Phrases that sell

28.02.2023 17:44

Author and content analyst on trade automation

фрази, що продають

Success in sales largely depends on the words and phrases you use in your communication with customers. We have compiled 2 lists for you:

the most commonly used words and phrases that will help in sales,
statements that a salesperson should avoid.

To begin with, let's determine what rules you should include in your business communication policy.

Principles of communication with customers

✅ Length vs. content

Complex and long sentences are incompatible with sales. To ensure that the information you convey is understood by the client without much effort, you need to not only switch to the client's language - explain in terms they understand - but also get into the "pain" of the buyer - understand what need the client wants to address and talk about it.

Where is the balance point? ⚖️

The main rule is that selling words and phrases should encourage action.

Use simple sentences to avoid confusing the customer.

1 sentence = 1 unit of information.

✅ Tame advertising

Quite often, we see overly emotional and overtly advertising slogans in advertising messages and salespeople's language, such as:

"Limited time offer! Buy now while supplies last!",

"Only for you! Exclusive offer that does not repeat!",

"Incredible prices! Get the best deal because only we have it."

Such phrases no longer catch people's attention, on the contrary, they repel the customer's attention, irritate with overt advertising content and smell cheap.

✅ Honesty

There is a lie and then there is a deception. Misrepresentation is a distortion of facts, vague wording that is not technically a lie, but not the truth either. Misrepresentation is used to reinforce a weak and unproven opinion.

"Our slimming bars are guaranteed to reduce your weight in just 1 month of consumption."

"Order our sunscreen for your car and you will forget about the heat and overheating of the interior in summer."

Your film is unlikely to help you forget about the problem. But it can help solve it and improve the customer's quality of life.

Businesses pay for false information with their reputation and money.

Be honest about the characteristics of the product, its purpose, and the problems that the client can solve with its help.

Also provide all the information about the product: terms of use, returns, delivery, payment methods. If you write about free delivery, it should be so. This way you will win the favor of customers faster.

✅ Competence

Buyers trust ads that show that the seller or company has been in this business for a long time and is serious about it. Express your expert opinion about your product in the advertising text or when communicating with the customer.

Show how your company has achieved positive results, share stories, successful examples of your customers, their experience of using the product on your website or in social media. At the same time, try to be clear. People are primarily interested in your experience, not impersonal numbers and complex concepts.

Express complexity in simple, familiar words.

Text on the website of a business school in Ukraine:

"We provide our students with a multifaceted educational program, using the most effective pedagogical approaches that combine progressive thinking skills, professional events, and modular courses that the faculty and community consider important."

It is unclear what kind of educational program is provided, what professional activities, pedagogical approaches and modular courses are important for teachers. The impression is that everything at the school is at a high level, but difficult.

Text from another school:

It better reveals the school's expertise and its main advantages for all students.

✅ Specifics

Another important principle follows from the previous point: selling texts should contain specifics, not abstract words and ideas.

Use facts and figures in your communications with customers where they are needed. Don't say: "Your income will increase many times over". Instead, say: "Your income will triple in 2 months" (if this is true).

Instead of saying, "We have a large assortment of cakes," write: "Our confectionery offers 40 types of cakes".

✅ Benefits

Numbers, statistics, and honesty are good, but don't forget about the main motive of your advertising message, which is to make a profit. Show what the benefits of your offer are, how your product will help or has already helped to solve customers' problems and change their lives for the better.

To do this, use fewer qualitative adjectives, comparisons, and epithets. These words make the text melodic, but do not encourage action.

An example of a useful text for a client:

"Our cosmetics help women to reduce anti-aging manifestations such as wrinkles, dry skin, loss of elasticity and firmness. Thanks to natural ingredients such as coenzyme Q10, collagen, elastin, ceramides, retinol, as well as extracts from vegetables and fruits, the skin receives the necessary nutrients, is well moisturized throughout the day, and you will feel energized and refreshed."

