College Keeps you Busy

I’ve noticed something interesting recently and that is, Americans love to talk. They love to listen to other people talk too (like the television or radio). They get their books on tape. They have the radio tuned to talk shows. . . we’re a people uncomfortable with the sound of silence. This is especially true in conversations. There’s an awkwardness that most people experience when there’s a lull or a bit of space in the conversation and they struggle to fill that void. This can be particularly damaging in sales especially when we’ve almost got our product or service sold, and then muck it up with too much talk.

Filling in the spaces is the inane chatter. We are surely familiar with the cliche sales persona, someone who look at the photographs on the wall or desk of their prospect, asking how the wife and kids or husband and kids are, how the golf game is — also known as, chit chat. Even more detrimental to sales, is the chit chat that happens after the sale is in the bag, but not signed off on. This is the stuff that breaks the deal because maybe we’re excited about having made the sale and we begin to blather on and on. .

One of my personal breakthroughs, and a big one, happened for me when I realized that I didn’t have to spend a whole lot of time in that chit chat mode. When I was just a kid starting out in sales, I can’t even count the number of times I totally destroyed the sale by being too talkative. I was consistently derailing my chances. And the more I saw the sale derailing, the more I would talk, nervously, in an attempt to regain the footing I had lost.

If a prospect or client was looking for a way out, I would give it to them eventually if I chattered on too long. I kept wondering why they didn’t want to be more like my friend, why they didn’t want to talk about more personal, day-to-day stuff. I can tell you the reason this is the case is because they weren’t getting the answer to a burning question within them.

I realize I have been blessed with the gift of gab. The shift in my thinking came when I realized I had to fashion what I was saying to focus intently on the prospect and their needs and not my own agenda.

So what is the burning question? The question is, “What can you do for me, Kenrick?” Our prospects are ultimately wanting to know, “What’s in this for me? What is it that you’re going to do to help me?” The only way to find the answers to these questions is to elicit their criteria and once you’ve elicited their criteria, then we have to get to the meaning.

Criteria and its meaning have got to be the foremost thing in your mind when making a sale, no ifs, ands or buts. Remember this, and you won’t be derailed.