Simplify Your Sales Message.
Why Over-Explaining is Costing You Sales
Stop Talking Yourself Out of Sales and Start Closing More Deals
Click HERE to watch:
The Power of Simplifying Your Sales Message
I grew up in Miami Beach back when our TV menu had just four options: Channels 4, 7, 10, and PBS. That was it. If you wanted variety, you walked across the room and turned the knob yourself. No remotes. No streaming. No endless grid of thumbnails promising everything and delivering nothing.
Now we have five hundred channels, and as Bruce Springsteen sang, “…and nothin’ on.”
More is not always better. Sometimes it is just more. And in sales, more information is not always more persuasive. In fact, over-explaining your sales message can quietly sabotage the deal you are trying to close.
Lessons from Religion, Science, and Branding
William Green, in his book Richer, Wiser, Happier, explores how complexity creeps into everything from investing to wellness to spiritual life, and how real breakthroughs come when you push through the clutter to arrive at simplicity.
Religion offers some of history’s best examples. The Old Testament delivered 613 commandments. Then Moses trimmed them to ten. Hillel, asked to summarize the Torah while standing on one leg, replied, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. The rest is commentary.”
Jesus gave a similar answer: “Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy strength and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself.”
Buddha put it like this: “Refrain from what is unwholesome. Do good. Purify the mind.”
Three spiritual traditions. One clear message: Less noise, more signal.
Over-Explaining: The Silent Sales Killer
The people who truly understand their subject do not bury it in complexity. They refine it. They make their sales communication clear and focused. Not because they are dumbing it down, but because they know what matters.
Dean Ornish spent decades studying health and boiled it down to eight syllables: Eat well. Move more. Stress less. Love more. That is not a slogan. That is forty years of medical research distilled into one breath.
Einstein said all theories should be simple enough for a child to understand. William of Occam advised favoring the solution that requires the fewest assumptions.
Your sales message should work the same way. The more you explain, justify, and elaborate, the more you risk losing the sale.
How to Simplify Your Sales Message Without Losing Impact
Focus on Your Audience’s Story
Your prospect cares less about your credentials and more about how you can solve their problem. Stop telling your story and start telling your audience’s story.
Use Clear, Memorable Phrases
Think Google’s homepage, a logo and a search box. Or Apple’s original “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” Short, direct phrases stick.
Eliminate Jargon and Clutter
Avoid insider terms that force your audience to translate. The easier it is for them to understand, the faster they will act.
Bringing Clarity to Your Marketing and Branding
This principle is at the heart of my book All About Them. It is not about cleverness. It is about clarity. The kind of clarity that makes your sales message impossible to misunderstand and easy to remember.
I have applied it to branding for decades, helping businesses craft a branding message in one sentence. The result is messages that are shorter, sharper, and more effective.
Because when you know what you stand for, you do not need five hundred channels to explain it. And when your communication is sharp, clarity is the show people are waiting for.
If you are planning events for 2025 or 2026 and your audience is tired of jargon, complexity, and more-of-the-same advice, let us talk. I have just a few speaking dates left, and I would love to help your group cut through the noise and get to what actually matters.
Simplicity is not easy. But it is powerful.
And in a world with five hundred channels and nothing on, clarity is the show people are waiting for.
Let’s Talk