Politicians Avoid Details

Westminster village has been ablaze with recriminations over the on-off UK election these past few days.  Now his ‘honeymoon’ is well and truly over, has Brown bottled it, destined to embarrasingly cling on to power till the end of the term, or has he flushed out the Tories strategies early, able to expose any weakness?  There’s a separate sales lesson in this too, if you think about how you next try and qualify your way through a large deal campaign….

Spurred on by this perhaps, my fave news show, Newsnight, is running features on democratic foibles from around the world.  Checking out their piece on a Japanese local council vote was a real eye opener.  (Click on the link contained within here.)

The main element that impressed me from a sales perspective, is that the backroom ‘kingmakers’ (Sensei) advised their ‘young’ candidate (he was 40 for crissakes!) to avoid talking about detail when he spoke.  Simply smile and repeat his name as often as possible.  When he met people, all they’d take from him was whether they liked him and could remember his name.

And I got to thinking what a large chunk of truth existed in this approach.  How often on say a cold call, do you find yourself on the phone having earned the meeting, next stage, whatever goodie you hoped for, and yet you hardly had to go into any depth at all about what you offer?  Isn’t it often the case that the more detail you go into, the less likely you are to prevail?