Practice may make perfect, if you believe that old adage, but nor repetition.
In one of Shakespeare’s plays (of which I know nothing and am glad of it), there is a line about a certain woman protesting her virtue so much that everybody begins to believe she has none.
That’s what repetition will do for you.
As my old friend Dr. Phil would say, ” How’s that workin’ for ya. “
If she had kept quiet about that virtue of hers, she might have slipped thru and been safe. It was her oft repeated protestations that gave her away.
The same thing works in sales calls. The other day a salesman made a presentation to my company that included no less than 20-25 instances of him repeating the same phrase. It was about one of their features. Instead of thinking it was a great thing, it made me leery about the feature and I didn’t even consider buying the product.
There’s two dangers inherent with repetition:
- Too frequent or constant repetition can infer weakness.
- You keep repeating the same, tired, old, drivel and you make MEGO (my eyes glaze over)
If my eyes glaze over, you have no shot at selling me anything other than a white-chocolate mocha latte. No shot … unless it’s a double-shot.
There’s two ways to overcome those dangers:
- Get me to make the point you’re trying to get across and have me repeat it … once. I never grow tired of my own words.
- Work the point in as a transistion or bridge phrase … casually. Then if you need to, you can say we already went over that point and you may get away with repeating it.
Keep ol’ Willy Shakespeare in mind the next time you’re planning a sales call. He just might bear repeating.
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