Sales 101 – When You Hear “Yes”, Stop Talking

As I mentioned in the article Tips to Successful Selling , it is very important for a salesperson to listen more than they speak as this is a major part of building trust and rapport in the relationship with your client.  I understand this is quite difficult as sales people love to talk, and some just keep talking to addresses their nervousness or anxiety during the sales meeting.  A response I often received from other sales people who have worked for me is “how is the customer going to know how great our products/services are for them if I don’t continue to pitch them?” This is a valid question, but one has to also understand what the client needs and how our products/services addresses that specific need, instead of just hearing about the many differentiators our product has versus our competition. A simple way to do this is by asking open-ended questions.

The biggest mistake I have witnessed over my career is when salespeople here “yes, I want to move forward with you”, and they KEEP talking.  At this point, you have the business! Anything else you say to them is not important and can potentially cause you to lose the business you just earned.

I can speak from experience where I made this fatal mistake.  I was presenting to my board and wanted to move forward with this project immediately where the board had wanted to wait 3-6 months to see how things progressed.  I did a really good job in the presentation of creating a compelling enough case to where it was decided we would move forward immediately with the project.  I then KEPT on going through the rest of the presentation (I spent many hours putting it together), and by the end, my board elected to wait, and ultimately I never moved forward with the project at all.  If I would have stopped the presentation early, I had full board approval to move forward, but since I was so excited to show the rest of my research and work in my presentation, it cost me the project. Don’t let this happen to you, when you hear “yes”, stop talking!

If you are experiencing challenges in generating the sales you want, please reach out to me.