in a sales proposal!

The dimensionality of expected project problems coupled with the limited time available for preparation means that choices will have to be made to assure viability of the most critical analytical processes."

What this is supposed to mean is anybody's guess, but here's a shot at translating it into plain English that uses simpler words, cuts the sentence down a little, and eliminates the passive voice:

Because this project will focus on major problems and because time is short, we must prioritize our work so that we analyze the most important processes first.

2. Use the Primacy Principle to your advantage

People naturally assume that whatever comes first must be most important. So put your key points or information up front when you write. This rule goes for sentences, paragraphs, and the whole proposal.

For example, can you hear how negative this sounds?

"All assumptions are considered preliminary until the final proposal, SOW and vendor management responsibilities for each study is approved."

As the old song says, you've got to accentuate the positive. Here's a rewrite:

Once the proposal, scope of work, and vendor management responsibilities have all been approved, we can finalize the project assumptions.

3. Finally, keep your sentences and paragraphs short

Short sentences and paragraphs are usually easier to read than long ones.

As a general rule, the majority of your sentences should be between 10 and 35 words in length, with the average around 15-17 words. Use short sentences to make a strong point. Use longer ones for detailed explanations and supporting evidence.

Similarly, even though you may have been taught differently in school, paragraphs can have any number of sentences, including just one. In fact, fewer is better, because most people do not find large blocks of type very inviting.

The preceding paragraphs exemplify this principle. The three paragraphs contain 92 words and six sentences, for an average sentence length of 15+. And none of the paragraphs contains more than three sentences. They read pretty well, don't they? (The correct answer would be, "Yes, they do." Thank you very much.)