If there’s one thing we screw up as salespeople, it’s giving the prospect too much damn information. In sales, keeping it simple sells and complication causes objections. In my career as a salesman and CEO, I have seen hundreds of salespeople talk their way right out of a laydown sale. When they start educating the prospect on what they didn’t even ask about, they then wonder why the prospect needs a few days to process all the information they armed them with!
When I was a loan officer, I’d close 15-30 loans a month depending on the time of year.
Other LOs would always ask me how I got people to commit so fast. Then I’d go listen to them talk and hear what they were doing wrong. I’d hear LOs talking about the bond market, how rates work, and what hacks to use to get the best rate. I saw that they were teaching entirely too much and telling the prospect information that they really didn’t need or want to know about.
If you tell the prospect to watch for the bond market to drop before they lock in a rate, it’s no wonder they will wait and wait and wait for the market to shift before committing. That’s exactly what you just told them to do. I, on the other hand, learned that prospects don’t need to know all that. They just want a loan so they can buy a home. That’s all I talked about; getting a home. Therefore there was nothing to overthink and they’d commit quickly and close fast.
It’s not just financial advisers who do this.
I’ve seen insurance salesmen, roofers, car salespeople, and just about every type of salesperson there is, talk their way out of a sale by giving too much information. When you give out too much info, you cause the prospect the burden of knowledge and they have a lot to weigh out before they commit. This is the downfall of educated salespeople.
The less you know, the more you sell.
When I sold cars, I’d see new people come in and make a ton of money. Once they realized how invoices, payments and gross income worked, they’d almost always drop their price, tell the prospect too much and start losing deals due to overcomplication.
If a prospect needs to think about it, you gave them too much info to process and it’s your fault, not the prospect’s, that they didn’t close.
When you have a sales conversation, your job is to only talk about things the prospect mentions. It’s not deceitful; it’s not immoral; it’s your duty not to complicate the matter, so the prospect can buy, get their problems solved and move on. As kids, we are taught to be smart and we get rewarded for knowing how to explain a lot. As salespeople, being smart and explaining too much will cost you your commission checks.
The best thing to do in sales is to keep it simple and only give out information on a need-to-know basis. When you can forego the need to be praised for being smart, and instead keep it simple and short, you will start making more money. The reason the prospect needs to think about it is because you armed them with too much damn information.
Keep it simple, and watch the sales stack up.
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