The War of Words
By Adam Radzik
Consultant to Professional Firms

In ancient warfare, the weapons used were swords, spears and arrows. In modern warfare, the weapons became bullets, grenades, artillery shells and bombs.

What are the weapons in the making of a sale? They are words.

Your competitor wants to capture Bloomfield Industries. They make a presentation to Mike Ross. Your company, also wishing to acquire Bloomfield Industries, makes its own presentation to Mike Ross. After a week, you are informed that your competition has won.

Why did your competitor win and why did you lose? Your competitor won the war of words. He or she said better words than you did. Mike Ross was more impressed with their words than with your words. He chose their words over your words.

This phenomenon is going on in business every second of every day. Company A loses business to company B because company B did a better job at presenting words.

In today’s business environment, companies can ill afford to lose business to the competition. We must deal with the words –the words that are spoken during the sales presentation, the words leading up to the sales presentation, the words on the web site (in short, all of the sales words) – as they all have a cumulative effect on the prospect.

Let’s examine this phenomenon by observing other areas of human behavior. Would a rational person be willing to go up in front of 500 people and spontaneously begin telling jokes or singing songs or acting out a role in a play? Of course not, they would make fools of themselves. They would insist on a well-developed script and rehearsing and rehearsing until they have mastered the material. Chances are, even with lots of preparation they would be nervous because they would feel they are not really prepared, not really confident. Right?

But people go into the selling situation and they spontaneously begin to perform. They spontaneously begin to sell. There is no script. There is no rehearsal. There is usually no preparation. And they expect to win the war of words. When they walk out, one presenter smiles at the other, “Hey, we did pretty well in there right?” Wrong! They did not do well. Why? Because they didn’t prepare the words. They didn’t think about the words. They didn’t choose their words carefully enough, taking into account what words their competitors would use. They didn’t choose powerful examples to make their words compelling. They end up losing the war of words to the existing vendor or to the cheaper alternative.

If you want to know how effective your script is, go over to one of your presenters and ask him or her why a prospect should use your company over the competition. You will get an uncomfortable smile, a pause, a hesitation and a “Now? You want me to tell you right now?” response. If you do get a response, chances are it will be weak and unconvincing.

Why? Because there is no script and without a script a well-prepared competitor will win 90 percent of the time. You and your company will lose the war of words.

You need a sales script. You need a sales script and after the sales script is developed, you need to rehearse as if you would be performing because you will be performing!

Do you want to lose the war of words? Can you afford to lose the war of words?

Comedy Corner

A small town prosecuting attorney called his first witness to the stand in a trial – an elderly woman. He asked, “Mrs. Jones, do you know me?”

She responded, “Why, yes, I do know you, Mr. Williams and frankly, you’ve been a big disappointment to me. You lie, you cheat on your wife, and you think you’re a rising big shot when you will never amount to anything more than a two-bit paper pusher.”

The lawyer was stunned. Not knowing what to do he asked, “Mrs. Williams, do you know the defense attorney?”

She again replied, “Why, yes I do. He’s lazy, bigoted, has a drinking problem, and his law practice is one of the shoddiest in the state.”

At this point, the judge rapped the courtroom to silence and called both counselors to the bench. In a very quiet voice, he said with menace, “If either of you asks her if she knows me, you’ll be in jail for contempt within five minutes!”