“Invest the time to make sure your first few words hit the mark by capturing attention with billboards.” – Jennifer Colosimo in today’s Tip 1123
How do you create a sales billboard that’s relevant, distinct, and memorable?
Join the conversation below and learn more about Jennifer!
Strikingly Different Selling Book
FranklinCovey
Jennifer Colosimo on LinkedIn
FranklinCovey on LinkedIn
FranklinCovey on Instagram
Have feedback? Want to share a sales tip? Call or text the Sales Success Hotline: 512-777-1442 or Email: [email protected]
Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Jennifer Colosimo. Jennifer co-authored Strikingly Different Selling and Great Work, Great Career with leadership expert Stephen R. Covey. As president of FranklinCovey’s enterprise division, she is accountable for profitable growth in over 160 countries. She’s led teams in consulting, global operations, learning and development, CSR, and IT at FranklinCovey, Accenture, and DaVita, and served as a COO, CLO, and VP of Wisdom. Here she is:
Jennifer Colosimo: Billboards Are Compelling. From those in Times Square to those you pass on the way to the grocery store. Advertisers grab your attention for a split second and sometimes drive your interest to learn more. In a sales context, a billboard is a written or verbal message to capture attention. It’s focused on potential client outcomes, not on your product or solution. It takes some work to create because it needs to be relevant to the client. Not facts about you, your organization, your products, your solutions, and it needs to be concise. Human beings sometimes have attention spans as short as 8 seconds, according to a study from Microsoft. And those are exactly the same two reasons that billboards work to capture attention. Well done verbal or written, billboards are relevant, distinct, and memorable, just like roadside billboards.
So how do you create a sales billboard that’s relevant, distinct, and memorable? Think in the phrases of from to. So for a customer service center, from solving maintenance tickets to avoiding maintenance tickets. Less compelling, we can help you streamline your maintenance tickets process. For an accounting function, from the stress and frustration of closing the books in six weeks to the relief and satisfaction of closing in five days versus we’re a global accounting software company with 30 offices in 50 countries who can help you close the book faster.
Now, of course, those billboards are just topic sentences, you need from two supporting statements that support that topic sentence, and those also need to be relevant to the client, distinct, and memorable. Now, in prospecting, you have a hypothesis or said more simply, a guess about what outcomes would be relevant and would capture attention for your prospect. Based on your research from a website, earnings call, press releases, their social media, your experience in the industry when engaging with the client as you go forward in the sales cycle, your billboard might be based on previous conversation with your buyer or other stakeholders.
Your clients are busy. They have strategies to execute, decisions to make, challenges to overcome. With your planning and preparation, you can offer something to the prospect, to the client as you get involved in the sales cycle that has enough merit to entice them to listen or keep working with you. They may want to share their perspective, and if that goes well, they may want to have even further dialogue and you’ll go through your normal sales progression process. You’ll co-create, you’ll co-validate, you’ll move the sale forward. First, invest the time to make sure your first few words hit the mark by capturing attention with billboards.
Scott Ingram: For links to connect with Jennifer and to pick up a copy of her book, “Strikingly Different Selling: 6 Vital Skills to Stand Out and Sell More,” just click over to DailySales.Tips/1123.
Once you’ve done that, be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!