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You Are What You Sell

Posted by

Ian Brodie on April 1st, 2008.

You Are What You Sell Selling professional services has always been difficult.

The intangible nature of services means that potential clients cannot “touch and feel” or test the product before buying – so all the great benefits of the service can often be viewed as simply salesperson's claims rather than hard facts. Worse still: even if your services are unique, highly differentiated and of much higher quality than your competitors – what's to stop them claiming the same thing?

Traditionally, service companies have relied on testimonials, trials and guarantees to try to give customers something more tangible to judge their products by.

But very, very often customers use another key indicator – one that is often overlooked by the service provider.

They judge the service by the person selling it.

They don't just judge the salesperson as a human being or as a seller. They judge the salesperson as the living embodiment of the product.

If you're selling accountancy, legal, consulting or similar services then you're selling the “features and benefits” of the people who will be delivering the service. Maybe you're positioning your firm as leading edge or experts in their field – or highlighting your industry knowledge. Perhaps you stress your responsiveness and ability to partner with your clients. Or perhaps it's your efficiency. In every case, the qualities you stress will be qualities you claim your team will be able to deliver when hired.

How will your potential client judge whether your team really does have these qualities?

Well, if you're smart you'll make sure he is exposed to your delivery team during the selling process so he can see that they have the required skills and qualities.

But the person he will be exposed to most (and sometimes the only person he will be exposed to) will be the salesperson. Will he suspend his judgement, thinking “well, the salesperson won't be involved in delivering the work, so he can act differently to the rest of the team, he doesn't have to have the qualities I'm looking for”?

Of course not.

If your service promise is reliability and the salesperson turns up late to a meeting then the potential client won't believe your reliability claim.

If your service promise is expertise and leading edge thinking but your salesperson is a generalist without in-depth knowledge then he won't believe your expertise claim.

If your service promise is partnering, team-working and responsiveness and your salesperson is an irascible loner then he won't believe your partnering claim.

It's not fair – but it's human nature.

But how many professional service firms actively ensure that their salespeople reflect the values and the qualities that they position their delivery teams as having? And how many train and brief their salespeople so they are clear that this is what's expected of them. In reality – not many. Most focus only on their “pure” sales capabilities and are often very surprised when the salesperson with the best skills fails to deliver the goods.

And do you reflect the qualities of the services you're selling?

If not, you need to be. You are what you sell.

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Strategy

Medium is Beautiful

Posted by

Ian Brodie on March 25th, 2008.

Who are your best customers? It's a question I often ask my clients. And the answers I most often get are either “the big ones” or “the small ones”.

In fact, because I have a ton of experience in selling to large companies, I'm often asked for my advice on how to “land a whale” or to break-in to big companies.

But in my experience, the best, most profitable customers for most businesses are the medium-sized ones. It's certainly the case for me. And when it comes to prioritising business development – that's where I put my energy.

I love small customers and working with SMEs. They have a flexibility and a freedom that makes a real refreshing change from working with big corporates. The trouble is that the revenues from these businesses often don't justify the fixed “overhead” costs of doing business with them. In the work I do, I invest a lot of time really getting to understand my client's businesses, diagnosing what we will need to do to grow their sales, and understanding the best way of implementing my recommendations so that they will really stick.

That up-front investment is pretty much the same for small or large businesses – but with small businesses the revenues I may get from that investment are usually lower. And because my fees are pretty much at the top-end of the market, smaller businesses often struggle to afford me. So sadly, I have to restrict my work with small businesses to a few a year, where I am really going to learn something and grow myself as a result.

Conversely, although the profits I might earn from large companies are theoretically much higher, I find this to rarely be the case.

Nowadays, large companies have “professionalised” their purchasing processes – and in my experience this often means that they have bureaucratised them. The selection processes for suppliers are long, complex and costly – effectively ruling out many smaller businesses and handing a huge advantage to bigger suppliers more used to dealing with these processes and having pre-prepared stock answers to the typical questions asked.

