Spend a week in the field with salespeople and you’ll observe too many sales calls where the salesperson is just talking too much. Why? We’ve heard lots of reasons, like: “This product is great – it will sell itself if I just talk about …” or “My customers tell me they want to know everything about our new …” or “If I’m talking, I know the customer will forget about that objection.” And of course, there’s the old catchall, “Nature abhors a vacuum.” And I would guess any sales leader could add a couple of their personal favorites to the talking-too-much excuse list.
Regardless of the why, the end result is clear. First, by talking, the salesperson isn’t listening. Peter Bregman shares in his Harvard Business Review article about what he learned while nursing a sore throat. “There was some good news in my experience of talking less: I listened more. And listening, it turned out, was a much more productive way to achieve my speaking objectives than speaking. When I listened, I helped myself, helped others and built relationships at least as effectively as I did speaking and with much less collateral damage.”
Bregman recommends that we “think ahead – long term – when we’re about to say something in the moment.” We support that recommendation. While it may be difficult for salespeople to excel at this in real time, pre-call planning and rehearsing parts of an upcoming sales call will help address the problem.
And what about listening? Salespeople need to follow the 100 Percent Rule – salespeople must take 100 percent of the responsibility for making sure the customer understands them, and take 100 percent of the responsibility for understanding what the customer says. How? Active listening.
Counter-productive speaking may make us feel better in the short-term, but it doesn’t advance the sale. Pre-call planning, rehearsing critical portions of sales calls, actively listening to the customer and positioning the conversation to the customer’s interests all help get the job done.