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May 12, 2012 at 12:00 AM
Recently, a friend of mine attended a trade show, where he heard a variety of lame sales lines intended to get him to make a buying decision on this or that product or service. He emailed me and suggested I write a post about some of these lines.
I thought this would be a fun post to write, so here are a dozen lame questions and lines that make salespeople look stupid. (Warning: There is a serious dose of sarcasm in the accompanying comments.)
“What will it take to earn your business?”
Uh, maybe you could act like a professional and show me how I’m going to benefit from your product or service?
“Is price the only thing holding you back?”
No, but the fact that you think price is the most important issue shows your complete lack of sales ability.
“Here’s the phone, why not call your wife right now and talk to her?”
Seriously?
“Don’t you want to save money?”
No, I’m an idiot. But, please insult my intelligence again by asking another stupid question like this.
“If I could show you (insert benefit), would you be interested?”
How about you ask me a question or two so you can figure out how your product will help me?
“This price won’t last long.”
Really? You can’t come up with anything better than that?
“At this price, we’ll be sold out by the end of the day.”
“I don’t think we’ll be offering this incentive next week.”
“What do you know about us?”
“What do I need to do to get you into…?”
“Have you heard about us?”
“What are your needs?”
There are a million ways of pitching a prospect, but these are a few clichéd ways that it’s in your best interest to avoid.