Wade Armstrong

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STFU

Posted Monday February 26, 2007 in Business

I’m doing a lot of sales lately for my new venture, and I’m rediscovering something I learned before, both selling and being sold to. It’s an important lesson — one that made me more successful in sales in the past — but it’s easy to forget, because it’s so counter-intuitive. That lesson is to just keep my yap shut.

The Virtues of Staying Silent

Staying silent leads to a virtuous approach to sales. If you stay silent, you can listen and engage, giving you a positive interaction. You also avoid the common pitfalls of giving your sales prospect that one piece of data that justifies a “no,” and of talking over your prospect’s “yes.”

Listen

The primary job of a salesperson is to understand and fulfill needs. If you listen to your prospects, you can learn what it is that they want and need, and how they are comfortable tackling those wants and needs. If you talk, then you never have that opportunity.

Engage

Make it a discussion, rather than a pitch. Not only does a dialogue give you the chance to listen, it also gets your prospect engaged with your product or service and even gives them the chance to sell themselves on what you’re offering. If you really are offering a valuable product or service, then a candid discussion will almost always leave your prospect impressed and open to the sale, and you armed with the information you need to make the sale.

Reasons To Are Also Reasons Not

If you just talk and don’t listen, then you don’t know what all of your prospect’s red flags are. That means that you’re in a minefield — anything you say can turn out to be their big turn-off. What you thought was a desirable feature or benefit could, instead, be something your prospect is specifically looking to avoid. Don’t put yourself in that situation.

Don’t Talk Over a Yes

It’s easy to be so busy pitching that you keep talking even after your prospect says “yes.” You don’t need to reassure them they made a good decision, you don’t need to list other features and benefits you have — you’ve already made the sale. Get them to sign on the dotted line. Only by being silent when they say “yes” will you hear that magic word and move from selling to closing.

My New Resolution

So my new resolution, starting today, is to shut my yap more in sales meetings. I need to listen and understand better, because only in that way will I deliver true value for my customers — and, let’s face it, delivering that value is the only way to succeed in the long term.