Change Your Sales Pitches

Article via Staffing Talk

I just read this dense and really nerdy study fromUniversity of North Carolina that essentially proves three simple things: 1) most people find calorie totals meaningless, 2) most people are intimidated by exercise, and 3) people will eat differently if they know how much exercise it would take to burn their meals. What does this study have to do with staffing? Well maybe it’s just a lesson in speaking on your clients’ terms, rather than your own.

Let me explain.

The medical school research study, published inAppetite, asked people to look at one of four different types of menus before ordering food. 1) No nutritional info, 2) just calorie info, 3) calories plus minutes of walking it takes to burn the calories, and 4) calories plus distance you’d have to walk to burn the calories. What they found was that groups 1 and 2 acted almost the same and their orders averages 1,020 calories. Groups 3 and 4, meanwhile, averaged a significantly lower 826-calorie meal.

This study also mirrors the findings of Johns Hopkins when they posted signs at convenience store soda coolers that showed how much exercise it would take to burn off one soda (50 minutes of running). Not surprisingly, people were less likely to buy a soda.

What I love about this approach (other than the factthat it seems like a common sense thing to do) is that it takes away labeling foods and instead reframes it to labeling people. It’s a phenomenon that reminds me of a piece of sage advice I got as a budding journalist: if you can’t get them by the heartstrings, get them by the purse strings. The idea is to adjust and customize your message specifically for your audience so it speaks to them.

So if you hear clients say things like “you don’t offer enough value” or “you’re too expensive,” do the math and figure out exactly how much resources they spend on hiring right now, then translate that into dollars. The idea is that, instead of staring atyour price tag, you make them look at their price tag. If you get really good at framing your pitch, you might even be able to prove that you’re an investment that pays for itself and helps that client grow.