In an effort to have a “fair” process, suppliers are prohibited from speaking to potential business customers during the selection process and are funnelled through the procurement professionals. This hands a huge advantage to incumbent suppliers who know the company well and know how to frame their solutions and responses to resonate with the company's needs and culture. For new suppliers, cut off from rich interactions with the people who are really going to be impacted by or using their products, they have to rely solely on what has been written in black and white on the request for proposal.

As anyone who has been involved in sales knows, it's frequently the case that the true customer requirements only really emerge from in-depth interactions with expert sellers. So by cutting off those interactions, the process effectively becomes a guessing game where the winner is the supplier that is able to most accurately second guess what the customer is really looking for, rather than the one who is best able to deliver it for them.

And of course, the procurement departments in large companies are frequently charged with ensuring “value for money” by squeezing out every last drop of discounts from their suppliers. It's only the very best procurement professionals who are able to get more value by working with the supplier to ensure greater benefits. The majority simply work at reducing the supplier's price.

Now this is not meant as a tirade against large companies and their procurement practices. There are very good reasons for them having adopted those methods. But what it does mean is that for most suppliers, large companies are usually not their best customers.

In my experience, both personally and for my clients; medium-sized companies are frequently the best customers.

They are large enough to place decent sized orders or engage service providers for large projects. They are still small and flexible enough that the seller can engage with the key decision-makers to properly shape up a solution and demonstrate their capabilities rather than working through intermediaries.

And medium-sized companies often have an ambition level that outstrips the large companies. They're not focused on protecting what they've got – they're focused on growth and are willing to take on new ideas to do so. As an additional bonus for service providers, medium-sized companies rarely have their own internal organisations which duplicate what external providers do – so they are more willing to take on outside help.

Of course, this picture is not universally true. Some small companies buy big from certain suppliers. Some large companies are nimble and focused on value rather than just cost. And some medium-sized companies suffer the worst of both worlds.

But more often than not, when you do the analysis and work out the profitability of each of your customers – taking into account all the costs of doing business with them – medium sized businesses come out on top.

The implication? Don't be afraid to focus your prospecting and business development activities on medium-sized companies rather than chasing the big company “whales”.

Onward!

Ian

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Selling

Ask for that meeting – and grow your sales!

Posted by

Ian Brodie on March 12th, 2008.

Early in my career I learnt a very simple tactic which made a significant difference to my sales – and I noticed recently that I had stopped using it. So as well as restarting its use for myself, I thought I'd share it. It's most appropriate for consultants or other professionals who have to prepare proposals to sell what they do.

Here's the tactic: when someone asks you for a proposal, instead of meekly agreeing and heading off to do it; set a meeting date with them then and there to review it together.

Simple and obvious, and as old as the hills. But easily overlooked.

When you're in a sales meeting with a client and you've talked about what they need and what you can do and they pop the question: “can you write that up as a proposal for me?” – it's so, so easy to agree and to rush off to do the proposal just as they've asked.

Assuming doing a proposal is actually the right thing (often it isn't – often the problem itself requires further exploration with the client – but assuming it is); as we all know, our chances of selling something increase exponentially if we present the proposal personally rather than just sending it in.

However, calling after you've done the proposal to set up a meeting very often results in the client asking if you can just send the proposal in for them to read first – then they'll set a meeting if needed.

Of course, without you there, the proposal doesn't have the same impact, the meeting never happens, and the sale is lost.

But if you ask for the meeting then and there you're leveraging three things:

It's harder to turn someone down face to-face
You've built up a degree of rapport in the meeting
They've just asked you for a favour – so they're likely to reciprocate by agreeing to a meeting

It's an obvious and pretty easy thing to do – but very, very often it's not done.

There are many reasons for this. I've seen sales people simply forget in the heat of the moment. But more usually, there's an underlying fear preventing them asking. They fear that the client may say “no” – and then they'll lose the chance of proposing and of winning the sale.

