5-Minute Selling

CHAPTER 16LISTEN, DON'T TALK

Ask a question, and wait silently while your customer thinks about the answer.

Don't interrupt them with nervous chatter. Don't talk your way out of a sale.

I want to talk about two kinds of silence in this chapter:

• Macro-listening, which is the general approach to a conversation with a customer where you do most of the listening and the customer does most of the talking
• And micro-listening, wherein you ask a question and do not speak again until the customer answers your question

MACRO-LISTENING

Recently I was shopping for disability insurance, and my regular agency had me speak with a specialist in this area. I had never spoken with him before. And I have little interest in doing so again.

This is because he talked so much, I have no idea when he breathed. For the first 10 minutes of the conversation, he talked with interruption.

More than once, he asked me a question and took guesses at trying to answer it himself. Once, I actually tried to answer his question, but he talked right over me, bulldozing his way to even more airtime.

This wasn't macro-listening, it was macro-yapping.

The only thing that kept me from cutting off the call was that I like the agency and its owners, and I want to keep my business with them.

You cannot sell successfully if you do all the talking. In fact, in a sales conversation, about 25% of the talking is the right amount.

This means that the customer should be allowed to speak for three-quarters of the conversation. ...