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I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve fallen into this trap (more than once…..I may add). Early in my media career, I’d be in-front of a prospect and start having ‘diarrhea of mouth’………throwing out acronyms like: HUTs, PUTs, Ratings, Shares, TSL, TOS, IMPS, CTR, CPM, etc. I (obviously) knew what I was talking about, but 9 times out of 10…….the person sitting across the desk from me would shake their head and smile – pretending that they knew what I was saying as well. I’d be like GREAT, they get it. When what they were really saying was “you’re speaking a foreign language and I’m just gonna nod to make it look like I know what he’s saying”. I’d walk out of that meeting, thinking ‘yes, I nailed it’. Wrong! But, because of that, I lost more sales than I care to admit. Of course, I did land a few accounts using this ‘flawed’ technique, but as a good friend once told me…..’a broken clock is always right – TWICE a day’ AND ‘even a blind squirrel finds an acorn, once in a while’. After a couple of dozen ‘failures’, I did an inner-search to figure out what went wrong and the answer was clear……it wasn’t the client, it was ME.
In EVERY business, there are words, phrases and acronyms that are COMMON to the people IN that industry. We eat, live and breathe those words……24/7. But, if we go into sales meeting and try to figure out what the client REALLY needs, they DON’T EVER need to hear ONE industry phrase………they don’t care. All they want to know is:
A) how we can help achieve a goal OR B) how to fix a problem—–THAT’S IT.