But if a client is going to say “no” to a simple request like a meeting – how likely is it they're going to buy anything? In reality it's much better to get a “no” right now than it is to waste time on the proposal.

Another problem some salespeope have is that they put themselves in a servile position relative to the customer. They take the “customer is king” philosophy too far and feel that they must do just what the customer asks with no reciprocal obligations. They don't feel it's right to push for anything, but instead just jump through whatever hoops the customer asks them to jump through, hoping that they'll be rewarded with a sale.

That's not the right positioning for most sales – and certainly not for selling professional services where what the customer needs is a real business partner. A peer who can advise and guide them – not just do what they ask slavishly.

So next time you're asked to prepare a proposal, just take a deep breath, and say “sure, that would be great. Let's set a date for a meeting together to review it……”

Onward!

Ian

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Strategy

Challenging the 80:20 Rule

Posted by

Ian Brodie on March 5th, 2008.

The 80:20 Rule It's probably the best-known and most-repeated rule in sales: 80% of your sales come from 20% of your customers. The implication is that you should focus the majority of your sales efforts on those 20% to maximise your returns.

But it's also the most misunderstood and misused rule in sales. Slavishly following the 80:20 rule could cause you big, big problems.

The first question to ask about the 80:20 rule is “is it true?”.

Well, the answer is “usually”. There are many professions where sales do follow some sort of 80:20 or 60:15 or other uneven split. But there are also professions where it doesn't – where the spread of sales is pretty even across customers. So it's absolutely crucial that you know the numbers in your business and don't end up putting all your eggs in the wrong basket.

The second, more important question is: “OK, there is an 80:20 split in my business – but does it persist over time?”. In other words – are the 20% of customers who make up 80% of your business going to be the same today as next year?

In this case, the answer is very often “no”. And this can be a huge trap for business developers who focus their efforts too heavily on today's big customers. In very many situations today's big customers may not be tomorrow's.

Takeovers, changes of management or changes of strategy often result in big changes in the amount of products and services being bought – and in who they are bought from. And in many industries there is a natural cycle of peaks and troughs in purchases.

For management consultants, for example, there is often a natural cycle of entry into a client firm, followed by an expansion period where you build relationships with more client executives and sell more work. However, there is also a natural decline as the issues you were brought in to deal with are addressed, and the clients begin to take over much of the work and the capabilities to do it themselves.

The key message is to be aware of fluctuations in the 80:20 rule. Look at your historical sales and analyse whether the composition of the 20% of customers who make up 80% of sales varies significantly year on year.

And if it does, you need to watch carefully and invest time and effort in nurturing new customers to rise up into the top 20% rather than spending all your effort on the current 20%. Focus on sales potential to drive your efforts rather than just historical sales.

The final question to ask is: “Even if I know my top 20% – does that mean I should devote most of my attention to them?”

The answer here is “usually yes – but not always”. It's common sense to focus on your highest potential customers. But there are sometimes diminishing returns to any extra efforts if you are already devoting a lot of time to a customer. Sometimes spending more time with an “underserved” client can produce a much greater impact on sales than holding yet another meeting with your favourite client.

In all three cases the key is to look beyond the simplistic 80:20 rule to check:

Does it really apply in my business?
Does it persist over time – or do I actually need to focus on “rising stars”?
Will extra effort on my top 20% really increase sales – or are they already being fully served?

Now don't get me wrong – the 80:20 rule can be very helpful as a simple guide to where to focus your effort. But thinking beyond the simple rule will pay big dividends for sales people willing to invest their brain power and challenge the accepted norms.

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Selling

Beating your #1 Competitor – the Status Quo

Posted by

Ian Brodie on February 22nd, 2008.

No, not the band, of course.

If you've read any of Stephan Schiffman's Sales Training books you'll know he believes the number one competitor of any sales person to be “The Status Quo”. In other words, rather than going with you or a competitor, the customer decides to do nothing. Either not buy, or stick with who they're currently got.

