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Use these words to improve your skills in selling,sales presentations, bonding with clients,copywriting, public speaking, reaching senior leveldecision makers, direct response, negotiating,mediating, prospecting, cold calling, websitecopy, business writing, public relations, businesspresentations, marketing strategy, brochuredesign, advertising design, positioning, persuasion,staffing selection, coaching and mentoring,psychological profiling, personal development,consulting, bargaining, motivating or inspiring,email marketing, NLP, body language,personalization, defusing tense situations, dealingwith objections, closing sales and maximizingconversion ratios.
The Brooks Group www.thewordsthatsell.com 1-800-633-7762
The Words That Work was original research that was developed for useexclusively in the political arena. Based upon his fantastic success with politicalcandidates, Tom Travisano then went on to observe over 12,000 salespeopleover a 20 year period. His findings were then ready for real-world application asrelated to sales improvement and enhancement. Based on this subsequentresearch Bill Brooks joined Travisano as they wrote the blockbuster book, You ’ re Working Too Hard To Make The Sale , which was published through Business OneIrwin in 1995.
After the unfortunate death of Travisano, Brooks continued to develop the
concept that certain words work with great precision in specific sales situations
with varying customer types. Prior to Travisano’s death he and Brooks had
begun to produce an extensive library of terms and phrases that key decision
makers respond to most favorably as it relates to the overall sales relationship,
perception of products and services, benefits most sought, expectations of
vendor delivery and price. For example, the words that work best for a
Corporate CEO are not the same words that work best for an Entrepreneurial
leader.
Your purchase of Words That Work is a great and wise investment in developing
specific communication skills for your targeted market. It is not uncommon to
find that more than one report is helpful in recognizing and properly addressing
the prospect or audience of your desire. We recommend that you consider
additional reports for other types of buyers that are closely related to those in
your primary market. For instance a Primary Care Physician could also be an
Entrepreneur or a CEO type. Note that each library includes tips on how to
identify these types more specifically and choose your precise, exact words
The Brooks Group www.thewordsthatsell.com 1-800-633-7762
By the way, when we asked him for a specific definition of the difference
between the two sides, he couldn’t tell us. But he was still convinced that there
was a difference!
Entrepreneurs have that obsession because they don’t like to make what’s
called a conceptual leap.
In other words, they don’t eagerly make the move from the general to the
specific, or from one application to another, or from one industry to another.
And they usually resist adapting a broad concept to their own situations.
They’re always suspicious that salespeople are trying to make them force a
square peg into a round hole.
As a result, salespeople often hear Entrepreneurs condemn their product or
service by saying, “That doesn’t apply to me,” or “My business is different, it’sunique.” Of course, they’re actually saying, “I’m unique, but you don’t make
me feel that way.” Never forget ... the owner and the business are practically
one-in-the-same.
The words “specific to his or her unique situation” will have different
meanings for different Entrepreneurs.
Those words are really a matter of perception. They might simply mean that
your product or service was designed for an entrepreneurial type of business, oran owner-operated business, or a small business. If you pay close enough
attention, the decision maker will tell you which one he or she wants to hear.
When a product or service is perceived as practical, street smart and not
theoretical, most Entrepreneurs believe that:
A. It will eliminate complexity from their lives,
B. It won’t strain the company’s resources, and
C. It won’t put additional demands on the owner’s personal time.
Entrepreneurs have no patience for complexity because it interferes with the
hands-on, quick-action performance they consider so vital to their personal
The Brooks Group www.thewordsthatsell.com 1-800-633-7762
When things are too complex and ambiguous, the path is open for the abstract.
And Entrepreneurs don’t trust anything abstract because — in contrast to
anything that’s thought of as concrete — it’s theoretical.
Anything that’s theoretical is automatically “ivory tower,” or academic, or
intellectual. Because it lacks the basic strength that comes from being “street
smart,” it doesn’t have any no-nonsense, hard-nosed practicality.
The Entrepreneur draws a clear distinction between “the street” and the rest of
the world. Only the street has the desirable virtue of being uncomplicated,
down-to-earth and easy to understand.
That’s why Entrepreneurs can be so frustratingly resistant to learning anything
but hard information that deals with “how to.” Anything that relates to “why” is
of very little interest to them.
