The Art of Being Succinct

One of the most valuable tools for any sales professional is the ability to be succinct. From strict space limitations in creating sales copy for advertisements, offline and online, to crafting effective sales messages to be distributed to potential leads, the importance of the ability to be succinct in sales copywriting cannot be understated.

While it can be difficult, here are a few tips to help you be more concise in your writing:

What is your Focus?

In your sales copy, what is the part of the message that you really want to effectively communicate? The key is to focus on this part of the message and avoid spending too much time on either the “build-up” or introduction to your focus or the conclusion after. The easiest way to discover your focus is to challenge yourself to fit your message into certain space restrictions. Even if you have a page for your sales copy, pretend you have to fit your message into a 140 character Tweet or Google AdWords ad space? With such significant limitations on how much you can say, what part of your message are you going to focus on?

Once you create your sales copy based on these restrictions, create the sales copy you actually plan on distributing with an emphasis on what you covered with these space restrictions and only brief coverage of other matters.

Get Outside Feedback

When writing sales copy for your own products and services, entrepreneurs and sales teams have the tendency to provide too much information. After all, in an effort to stress how great and important the solutions they are providing, sales professionals tend to go on and on about all the features and uses their solutions have. While this provides the lead with all the information they could possibly want, it results in long sales messages which can dissuade leads from reading all the information provided and moving forward with the sale. They key is to provide just enough information, so that interested parties request more details.

To help avoid long winded messages, have someone outside the firm unfamiliar with the product or service read the message and see what they gather from it. If they get lost or lose interest in the middle of your copy, then it is likely that it is too long and needs to be cut down. Refer back to the first point for help on how to find what your message should focus on.

Proofread your Message Out Loud

This may sound like something from a high school English class, but it truly is a simple effective tip for reducing wordiness. When editing work by simply reading it in your head, you tend to skip over words and phrases that seem commonplace, making your message seem more lucid than it actually may be. It is only through forcing yourself to read every sentence slowly out loud that you will be able to find run-on sentences, awkward phrasing, and unnecessary wording.

This post was written by Aditya Mahesh of Aayuja Sales Consulting, a leading sales consulting firm for technology companies. Visit the Aayuja Blog, for more posts on sales tips for increasing your blogging and online sales revenue.