Twelve Common Words That Are Costing You Sales

The right words can help us make the sale, while the wrong words can blow it for us. The challenge is, often what we think are the right words are actually the wrong words.

Here are twelve words you’re probably using in your sales and marketing efforts which are—in reality—working against you:

1. “Quality”
2. “Service”
3. “Value”
4. “Performance”
5. “Unique”
6. “Leading”
7. “Premier”
8. “Results”
9. “Solutions”
10. “Best”
11. “Innovative”
12. “Excellence”

What’s the problem with these seemingly positive words? They’re clichés!

Everybody uses them, so they have no impact anymore.

Words like “premier,” “excellence” and “performance” sound good, but don’t truly mean anything. And words like “value,” “leading,” and “best” are completely subjective, so they can’t be proven or disproven. (Which is exactly why so many companies use them.)

Worse, companies with lousy quality claim their products are high quality. Companies with horrible service claim to provide great service.

And while everybody wants to be “unique,” just saying you are doesn’t make it true.

When you use these words to describe your company, product or service, you sound exactly like everybody else. And that makes you a commodity. If you’re no different than your competition, there’s no reason to choose you.

Don’t rely on clichés. Give me an example of your quality. Tell a story about your service. Describe the specific results some of your customers have achieved. Prove your uniqueness with some kind of verifiable fact.

Here’s something to think about: How can you use the word “only” in your sales and marketing efforts? How can you use a measurable superlative like “largest,” “fastest” or “most?”

It seems like everybody and their brother uses clichés like they’re going out of style, but at the end of the day, if you want your sales to grow by leaps and bounds, you should avoid them like the plague.