The other day I wrote about ‘selling people a problem’ – i.e. when the buyer perceives a complication or cost, that goes along with your solution.
Today, let’s look at interaction-tax.
And while it’s a word I made up, each of us force others to pay that tax.
– An email that’s long, and carelessly worded?
Now your buyer needs to allocate mental resources to even grasp the core of your message: you’re making the pay interaction-tax.
– A Zoom call with a buyer, where you let them ramble and you don’t guide the conversation to a result of some sort?
They just spent an hour with you, and no real advance was made: Interaction tax.
– Need to tell an employee that you’d like to see them take more responsibility – but you cloak it in a ranting complaint about company morale?
Interaction tax.
– Present a demo with logic gaps, and your listener needs to think to connect the dots? Interaction tax.
In so many ways, so very often, we force people to pay a cost to interacting with us, and it goes directly against results, and against everybody’s interests.
My favourite pet-peeve in this context?
Those blighted audio messages people are always sending each other on Whatsapp. Horrible thing.
Oh, so you can’t be bothered to think out, and type up, a pithy, 1-sentence message?
Well, now the recipient needs to spend 90 seconds listening to you rambling, about something that could have been said in 5 seconds, or read in 3 seconds. Interaction tax.
Of course it’s not your intention – but it’s crazily easy to levy interaction tax on others.
Don’t do it – especially when you’re dealing with a stakeholder, such as a client.
Any interaction they have with you, be it written feedback on something, or an email or text reply, or a work meeting or session:
Carefully tailor your interaction and messaging to be as friction-free and low-cost as possible for the other.
Avoid making people pay a cost to interacting with you, and you’ll magically start seeing things move more smoothly with everyone – including your buyers.
On another note:
I’m building an app that coaches you on working your pipeline, moving your deals forward – and closing them faster and at better rates.
It’s called SalesFlow Coach, and we’re scheduled for beta-release early May 2022.
Register here to be notified when it goes live.
