Over the last 6 years we have been collecting little nuggets of our dearly beloved sales pros and their attempts at written marketing content. These examples are all from $5MM to multi-billion dollar companies. Salespeople are terrific, but…well…somethings are just…forget it…enjoy.
- “We are the best lender in the country.” Of course you are.
- “Nobody beats our rates”. That’s always good. Lead with price. And by the way, lots of people beat your rates.
- Clip art? Really? It is never OK to use clip art and hasn’t been since 1999. If your sales team is feeling the need to be a graphic designer, please stop, drop and roll. You’re burning alive.
- “Let me introduce you to our company by taking you through our deck (30 pages)” Yep, 30 pages without asking a prospect the first thing about their company.
- “You can get out of our deal at any time” I’m sure you can…for a gamillion dollars and your first born child.
- “Leasing a great way to hide asset debt form your bank”. In addition to being wrong, this is such a bad way to communicate off balance sheet benefits (that are fading fast) it is almost criminal. Literally.
- “We are experienced.” (And that was the only thing on the slide.) Hey, what does the competition say, “we are figuring it out as we go.”
- “We can guarantee less equity and more debt for each acquisition (presentation to a private equity firm)” You can guarantee that…really?
- A powerpoint of 68 asset types financed with clip art!!! You just made a 68 page list of 62 asset types your prospect doesn’t finance.
- Asset based lending is a good choice if you want to make money. Because most of you clearly don’t want to make money.
- “We don’t look at cash flow, we look at assets” Almost everyone looks at cash flow to some degree. This rep will get a bunch of packages and no approvals.
- “We lend against all asset types.” No you don’t. Video games? Robots? Whiskey stills?
- “Do you want to do a deal?” At least they are trying to close. But reminds us of Princess Anna asking if we want to build a snowman.
- Powerpoints that look like they came out of a 3rd grade class. Yes, the following was presented by an ELFA 100 Bank owned equipment lessor.
You only get one chance to make a first impression. Your sales team might need some help with that. In their defense, often even their own marketing teams either take forever or produce content that is really weak. If you every want to talk about your company’s first impression, give us a holler.