Paul McCord posted an excellent piece on this recently: Recognizing Your Biggest Competitor.

By the way, if someone knows how Paul manages to write so many high quality posts so frequently, please tell me!

I dropped a comment in on his blog, but I wanted to expand here, as I feel there's a side to this that isn't often explored.

Usually, when people talk about a customer deciding to do nothing, they recommended better qualification (to classify the customer as a tyre-kicker early on and not to waste time with them) or more aggressive closing techniques to push the customer into making their mind up.

But in my experience, the biggest reason why customers decide to do nothing in large sales situations is not because they're timewasters, or that they need to be pushed into action.

The issue is most often that they haven't been fully convinced that the value of what you're selling outweighs the cost for them.

It's not that you haven't talked about the business case for what you're selling, or shown how it meets the customer's needs. The problem is most often that you just haven't spent enough time fully exploring the customer's expressed needs and identifying the wider and deeper needs – and corresponding costs and impacts – that underlie it.

Typically what happens in a sales situation is that the minute we hear a customer express a need that our product can solve, we jump straight into “selling mode”. We talk about the benefits of the product, how it can solve their problem, and what the business case for doing that is.

But the problem is that by jumping straight to the solution we didn't allow the customer to fully discover how big their problem actually was.

It’s very common for customers to initially believe their problems are “annoying but not worth solving” (for example a computer system that’s difficult to use) – but then on deeper exploration to realise it’s causing them huge problems downstream (lost productivity, errors in customer records, bad customer service, etc.) which definitely are worth solving.

It's up to you to lead that further discussion. By using your experience of similar problems you can use questioning and examples to help the customer discover for themselves just how significant their problem is.

And so suddenly, the solution you then offer doesn't look so expensive after all. Suddenly its costs are far outweighed by the size of the problem it solves.

I’ve found this ability to “build up” the perception of a problem (not falsely – it’s all about helping the customer realise the true impact) is a key skill in large sales. Most professionals – and even trained sales people jump straight from hearing a need that their product can solve into selling the benefits of the product and trying to close.

They don’t spend nearly enough time exploring the problem itself and its impact with the customer.

But by doing this full exploration a salesperson can turn a “Status Quo” loss into a big win.

Onward!

Ian

Featured

Marketing

Turbo-Charge Your Sales Stories

Posted by

Ian Brodie on February 11th, 2008.

Selling with Stories proved to be my most popular blog post yet. Not surprising really – it's a brilliant sales technique – one I almost felt guilty giving away.

Shortly after I posted it I was alerted by a post on Carol Bentley's B2B Copywriting blog to an even better template for these story-come-testimonials. She highlighted a brief but insighful post on the Heart Shaped Testimonial by Alex Mandossian.

This is a great testimonial format designed for use in sales letters and other written communications. But, of course, it works brilliantly in spoken stories too. Just remember the other hints I gave in the Selling with Stories post and you'll have yourself an intriguing, sales-inducing little story.

Onward!

Ian

Featured

Selling

Selling With Stories – A Powerful Tool for Building Trust and Credibility

Posted by

Ian Brodie on February 4th, 2008.

The art of storytelling is dying.

We live in an age of soundbites, special effects, snappy comebacks and the 30-second attention span. It seems that no one is interested in taking the time to listen to, or tell a good story.

Yet think back to the last time you were truly moved by a film or play or TV show. When you last cried in the cinema or sat on the edge of your seat thoroughly gripped by a thriller.

Chances are that it wasn’t because of the special effects or any snappy dialogue. It most likely wasn’t even due to great acting – although that can help.

No, the reason you were truly engaged with the film or play was because of the plot. Because the author hooked you with an interesting story. And especially, because the author got you to really care about the characters in that story

Stories in Business Development

Now think about that example in the context of business development.

Don’t you want your clients and prospects to really engage with what you are saying? Don’t you want to grab their emotions rather than just their logical brain?

