Dissonance between Message and Behavior Kills Sales

Written By Ted Grigg

Companies put enormous resources into positioning their products, backing warranties, training customer service staff, creating benefit driven collateral and other content only to drop the ball in the sales process.

In my opinion, mishandling new business selling steps kills more sales than any single issue.

Let me give a recent example to illustrate my point.

I received a well-written email several days ago from a LinkedIn participant asking me to consider joining a group of CEOs and CMOs with a clear agenda. The writer was the head of this group and had reviewed my LinkedIn profiles citing interest in some specific skill sets.

The writer concluded asking me to give him a couple of times to meet for 15 or 20 minutes by phone to discuss the opportunity.

I wrote back thanking the leader o this concept for writing such a well thought out request and gave him a couple of times.

Three days later I get an email from his assistant asking me to sign up for a time to talk with his partner or him. What a turn off!

I did not, nor will I ever speak to anyone associated with this organization. 

They came in promising a personal touch, and then changed their tone to sound like an impersonal, large selling organization.

Why ask me for my time availability only to ignore them? This was not only a letdown, but also insulting.

Never position your organization one way only to change course midstream. This engenders distrust -- and outright anger. It would have been better never to contact me. Now they are a marked company.

The takeaway: make sure you meet the expectations of every one who contacts your company. Be consistent and don't oversell. Represent who you truly are even if you wish you were a more service oriented organization.

It's always best to undersell than oversell.

Ted Grigg

Ted Grigg is a direct response strategist who helps growth-focused companies reduce risk by identifying weak assumptions before they become costly mistakes.

Over the course of his career, Ted has evaluated several hundred million dollars in direct response testing across direct mail, digital, print, television, telephone, and other channels. His work combines direct response strategy, acquisition economics, customer analysis, creative evaluation, offer development, and disciplined testing.

Ted has worked on both the client and agency sides of the business. That experience gives him a practical understanding of the pressures facing executives, marketing teams, agencies, and service providers—and of the problems that arise when activity, media volume, or creative preference replaces a clear economic objective.

His consulting work helps organizations examine such questions as:

  • Are acquisition goals economically realistic?

  • Is the allowable Cost Per Sale supported by customer value?

  • Are targeting, offers, creative, media, and response paths working together?

  • Are tests structured to produce reliable business decisions?

  • Are unproven assumptions being treated as facts?

  • Is the organization measuring sales outcomes rather than convenient proxies?

Ted’s experience includes the development of direct mail and multichannel acquisition programs for insurance, healthcare, financial services, technology, nonprofit, manufacturing, retail, transportation, communications, government, and business-to-business organizations.

For a national direct-to-consumer insurance company, he developed a direct mail format that defeated established controls and helped expand the productive use of compiled prospect lists from less than 10 percent to more than 30 percent of total direct mail circulation within one year. He also planned Medicare lead-generation programs for more than 60 regional and national HMO and PPO organizations, with some programs exceeding sales projections by as much as 60 percent.

Ted founded Wyse Direct, a direct marketing division of Wyse Advertising in Cleveland, where he developed acquisition programs and helped launch a new technology product for Seiko Instruments by generating a predictable flow of qualified sales leads for its national sales organization. As vice president of new business development for the Grizzard Agency, he helped broaden the agency’s strategic capabilities and pursue new commercial and fundraising opportunities.

He is the author of The HMO/PPO Marketing Plan—A Step-by-Step Guide, published by Executive Enterprises, and has written numerous articles and conducted webinars on direct response strategy, testing, creative development, and marketing economics.

Ted earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Abilene Christian University and completed two years of graduate study at Texas Tech University. He is the founder of DMCG, LLC.

http://www.dmcgresults.com
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