Tested Sentences that Sell

Elmer Wheeler

• Publisher: Papamoa Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781789124767
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Werbung

This book describes the simple but effective methods that Elmer Wheeler has used in making two sales grow where only one grew before.The author is sales consultant for scores of prominent firms. He has tested thousands of word-combinations and selling points on millions of customers at the point of sale.He knows the selling points and techniques that will achieve results. He knows the ones that will fail.The author shows you how the slight twist of a phrase may make a difference between success and failure in selling a product.He shows you how to go about building up your own selling sentences—your own sales presentations—and how to test them on the customer.You will find this book intensely interesting and practical, for the author has filled it with stories of actual sales campaigns that have been built upon the use of tested sentences.The ideas in this book are making money for some of the best-known concerns in the country. They should make money for you.

PERTINENT EXAMPLES OF WHEELERPOINTS, RULES, PRINCIPLES AND FORMULAS

CHAPTER 9—YOUR FIRST TEN WORDS ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE NEXT TEN THOUSAND

You have only ten short seconds to capture the fleeting attention of the other person, and if in those ten short seconds you don’t say something mighty important, he will leave you—either physically or mentally!

Everywhere you go you read a sign that says, “Don’t write—TELEGRAPH!” There is a definite reason for this slogan, and for choosing it as our second Wheelerpoint. No matter how busy a man is, when a telegram arrives it gets his immediate attention. The sender was forced to boil into ten words the entire “sizzle” of his message—so his story was told in ten seconds, and naturally “rang the bell.”

Little Willy wants an extra slice of bread and jam; Big Brother wants the car for the evening; Dad wants to go out and play cards with the boys; and Mother wants a new hat. Uncle Joe is planning a sales program for a new cosmetic; Sister Sue wants her beau to take her to Bermuda on their honeymoon; and around the corner the preacher is planning a visit on the household to make it church-conscious. Their first ten words will be more important than their next ten thousand!

THE RIGHT COMBINATION

Everybody in the office knows the numerals on the dial of the safe, yet only a few know the COMBINATION of those numbers that will unlock the safe and reveal the riches that lie therein.

So it is with selling. Every salesman knows the many “sizzles” of his product—he knows the numerals inside his sales kit, but what he often doesn’t know is the RIGHT COMBINATION of those selling words to make people buy. One thing is certain—he must boil his “sizzles” down to the fewest possible and his sales talk to the least number of words to get the big message across to the other person.

This we learned in the chapters on the five Wheelerpoints, but for a moment now let us see the psychological reasons that underlie these Wheelerpoints. It is interesting to know WHY something happens as well as to know that it happens.

WHY YOU MUST GET TEN-SECOND ATTENTION

As you walk to work your mind is fleeting from thought to thought and your eye from object to object—you are doing what is known as “daydreaming.” You see everything—yet see nothing! Your mind is miles away. You are building castles in Spain. Automatically you tip your hat, automatically you dodge a street car, and instinctively you walk around people who may bump into you. You are awake—yet sound asleep! You are in a daze.

Then somebody uses a “Tested Selling Sentence” on you. It penetrates the “cloud.” You come to life—down to earth! You are all eyes and ears. The “sizzle” captured your attention.

We must learn the secret of getting our words INTO the other person’s brain-by the haze and past the daze—for the prospect may be “Looking at us, eye to eye, yet his mind may be miles away.” As Richard Borden says, “You must have an Oh hum crasher’ for your prospect!” You must crash his “Oh hum”—his yawn—you must use words that dash by his daze.

“Stop, look, and listen” means nothing today to people; they look at it, yet every day people are being hit by trains. It is not a good split-second “daze crasher” anymore because we have seen it too often.

Go over your vocabulary. How many “daze crashers” have you, along with “door crashers” and “telephone crashers”? Pretty few, I’ll bet, if you are like the average salesman. Better stock up on some. They will come in handy to penetrate the other person’s “castles in Spain”—to change that glassy, far away look into one of keen attention!

This is why our first Wheelerpoint is, “Don’t sell the steak—sell the sizzle,” and our second one is, “Don’t write—TELEGRAPH.” This is why we advise you to “watch your first ten seconds—your first ten words!”

WHEN YOU GET TEN-SECOND ATTENTION—THEN WHAT?

Once you have been successful in crashing the prospect’s “Oh hum” or his daze with a “sizzle,” then you have about three short minutes to get your message into his mind—his blood-his system. You have three short minutes before his mind will wander away, saturated!

After walking five miles, after reading several chapters, or after talking for some time, our muscles, our mind, and our spirit wilt and grow weary and fatigued because we have saturated ourselves. A blotter holds just so much ink, and then it becomes “fatigued”; it is saturated, and it is useless to the writer.

Our case histories indicate that Mr. Prospect fatigues when you talk for more than three minutes without letting him talk, without using some showmanship to renew his interest, or without changing the topic. He can concentrate just three minutes; then he wants to talk; he wants to try it; he wants to participate. For this reason we have developed Wheelerpoint 3, “Say it with flowers,” which teaches you to make the prospect a part of your sales show.

OUR LIE DETECTOR TESTS

A number of years ago I experimented at Johns Hopkins University with a lie detector, to see if certain “sizzles” would make people respond quicker than others, and we received definite proof that they would. We adjusted the little quartz string to a “customer,” and recited a long sales talk to him or her, and on going over the film afterwards noted wherein we had received mental reactions.

These findings indicated a three-minute fatigue point, beyond which the sales talk fails to register efficiently. They also indicated that words affect people physically as well as mentally, and so we offer you our Fourth Wheelerpoint, “Don’t ask if—ask which,” to help you close sales quickly, before saturation sets in!

“LEMON”—”COTTON”—”ALUM”

Take the word lemon. Visualize biting into a nice juicy lemon, and note how your salivary glands will function. Speak the word to somebody, and talk about cutting the lemon. Watch his mouth water.

If you want to dry his mouth, ask him to visualize a mouthful of hot, dry cotton. This thought will tend to dry the salivary glands, just as the thought of the word alum tends to pucker the lips of those who hear it.

Then I was sales adviser to Dave Rubinoff, showman violinist, he informed me how he could move people physically, as well as mentally, with his musical “sales notes.” If he played “Humoresque” soft and low, the ducts in the eyes would water up; the “St. Louis Blues” caused spines to wiggle; “Lover, Come Back to Me” prompted the ladies’ hearts to beat faster; and a Sousa’s march always made the feet of the men beat in time.

Such is the EMOTIONAL POWER of word tones on the human system! This accounts for Wheelerpoint 5, “Watch your bark,” because your voice is the carrier of your “tested words.”

A GOOD SALES EXAMPLE OF THESE FACTS

As a good example of the fact you have ten seconds to get attention and must tell your story in three minutes before saturation takes place, note this sales talk of L. D. Caulk Company, makers of silver alloy for the teeth. This sales talk, which I developed with William Grier, president of the company, was designed to be used on dentists, who have only a very few minutes to give to any dental salesman. They are professional men, and their time is valuable....