Ryan Dohrn explains why salespeople should avoid overwhelming prospects with technical details. Use the hot dog and sausage analogy: sell the experience, not how it's made. Ask buyers what they actually need to know, keep it simple, and recognize that too much detail kills deals.
Hey friends, Ryan Dohrn here, your global sales and marketing coach, and today's tip is all about being careful about giving way too many details. Now, I did a training tip on this not too long ago and got quite a bit of feedback on it, so I want to record another one and give you a little more detail on this. All right, let's just say that you're a technology company. Let's say you're selling programmatic media. I'm not suggesting that you don't give details to people I'm just suggesting that most people like to eat a good old-fashioned hot dog at the ballpark. But once you tell them what's inside the hot dog, they're kind of like, I don't know. I like to call it the sausage or hot dog scenario. Get that client excited about the experience of eating that hot dog, about eating that sausage, without getting into all the details of exactly what's inside the sausage. What happens is you or me as salespeople, we've had a bad experience. Well, this one time this client got real upset because I didn't give them all the details. Well, give them the detail they need to make a decision, but don't give them so much detail that they choke before making that decision. Remember, a confused buyer always says no. That should be the big takeaway. The more detail you give, a lot of times it's just, just confusing to them. Ask what detail they need. Don't give them more detail than they need. And focus on ways to keep things really simple, especially if you've got a complex sale that you're trying to walk them through. The other thing is this: some of y'all out there, you love the technology, you love giving all the details. Doesn't everybody want to know? The answer is no, they don't. To go back to the old KISS— keep it simple, stupid— or keep it stupid simple. Figure out the easiest way not to drag that customer into the weeds and still get the job done. Every customer is different. Ask good questions. Make sure you're not going overboard. And I think you'll go further faster in the sales business. Giving too many details sometimes, friends, it can kill the deal. Just remember the hot dog sausage scenario. All right, if I can be of help to you, reach out to me over at ryandohrn.com. I'm back out on the road about 7 days a month speaking at conferences and training sales teams chest like yours. Never forget, friends, if sales was easy, everybody'd be doing it, and they're not. So we're either crazy or we found careers, friends, that'll feed our families for a lifetime. All right, ryandohrn.com. We will see you next week.
