1 Liners

When either selling, pitching, negotiating, forming marketing alliances or teaming up, people sometimes sit on the fence. I hate that, because time is money. But often, a single sentence can move a couple of hesitating turtoises off the fence. I call these “1 liners”. It won’t get you the business or sell you or your product all by itself.

But I’ve seen it time & time & time again close deals which could have gone either way. Let me give you an example. 5 Minutes prior to writing this post I was one the phone to form a marketing alliance with a local printer. I want the printer to introduce me to their clients and pay them for it. Here’s the conversation:

Me: Can I speak to the owner please

Owner: Speaking

Me: Hi, my name is Raymond, we haven’t met yet, I’d like to know if you want to add marketing coaching to your printing business

Owner: No, no we are not interested

[I could have given up at this point, but somehow I got the idea that the owner thought I was a telemarketer]

Me: No, no the service is not for you, I’m not selling anything here [That’s the 1 liner retort]

{Warning >>> Don’t say you are not selling anything if you are, got the tshirt}

Me: I’d like to pay you for adding my services to your business, if we can have a 3 minute meeting I can show you how, but it may or may not be for you either way – when would you like to meet?

That’s more or less how the conversation went. The meeting is on Monday, can’t wait :).

So here’s the lesson – think or dream up one liners that you can say when you get a little bit of resistance (resistance is normal).

I’ve seen Daymond John from Shark Tank threw this one: “Work with me and I’ll make you filthy rich”. Nice. Now that we are on the subject of Shark Tank … WATCH EACH EPISODE! It’s amazing even if it’s just for Kevin O’Leary’s laser like expressions on cash. My favourite is … "don’t cry for money, it won’t cry for you".

Back to the 1 liners. Let’s crank it up a notch. We can move from 1 liners to automatic 1 liners. These are simple retorts you can say no matter what type of objection your prospect gives you. This … is … gold. 

Why? Well because when you are pitching, selling or negotiating you can’t wait 5 minutes, 2 minutes or even a minute to think of something to reply with.

You’ve got 2 seconds. Take any longer and you lose perceived value. Imagine somebody trying to sell you something and you ask them a basic question and they go hmmmm for 5 minutes. Daai kite gan nie vlieg nie. Not gonna work.

So let’s say somebody says to you:

You are too young > That’s exactly why you should hire me
You are too expensive > That’s exactly why you should hire me
Your business is too small > That’s exactly why you should hire me

Obviously this isn’t the magic bullet to save your skin, get rich, get the car and get the girl. However: it buys you 5-10 more seconds for you to stay in the game. And that’s all you need right now…