✅ Call to action

Use more active verbs in the present tense, perfect form:

"Try [product] for free, under the following conditions:__"

"Evaluate the possibilities of [product]: check out our latest catalog..."

"Test our new [product] and get__"

Phrases that help sales:

You can use the following selling phrases in your communications to grab your customers' attention:

Business, safe, well-being, have fun, taste, opportunity, great, benefit, expressive, harmonious, good, home, worthy, achieve, unity, only, life, wonderful, funny, health, perfect, exceptional, career, quality (quality), comfort (comfortable), beauty (beautiful), love, personality, cute, fashionable, young, music, hope, reliable, real, irreplaceable, inexpensive, original, excellent, charm, victory, useful, truth, advantage, attractive, pleasant, beautiful, prestigious, productive, joy, fun, recommend, resolute, luxurious, self-sufficient, bold, perfection, modern, consent, solid, save, style (stylish), sporty, hardworking, passion, luck, satisfy, smile, success, successful, character, good, valuable, value, clean, wonderful, chic, economy, exclusive, elegant, spectacular.

Words to avoid in sales copy

Any text can be ruined by cumbersome lexical or syntactic constructions:

❌ Stationery

Stationery is a speech cliché that conveys information in a concise form and does not carry a specific meaning. The purpose of the bureaucratic language is to fill the "airwaves" of a client or website visitor with complex language structures that are supposed to create an impression of expertise; to attract the audience's attention with the scale of words, not their usefulness.

Many sellers have the illusion that abstruse words and formal business style will impress the buyer.

This is not the case.

Content full of clichés does not increase website traffic. A seller who talks about a product in the language of office work does not motivate a customer to buy it.

For example:

"Based on the foregoing, we would like to inform you that..."

These phrases are very easy to replace with familiar, everyday ones:

Based on the above - Therefore.
To bring to your attention - Pay attention to.
In order to.
Due to the fact that - Because.

❌ Stop words

Stop words are words and phrases that can be deleted from the text without losing meaning. They carry no semantic load, i.e. they are "water". If you remove stop words, the text will not become more interesting or informative. It will just become cleaner. ⠀

➖ insertive constructions: frankly speaking, as you know, in fact, so to speak, maybe, let's say, after all, at the moment, roughly speaking, fair enough, to be honest, do you know, let's turn to, frankly speaking, by the way, in my opinion, so to speak, firstly, secondly.

Indefinite prepositions and adverbs: something, some, somewhere, somehow, further, once more or less, close, approximately, near, and so on and so forth,

➖ reinforcing words: very, absolutely, certainly, really, minimally, maximally, generally, only,

➖ evaluative adjectives: significant, large, inexpensive, effective, successful, up-to-date, high quality, premium, guaranteed, perfect, high-quality,

verbal nouns: to carry out activities, to carry out repairs.

➖ sentences in the passive voice: "the goods will be delivered..." instead of "the courier will bring the goods..."

➖ stable expressions and advertising clichés: expanded sales geography, became one of the top three, wide range, individual approach to customers, flexible pricing, etc.

Words that harm sales

Absurd, aha, poverty, poor, hopeless, anxiety, pain, sick, probably, guilt, guilty, perhaps, seemingly, stupid, rude, debt, must, won't, can't, don't want, no way, if, complain, idiocy, frightened, crooked, lie, probably, low-quality, hate, necessity, wrong, failure, beggar, insult, about, responsibility, mistake, fake, almost, obstacle, say, roughly, try, doubt, worth, fear, crazy, spend, hard, humiliate (humiliation), tired.

Meaning is more important than words

There are no "right" or "wrong" words, but there are those that interfere with understanding the essence, do not carry any meaning, and mislead the client.
Tell the truth, even if it is inconvenient - be honest with customers, it is appreciated.
For each product or service, have a few facts or evidence that "work" for the product, reasonably explain its benefits and feasibility.
Tell stories, add examples - it sells best.
Tell or write briefly and with an emphasis on the benefits of the product for the buyer.
Write or speak as if you were writing for yourself.

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