Are You Drowning Your Customer In Mounds of Sales & Marketing Material?

If you’ve attended more than, say, one sales training session in your lifetime you have undoubtedly been warned about the dangers and perils of feature dumping.

I cannot argue against such admonition, and honestly, I’ve offered that counsel myself countless times over the past thirty years.

Feature dumping is abhorrent, disrespectful and irritating. A customer does not need a salesperson to spout off a list of product qualities which are of absolutely no interest to them.

My instruction has been very consistent on this topic, and I offer this mantra:

Know everything. Share what matters

I know I am preaching to the choir on this one. You’ve heard it before, you’ve accepted the premise, and you are careful about monitoring the amount of information that gets spewed in the general direction of a prospect. The verdict is in: you are not guilty.

Or are you?

There is a subtle form of feature dumping that is often overlooked because it is not administered via dialogue. I’m talking about the mass of information in brochures, flyers, and handouts.

I began my sales career back during the Truman Administration (well, it sometimes seems like it’s been that long). The regular practice then—and I don’t think this has changed much over time—was to hand the customer an armload of paperwork: brochures, feature lists, pricing information, comparative information, warranty correspondence, legal documents, voter registration forms, CliffsNotes on War and Peace, a copy of the federal tax code, etc.

I eventually realized that loading prospects up with piles of marketing materials was not limited to one sales office. Customers were having this experience at every single stop they made. I have this mental picture of a customer pulling up to their home at the end of a shopping day, pushing a wheel barrow over to their car and filling it with the huge stacks of material they acquired that day. I don’t think I’m far from reality on this one.

Here’s a quick news flash: your customer isn’t reading that stuff.

I personally believe that 97.3% of marketing material is quickly ditched by the customer.

Here’s my advice – and it is exactly the same advice that I offer regarding getting away from feature dumping:

Know everything. Share what matters.

Apply this mantra to marketing materials. You do have some potentially valuable material. Great. Now, sit on it. Hold it until the point in the sales process when it means something specific to the customer standing in front of you. That moment is the time when “marketing materials” will actually market vs. just being another mound of marketing material to dispose of.

Have all marketing materials at your fingertips, but only share the stuff that really matters.

Trust me, you will make your customer’s journey so much more pleasant – and you might just save a tree or three along the way!