Sell the Sizzle, Not the Steak

In this new podcast, The Reality is Sales Training, Bob Morrell & Jeremy Blake, with over 20 years of experience behind them, dissect the worldwide sales conversation. They offer you the wit and wisdom to craft compelling narratives and new sales approaches that captivate any prospective customers. 

In this first episode, discover the forgotten genius of Elmer Wheeler, a titan of sales training, and learn why 'basic' sales skills are anything but basic. ‘Sell the Sizzle’ is one of Elmer’s ‘Wheeler Points’ – core principles that underpin professional sales behaviours. If you are not selling the sizzle, then your conversion rate will be less than it could be. 

Whether you're honing your own skills or managing a sales team, our podcast serves up a hearty feast of pragmatic strategies and stories that reshape the sales landscape. Let's turn up the volume on your sales potential! Commercial organisations will look at so many ideas to be more successful. If you look at your customer-facing staff, either face to face or on the phone, or via webchat, of all the things you could do, the Reality is Sales Training is in our experience, the most effective investment. 

Please listen and share! 

Explore resources, insights, and tools tailored to support your team's success and strategic growth at realitytraining.com.

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:14

Hello and welcome to the very first episode of the Reality is Sales Training. I'm Jeremy Blake and I'm joined by Bobby Morrell, and we are bringing to you our new podcast for a very important reason. This is what we have been doing for about 24 years, but it's even longer if we count our careers as salespeople. So Bobby's going to give you a brief introduction to who we are, so that you know who you're listening to, and that will give you some context of the podcast of the Reality is Sales training.

Speaker 2 0:52

So Jeremy and I have been running a company called Reality Training now for over 20 years. Over that time, we've worked in every single possible marketplace and we've trained people of every level, whether it be telesales people, people of every level, whether it be telesales people, contact center people, field sales people, sales managers, team leaders, sales directors, operation directors. We've worked all the way up the line and the vast majority of the work that we've done has been frontline sales training, whether that be business to consumer or business to business, and over that time we've developed lots of information around the sales conversation, the art of selling, where it comes from, where it's going, what the future holds, and we thought it would be fantastic to have a short series of podcasts aimed specifically at sales training, and I also know that Jeremy has a really good perspective on why it's important that we do this. Jeremy, why should we be doing a podcast on the reality of sales training?

Speaker 1 1:55

I think the reality is which is often a phrase that people say the reality is, all training is sales training. When we go into an organization, what do they want? They want their company to be progressive, to continue to make sales. They want geometric growth, they want to increase their conversion rates, they want to increase their average order value transaction and they want to increase the frequency of purchases made by new or existing customers. So everything that you're doing in an organization, whether you call it something else, ultimately is leading towards that desired goal of sales development, sales growth. So the reality is, all training is ultimately sales training. If it's leadership and development training, which we do but that's not the focus of this podcast it's so that they lead and inspire people to sell, to have great service and so on. So that's my contention is that it's all about that.

Speaker 2 2:54

So, jeremy and I, when we started training, we were a double act for many years which in the sales training industry, is quite rare and we traveled all over the world actually to the United States, across Europe, to India and all over the UK, of course and we were a double act. So we would come on and we would illustrate the different parts of the sales conversation, we would act out those different scenes and we would inspire people to think about how they structured their conversations, how they changed their language and how they presented their products or services to be sold. And that was our focus for many, many years. We now have a team of trainers who work with us at Reality Training and, again, the majority of the work that we do is straightforward sales training Sales structures, conversations, presentations, value propositions and negotiation. Those are the key core areas that we train and we're going to be looking at different elements of those in these podcasts.

Speaker 1 3:57

The amusing thing is companies, when they talk to us, say we're just not getting the basics right and that's because they're not basic. They're actually the most difficult things to open a conversation, to ask great questions, to objection handle. I mean, you know, if you're listening to this, you're already involved in sales or sales training yourself, so you know all of the're listening to this. You're already involved in sales or sales training yourself, so you know all of the challenges people face. They just become lazy or inept or they have a whole skill lacking that they haven't even discovered. And the amount of topics that we can draw on for this podcast and our episodes is tremendous. There's so many things we can do, but it is about sales training. We're encouraging you to take this stuff and go train it, go use it. We're either training you or you're going to train someone else.

Speaker 2 4:42

So our first episode. We are going to look at some of the work of one of the pioneers of sales training, a gentleman called Elmer Wheeler. Elmer Wheeler came from the United States of America and he studied how people bought and sold things for many, many years. He wrote a number of books. The most well-known of those books is called Tested Sentences that Sell, and you can find it available online. I believe it's out of copyright now, so it's in the public domain and you should be able to get hold of it. Of copyright now, so it's in the public domain and you should be able to get hold of it. And I think the title says it all really tested sentences that sell. So if you think about your job as a salesperson, once you say a sentence that leads to a sale, you're more likely to use that sentence again because you've tested it and it works. And that's very much the core of what sales training is. It's thinking about language and what you say and how you say it and the effect that it has on a prospect.