Of course, you will never build the same degree of emotional response in a sales meeting or pitch as in a thrilling drama. But you can certainly do a lot better than the majority of dry, dull sales presentations made today.

The secret, of course, is to use stories. And the most powerful stories to use are personal ones. Stories with real human protagonists rather than faceless corporations.

When you introduce your company, for example, don’t tell your prospects you can save them 10% on their telecoms costs, or that you’ve worked with the top 5 car manufacturers. Get that same message across in a personal story and it will have so much more power.

Contrast these two different introductions:

“We work with all the leading consumer goods companies. Our six-sigma and lean manufacturing services can save you at least 10% of your operating costs and cut 20% from your lead times”

and

“We recently worked with John Smith, the CEO of BigPack. John’s problem was that because of the long changeover times, his production was very inflexible and he couldn’t respond quickly to the needs of some of his best customers and so he was losing market share hand-over-fist. By working with us using our lean manufacturing and six sigma methodology, he was able to offer the sort of flexibility his customers were crying out for – and as an added bonus, he found that running costs were 10% lower than before.”

Admittedly, the second introduction is a few sentences longer – but those extra sentences – and the way the whole introduction is worded – make a world of difference.

Think about how you would respond to the introductions as a CEO of a Packaging company.

The first introduction is OK. The professional builds some credibility by highlighting that they work for the top companies in the industry. And the fast changeover times and 10% saving on running costs sound OK.

But there’s no emotion here. It’s cold, hard facts.

Worse: the “we could save you 10%” is almost a challenge.

The natural response of most people is to silently think “Oh you could, could you? Prove it”.

After all, it's our first meeting: what does he really know about my business? How does he know I’m not already highly efficient?

But by rephrasing into a story as in the second introduction we get over these problems.

Firstly, the prospect becomes more engaged when he hears someone’s name. You’ve indicated you work with executives just like them – perhaps even someone they look up to.

And when you use the word “frustrations” – not just a business problem, but real frustrations – then they begin to feel empathy towards that person. Chances are they’re feeling frustrations too – but like many executives, there are few outlets for them to vent those frustrations.

Now, by talking about someone else’s frustrations you’ve begun to create an environment where they can safely talk about their issues.

There's something really interesting that happens when you use a story too…

By using an interesting story where you happened to solve the client’s problem and save 10% of running costs, you’re not making a direct claim. You’re not risking a challenge because you’re talking about something that was done for someone else.

You’re not claiming you can save the prospect 10% – but they will begin to make that inference for themselves. They'll project themselves into the story as the hero.

So now they begin to think “hmmm, I wonder if they can make those savings for us?” instead of “well, he claims he can make those savings, but I’m not sure”.

Your story has allowed him to reach a conclusion for himself – and so he is much more likely to believe it than if you claim it yourself.

In similar vein, when you get a prospect or client talking and they tell you about some of the issues and challenges they are facing; you can use your stories to build credibility and confidence that you have experience in these areas and know how to help.

But notice that you’re not jumping to providing a solution for the client’s problem (where you run the risk of being wrong) – you’re relating a story about a client in a similar situation and what worked for them.

Again, the prospect thinks for himself: “Maybe this can work for me. And even if not, they were able to solve this guy’s similar issues – maybe they can find a different solution for me”. As opposed to their thinking if you try to suggest a solution to their problem: “How can they know how to solve my problem after 5 minutes? Do they think I’m some sort of idiot who hasn’t thought about this?…..”

Crafting a Compelling Story

Some people are great natural storytellers. They mentally record their experiences as stories and have no trouble recalling them in an interesting and entertaining way.

For the rest of us, it takes a little work.

What you need to have in your armoury is a set of compelling stories – perhaps 6 or 7 – covering a variety of situations where you, your products or your services have added significant value. You can then select from the stories as needed to fit the particular circumstances you think are going to be relevant and interesting to your prospect. And you can use the same story as an example as part of your introduction, your elevator speech, or in an expanded version when the prospect opens up and talks about a particular issue they have.

