The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

“Keep it short,” they say, “because folks don’t have time to read anymore.” That’s good advice. The shorter, the better. When is brevity a virtue? When you have nothing to say.

Truth is, most of the advice we get telling us to keep it brief is based on the assumption that what we’re writing—be it a blog post, an email, a letter, a proposal, a report—is of little interest to the reader, anyway.

Therein lies the real issue: It’s not so much the length of what we write as it is the content and the layout.

Let’s get more specific, more real, about this notion that people don’t have time to read:

• They don’t have time to read things that are not interesting to them. When the subject is of interest, they’ll devour a 400-page book.

Raise your hand if you’ve ever been put on notice by a prospect—right up front—that they won’t be buying unless they get a terrific price.  (I know every hand went up… I’m clairvoyant.) “Right up front” is the key phrase that guaranteed all the hands would go up, but more on that in a moment.

Ready for a Fight

It’s not that every prospect acts that way, but enough do so that every salesperson has heard it. Many of you tell me you hear it every week!  A lot of prospects think it’s their duty, their job, their role in the great game of negotiation to announce up front that nothing is more important than getting a low price or a good deal. Their purpose, not unlike a boxer’s, is to put you off-balance and make you more vulnerable to their next punch. But it’s not every prospect, is it? It’s telling which prospects typically make these threats and which don’t.