Today’s customers are smarter and more sophisticated, and technology has become a way of life for them. For example, our cars have global positioning and mapping systems based upon satellite communications. The appliances in our kitchens turn themselves on and off. Our entire music collections are carried on digital devices the size of a deck of cards. We take pictures, play games, and send text messages to friends with our cellular phones. Over Nintey-five percent of all homes in the United States have personal computers. Via the Internet, customers can research products, prices, and opinions. Collectively, this has raised the level of sophistication of the customers we must converse with and sell to.
Perhaps the most interesting change is how people receive information. According to one university study, the world’s total yearly production of media content for newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and the Internet would require roughly 1.5 billion gigabytes of storage. This is the equivalent of 250 megabytes per person for each man, woman, and child on the earth. Because of this information overload, customer attention spans are shorter than ever.
Information must now be packaged with the customers’ shortened attention spans in mind. For example, USA Today, the largest selling newspaper in the United States, was designed to stand out visually. The colorful newspaper always includes bold diagrams and numerous pictures so that time-pressed readers can pick up a story’s message with minimal effort. Even the racks used to sell the newspaper are colorful boxes with rounded edges as opposed to the black square boxes of other newspapers.
Shortened attention spans have changed the nature of information itself. USA Today distills and condenses the news into easy-to-read chunks. A paragraph is rarely longer than three short sentences. Every article is written with the reader in mind, using a “what’s in it for me?” style. USA Today’s style is best summarized by the newspaper’s tagline, “An economy of words, a wealth of information.” If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, USA Today is the most successful newspaper ever because newspapers everywhere have adopted its format.
But even USA Today has had to continue to change both their online and print editions to maintain readers… This Brings Us to The Main Point of This Article:
Have You Changed The Way You Communicate to Connect with Today’s Customer Who is Smarter, More Sophisticated, But has a Shortened Attention Span?
Successful communication is at the foundation of all sales. “Sales Linguistics” is the revolutionary new field of study about how customers and salespeople use and interpret language during the decision making process. The conversations you have with customers are quite complex, they consist of verbal and non-verbal communication that are sent consciously and subconsciously. Sales Linguistics will help you learn to say the “right” words at the “right” time to convince skeptical customers to buy.
You must be able to adapt your use of language to a customer’s thought process and personality. You need to understand the process of communication and how it determines the level of rapport that is established between people. Language can be directly linked to customer behavior. It can be deciphered to predict the future, determine truthfulness, and used proactively to influence a customer’s thinking and opinions.
The salesperson’s most important competitive weapon is his mouth, and the winner is the salesperson who uses words to reduce the customer’s doubts, ease his fear and fosters his fantasy. That’s why it’s critical that you learn sales linguistics before your arch-rivals learn to speak more persuasively.
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