To craft the stories, first think about the typical problems your product or service solves. Then think of some recent examples of specific customers where this has happened.

Next, write a short paragraph summarising the example. A few guidelines should help here:

Make the story personal. Don’t just talk about a company, talk about a named individual who “owned” the problem your product & service solved. Your story will feel much more real – and your prospect will feel much more empathy towards a person rather than a corporation.

Talk first about the challenges the person faced. Again, try to describe them in personal terms so that the prospect builds a connection to your story. Don’t belittle the person – turn them into the hero of the story – they had a problem which (by working with you) they overcame.

Don’t spend a lot of time describing what you or your service actually did. Although this might seem interesting to you – it’s the least interesting aspect to your prospect. They’re much more interested in whether the problem you solved is similar to theirs, and what value or benefits did your solution bring.

Close with the benefits your product or service provided – but underplay this. Almost add it as an afterthought – as if the tremendous value you brought was just part of everyday business for you. Avoid boasting or self-aggrandising statements.

Write these examples up using natural, conversational language and revise them until they sound right. Then learn and practice their main points so that they don’t sound like a script.

And, of course, make sure you get the permission of anyone whose name you use.

Putting the Stories to Work

Armed with your stories you can begin to put them into action in sales situations. Don’t overuse them as you risk hogging the conversation when you should be listening. Instead, use them sparingly to spark the curiosity of the prospect, gain credibility, and provoke a reaction or question.

Personally, I use one story to introduce my company and what we focus on (selected based on what I think is likely to be of most relevance).

Then I may use further stories later on, to illustrate a point or to show that I understand their situation.

But I'll rarely use more than a couple in a sales meeting of an hour or less. To do so runs the risk of dominating the conversation and not giving the client enough space to open up about their problems.

And if they don’t talk about their specific problems, then I can’t begin to show them how I can help them.

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Selling

Postscript to Debunking the myths of non-verbal communication

Posted by

Ian Brodie on January 24th, 2008.

My post on debunking the myths of non-verbal communication has been picked up by a lot of google searches for “percentage non-verbal communication”, “what % of communication is non-verbal” and the like.

For those who haven't read the original article, have a look and you'll find that the often quoted figure of 93% is just pure hokum (well, it's an accurate figure for one very specific example taken repeatedly way out of context).

For those keen to understand what the “real” figures are for the percentage of communication that's non-verbal – have a think about it for a second.

Really, the question is meaningless.

What does “percentage of communication” actually mean? Do you mean the percentage of the actual message that was heard and understood? Or do you mean the percentage of intended emotion that got through? The concept of a “percentage of communication” is so oversimplified that it ceases to have meaning.

In addition, there are so many different types of communication that it's impossible to give a single figure or average that has any meaning. Even if you could figure out a “percentage of communication that was non-verbal” it would be so radically different for example, for a lecture on mathematics to an impassioned speech on third-world poverty that to give an overall figure would be misleading.

So here's my answer anyway:

Q: What percentage of communication is non-verbal?

A: More than most people think, but less than trainers in non-verbal communication would have you believe.

Onward!

Ian

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Strategy

High Prices really do influence Perceived Quality

Posted by

Ian Brodie on January 19th, 2008.

Wine There's an excellent article in this weeks Economist. It explores a study by Dr Antonio Rangel of the California Institute of Technology which found that if people are told a wine is expensive while they are drinking it, they really do think it tastes nicer than a cheap one.

It's not that they just say it tastes better, Dr Rangel and his colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging to show that the parts of the brain associated with pleasure were stimulated more by the wines thought to be higher priced (they were actually the same wines). And this happened with experienced wine tasters as well as everyday drinkers.

Of course, you could argue that we've known this for years – but it's good to see it backed up by hard science. And it's good to see that it's a real impact on perceived quality (which can therefore influence sales) rather than people just saying they think it's better (which won't have such an impact on sales).

