“You're the worst when you converse, just a big mouth clown
You talk when you're awake, I heard you talk when you sleep
Has anyone ever told you, that talk is cheap
You talk too much you never shut, up!!”
And truth is they just never shut up!
Why does this happen?
- “I have to explain my product or service to the prospect”
- “I get uncomfortable with silence so fill in the conversational gaps”
- “I don’t talk a lot, I’m just enthusiastic”
- “Many of my prospects aren’t very talkative”
The Prospect doesn’t care
Mr Prospect doesn’t care about you or your company; he also doesn’t want to be “educated” about your product. All he really cares about is what’s in it for him and his company. And that’s why so many potentially great meetings don’t result in anything more than a one sided dialogue from the sales person to the prospect.
The solution
Maybe the solution is hidden in what former US president Theodore Roosevelt said: “No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care”.
Stop talking about yourself and your company and let the prospect talk about themselves, their company, their product, their concerns.
The best way to do that is to ask some smart questions and see what reply you get. There’s no doubt that what you ask and how you frame it has a strong influence on prospects.
So how many questions do you ask during presentations? How much time is the customer talking? (it should be around 70% of the time)
By asking powerful, thought provoking questions you’ll get your potential customers (or even your current customers) to perceive you in a completely different way, firstly different from the “others” and secondly different enough to give you their time, some key information and maybe the sale.
Resist the temptation to talk about “you”, show that you really care by simply listening.
