Free Sales Training Article For Water Equipment Sales By Carl Davidson - Using Visual Images And Examples To Sell More

By: Carl Davidson

A picture is worth a thousand words but many of us forget to use dramatic pictorial examples when selling water equipment. Placing pictures in your prospects mind is a very powerful tool in selling. This article will discuss ways to get more sales using visual pictures and examples your customer can relate to. 

TDS Example 

Many salespeople talk about TDS in an unimaginative way. Customers often don’t understand what we are talking about. I have used a vivid example of what TDS is and how it affects customers that all prospects seem to understand. To explain TDS, I say “Let’s say you were cleaning your basement (or garage) and you came to that spot behind your furnace that you just can’t see or get to. If you reached in and felt something there, would you pick it up and eat it?” Let the horror of eating a ball of Lord-knows-what behind the furnace set in. The customers will say they would never do that. You can reply, “But that is exactly what you do when you drink water with 800 parts per million TDS. That means 800 parts per million are something other than water. We don’t know exactly what it is but we do know it isn’t water. When you reach for a glass of water, I am guessing you’d like to have just water. Am I right? 

Another good visual along the same line is “If you were walking down the street and you saw an orange pill on the sidewalk, would you eat it?” They will say no. You ask why not and they will usually say because they don’t know what it is. That’s when you use the sentence above to explain that they are drinking water that they do not know what some of the content is.  

Soap Cost Example 

Another great example of using visual techniques to strengthen your sales was given to me by a great salesperson this month. It concerns the soap savings part of the demo. Savings means little unless they see it in a powerful way.  Here is a technique from a great salesperson. 

Take 24 one dollar bills with you to every demo. When you do the soap flask savings section of your demo, ask them to picture each drop of soap you add is actually one dollars worth of soap that they buy and use. Give them each three one dollar bills to “buy soap with”. Put three drops on each flask and ask them to pay you. They give you three dollars each which you put in separate piles on the table. 

Shake the flasks. The conditioned water has a great head of suds and the water is clear. Their tap water is grey and has no suds. Allow the family member with the tap water flask to “borrow” 6 dollars to buy soap. Get them to pay you for the soap and leave the money in a pile in front of their flask. Add six drops of soap and shake again. The flask still does not have good suds, so leds them 12 dollars to buy more soap., get them to put it on the pile of bills and add 12 drops of soap. This time, there will be suds, but the water will be cloudy and a mess. 

Ask the participant who has the conditioned water how much they spent to get the laundry done. They count the bills in front of them and say “three dollars”. Ask the participant with the tap water to count the bills. They will count out $21.00. This is a very visual lesson on the cost of unconditioned water. The ratio of 3 to 21 is 1 to 7 which is a savings of 80% and that is what most dealers use a measurement of how much customers save with conditioned water. Using the right ratio makes the example much more believable, so I suggest you stick to these ratios exactly. Seeing actual money on the table makes this part of the demo much more powerful than just talking about abstract saving. 

These are just two example of how you can use visual aids and examples your customers relate to in order to increase your sales and closing rate. Try to work the visual into your demonstration and you will close more and enjoy doing the demo more.