This also ties in well with other approaches often taken to improve sales such as the use of testimonials and referrals. In each case, lacking hard, definitive information about the quality of a product, the customer uses secondary sources: the opinions of others or in this case, the price of the product itself.

Of course, this doesn't work in all situations. If one store prices an i-phone higher than another for example, customers won't assume it's higher quality. They have other, more concrete ways of assessing the (relative) quality of a product – in this case, they're identical because they're the same product.

This gives us useful clues as to where referrals, testimonials, and premium quality pricing can be most useful. If it's difficult for customers to objectively evaluate the product's value themselves, then they will search for other clues as to it's value. It's then when referrals and testimonials – and a premium pricing strategy – come into there own.

Conversely, if your product can be simply evaluated and accurately valued by a customer then you may be better off investing your time on other things than getting testimonials and references. And you may have little choice over how you price the product.

Onward!

Ian

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Selling

Debunking the myths of non-verbal communication

Posted by

Ian Brodie on January 9th, 2008.

93 Percent? 93% of communication is non-verbal. Everyone knows that.

I've lost track of the number of times I've heard this in sales training sessions or read it in books, articles and blogs. Sometimes the stats are qualified further, for example:

“One study at UCLA indicated that up to 93 percent of communication effectiveness is determined by nonverbal cues. Another study indicated that the impact of a performance was determined 7 percent by the words used, 38 percent by voice quality, and 55 percent by the nonverbal communication.”

The trouble is – it's not true.

Let's think about it for a minute – how can you possibly get 93% of the communication without the words? If you watch a foreign-language film, and watch the body language and listen to the vocal tones – can you really understand 93% of it? I certainly can't.

The truth is that the experiments at the source of this myth (carried out by researcher Albert Mehrabian in the 70's) were focused on some very specific areas of communication – namely the communication of feelings and attitudes – not communication in general.

As Mehrabian himself points out:

“Please note that this and other equations regarding relative importance of verbal and nonverbal messages were derived from experiments dealing with communications of feelings and attitudes (i.e., like-dislike). Unless a communicator is talking about their feelings or attitudes, these equations are not applicable”

In addition, the construction of the experiments was not an accurate reflection of real-world communication conditions. In one of the central experiments, for example, participants were read out single words (either positive words like “thanks”, neutral like “maybe” or negative like “don't”) in either positive, negative or neutral voices. In another, the words were combined with photographs of people looking positive, negative or neutral.

Participants had to judge whether the words were positive, negative or neutral based on the combined word/tone or word/picture combinations – which is where the statistics came from. It highlighted how the tone of voice or the facial expression often overrode the meaning of the word when it came to conveying a positive or negative feeling.

Of course, in the real world, we typically don't communicate in single words. And we're typically not just trying to communicate feelings either. But what has happened is that these important – but limited – findings from the experiments have been taken out of context, repeated, misunderstood, repeated, confused, etc. – up to the point where “93% of communication is non-verbal” has become accepted as reality.

So what does this mean for sales people?

Well, there's no doubting that non-verbal communication is important – but don't take the 93% rule too seriously. The words you use really are vitally important – they're the core of your communication.

Your non-verbals serve mainly to support what you're saying by conveying your feelings – your passion, your empathy, your truthfulness. How do you make sure your non-verbals provide the right support?

Well, critically – don't fake it. Despite what some trainers may try to convince you of, it really is almost impossible to try to “technique” your way through body-language. Non-verbal communication is so complex – too complex to try to act out or replicate – yet most people are really good at reading it, so they will pick up any fakery very quickly. Instead – make sure you really believe in what you are saying – and the correct non-verbal communication will follow naturally.

And of course, if you find yourself on a training course, or reading an article, and you read the phrase “93% of communication is non-verbal” – then think twice about the credibility of the trainer or author. They haven't done their homework properly on this – so what else have they skimped on?

Onward!

Ian

Postcript: Further thoughts on this myth

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