Speaker 1 5:45

What Bob and I really like about Elmer is he was a media sales advertising sales executive selling newspaper advertising for the Los Angeles Herald, the Boston Globe, and in those days the biggest buck he got was from department stores. And there was a company called May's Department Store and they were running big half-page ads with them, full pages for their new season of this and that. And one day when he went to renew the advertising from Mr May, he said, well, I don't think I'm going to renew it, actually it's not really working. And he went what? This is? Great copy, fantastic imagery. What do you mean? He said, well, it's just not really working. What Elmer then did was he hung out in the May department store and noticed people coming in on the back of the advertising, but what were ostensibly then in those days what they called sales girls? They're nearly all women working on the counters. Their conversation wasn't inquisitive enough, not inspiring enough, and he realized that the conversion was down to training, was down to language. So he completely switched businesses and he becomes one of the as Bob said, one of the pioneers of sales training.

Speaker 1 6:46

So one of the things he's most known for, which he sets out in this book which he wrote in 1937, are the wheeler points. And there's five wheeler points. We're not going to look at all of them but to kick off, we're going to kick off with his most sell the sizzle. And he was in a restaurant and somebody had ordered steak and it came out on these sizzling plates.

Speaker 1 7:08

And I think the closest that people in the UK get to this is when you go to a curry house and they bring out certain dishes, that sizzle, and you look and go what are they having? And the point is that it's the sizzle that gets people's mouths watering. It's not the steak itself, it's everything around that, it's the excitement of that and that's his wheeler point. One is, whatever it is that you sell, it's not the piece of paper, it's the fact that notes go on it, that you you're creative as you're drawing in the pad or whatever it is you're selling. It doesn't matter what you're selling, it has a sizzle. And he encouraged people to investigate the sizzle of their products and the sizzle of their services.

Speaker 2 7:52

Now you could apply that to so many different products and services and some of it. You think, well, how the hell can I make something that sounds quite dull sound quite exciting? So, for example, we do work with people who work in the events industry and they sell exhibition stands and sponsorship for conferences and things like that. Now, what you're actually buying at those things is pretty dull. You're buying space. You're buying a wall. You're buying some liveried posters going up on the wall. You're buying some digital promotions and things like that, and on the face of it it's not that exciting, but of course that's not what you're wall. You're buying some digital promotions and things like that, and on the face of it it's not that exciting, but of course that's not what you're buying. You're buying the potential for developing your business, and that is a bit more exciting. So selling that potential is the thing that you should be focusing on.

Speaker 1 8:41

Jeremy. Well, what he does in his book is he says list the 10 things a vacuum cleaner gives you, and it's things like oh, it has a time to empty single a dirt finder, an automatic rug adjuster, a non kink cord grit remover. This is all dull, dull, dull. So he says don't sell the price tag, sell less backaches. Don't sell construction, sell labor saving. Don't sell the motor, sell comfort. Don't sell ball bearings, sell the ease of operation. And don't sell suction, sell cleaner rugs. That's what it's about.

Speaker 2 9:14

Well, I remember a few years ago, we spoke at a travel conference in Spain and we talked about what it was that a travel agent was actually selling. Now, of course, when you buy a holiday, you buy a flight, you buy a hotel room, you buy a meal option, depending what it is you're paying for. Now, of course, those are the things that you're buying, but that's not what you're getting, because there's that moment when you're relaxing in the sun on holiday, where you actually start to kick back and think, wow, this is amazing, this is just what I need. That's the sizzle. That's the thing you're actually paying for is that moment of relaxation. All the other stuff that is part of the holiday gives you that. But that's the important thing. And if you can find out what somebody really wants to do on a holiday, what they're really going to get from it, that's going to help you build the type of holiday that they're going to want to buy from you. Now, those are some great examples. Any others that come off the top of your head, jeremy?

Speaker 1 10:10

No, I think we've talked a lot about outcome. I remember once we pitched for a major gym chain and my contention was that they were not discovering the outcome. You don't join a gym to go on a particular running machine with a certain gradient setting that you can discover. You do it to lose weight, feel better about yourself, go dating again, improve your self-confidence. They're all sizzles, and I think the modern word perhaps that you could write next to Elmer is, you know, discover the outcome. But that's so much more boring than don't sell the steak, sell the sizzle. You can remember that. So if you're listening to this, a kind of action point for you is consider what you're selling. What are the sizzles? What would Elmer say to you and this is right back in the 30s and it's as modern and as valid today Discover the sizzles in your product and service. Don't just go for you know the features. Always it's not as interesting as what you're really selling.

Speaker 2 11:08

So, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Reality of Sales training. Thanks for listening to the first episode. We'll see you on the next episode very soon. Thank you.