Their bias can be summarized in the statement: “Don’t tell me why, just tell mehow.” Or: “Don’t tell me about the theory behind it, just tell me how to use it.”
As far as Entrepreneurs are concerned, stopping and thinking — which is what
theory and ambiguity make you do — is a colossal waste of time. It gets in the
way of doing. And nothing must be allowed to stop that. Nothing must get in
the way of action.
Entrepreneurs always seem to be running … form on fire to another, from one
crisis to another, from one challenge to another. There’s always a tension right
below the surface when you talk to them.
What are they tense about? Burning through their recourses.
It doesn’t matter how resource-rich the business might be. They can’t help buy
having either one of two perceptions about their resources — they’re either
completely insufficient or just barely adequate to do the job.
Earlier, we talked about the almost mystical relationship between Entrepreneursand their businesses. Here, we said that owners and their businesses are
practically one-in-the-same. Therefore, the Entrepreneur’s idea of “resources” is
The Brooks Group www.thewordsthatsell.com 1-800-633-7762
Yet, Entrepreneurs perceive that almost every element of society favors the
large companies and institutions … university courses, professional and
consulting services, trade shows, published articles, seminars, books, research
data, legislation, periodicals and just about everything else that teaches,
explains or reveals anything that has any value. And when they look at the
structure of that world, they perceive a rigid, unyielding indifference.
It’s too big and powerful for them to bend to their will, too impersonal to care
about them and too consumed by what’s of no interest or value to them. It
won’t yield to their needs or, for that matter, even pay attention to them.
Therefore, they only want to do business with a provider who considers them
important enough to warrant flexibility or, if you will, very special treatment.
The ideal provider must be willing to make accommodations to what
Entrepreneurs consider their unique requirements. Of course, that provider won’t
have to actually be flexible or make the exceptions. You simply have to beperceived as being willing to do so.
Remember, the need for personal independence is a statement to the effect
that “I’m different from all the others, so I should get unique treatment.” They’re
not claiming to be better than everyone else, only different from them.
That sense of uniqueness — in other words, having special needs — is the
main source of these decision makers’ highly suspicious attitude toward most
salespeople.
You might have noticed that they often begin the sales cycle with the
assumption that the salesperson doesn’t understand them and is just, “trying to
sell me something.” And, as we said before, that’s usually a square peg for a
round hole.
If Entrepreneurs are going to perceive that your product or service was
designed specifically for them (see earlier), they also must perceive that you
took all the necessary steps to make it the right way. That’s why they alwaysdemand that you be more thorough and disciplined than they are. This is what
we might call a “would have” or “should have” situation.
The Brooks Group www.thewordsthatsell.com 1-800-633-7762
Consequently, they experience an exhausting drain on their energies whenever
they wear the manager’s hat. Being in charge wears them down, and
overcoming the disorder in the business is a challenge they’d do anything to
avoid.
If they accept the challenge, they know they’re going to be totally exhausted.
But if they don’t accept it, they have to tolerate it. And tolerating chaos is just asterrible an experience as trying to eliminate it.
Non-entrepreneurial executives view the companies where they work as
their place of business. Entrepreneurs, however, consider it practically their
home … the place where their entire existence is “on the line” every day. It’s
where the drama of their lives is acted out from minute to minute.
Their fate rests on everything that happens within those walls, where their
identity, value and purpose are being tested constantly. As we mentionedbefore, they consider themselves and the business to be almost the same entity.
The need Entrepreneurs have for order is the need for proof that their lives
aren’t being squandered. But because they deeply dread the challenges
associated with their personal-intervention management style, they’d rather get
control of the business in a different way … automatically.
They perceive that business problems are attributable to people — to
themselves and their employees — which is why they tend to explain problems
and failures in human terms.
Since being in business is an intensely personal experience for them, it’s not
surprising that successes and reverses are almost always seen as the result of
human performance.
Blind, impersonal forces like marketplace dynamics might interest academics
and other ivory tower types, but they’re just idle speculation to the Entrepreneur.
If a problem persists, people have to change the way they work in order tosolve it. Period.
However, in starting their own businesses, they made the statement that they
have no interest in changing themselves. They are what they are, and are
stubbornly proud of it, even when they criticize themselves.
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