What are the benefits of letting your prospects fill in the silence during a sales presentation?

My Customers would tell me more things during moments like this ,info about what is going on in their company ,which gave me a UP Front Clue ; followed up on later ,let them talk ,encourage their ideas ,helps make a sales persons job much easier4 . !

I'll admit that it's difficult. As a salesperson we are natural born talkers. But, if you want to build rapport and trust (and I hope that you do) you need to talk less and listen more. One of the best ways to ensure that we listen more is to get comfortable with pauses. Steven Covey said that most people listen with the intent to respond. We need to ask a question, pause and then listen with the intent to understand. The more we allow the other person to talk, the more information we gather, the better we are able to build rapport and trust. The truth is people buy from people they trust. One of the best ways to do that is to simply pause and listen with the intent to understand.

I call it the Power of Pause - a simple and powerful way to get information. As salespeople, most of us are more comfortable with talking and I get that. But, the most effective salespeople build in Powerful Pauses at key points in the story. The Power of Pause is particularly useful when trying to uncover the true objection of a prospect or client. The reality is most people aren't comfortable with silence and they will inevitably 'fill in the gaps' with information. That information often times uncovers hidden objections that you can then overcome. Ask great questions. Talk less, listen more and use the Power of Pause. You will get invaluable information that will help you overcome the objection and get more yeses, more often.

We've all heard it before - less is more. That's true in many situations and that's especially true with selling. The more you say, the less the audience will remember. The less you say, the more important it will be to the audience. And one of the key filters we humans use everyday as we are confronted with so much information is something called 'selective retention.' Only 1% of all the information we get on a daily basis is important enough for us to try and remember. So, the less we speak, the more important what we say becomes, the more confident you will appear, the more relevant it will be to the audience and therefore the more likely that they'll retain it. The Power of Pause allows you to show your confidence and expertise

For sure people tend to absorb, process and make decisions about new information, especially a sales pitch, at different rates. It is always best practice and polite to give someone a chance to take in and respond, if they want to. Failure to do so makes you come across as lecturing, being inattentive and rude. Pausing shows basic respect and you can build on that in your presentation. You can be strategic with your pauses to nudge your prospect to provide a response to specific points of importance, ie. discovery questions, like "We have seen so many examples of clients who were sick and tired of wasting their time and money on dated processes which they knew could be automated. What kinds of things have bothered your team?" (pause)