Please Shut Up!

He was hired as the Vice President of National Accounts and touted as the guy who was going to take us to the next level. I was excelling in the industry and more than a little irritated that they hired this guy and passed me over for the job. He had an MBA from a good school on the West Coast and I didn't. He looked great on paper and held some impressive roles prior to his time with my employer. I was young and probably a few years away from deserving the promotion.

We scheduled a time to meet in Las Vegas and go see our largest customer. He was a great guy, amicable and fun to hang out with. We got along well and shared a meal and a few drinks and my frosty opinion began to melt, a little. I like to lay out ground rules for joint calls and he was right there with me nodding his head in approval while I laid out my plan. I walked him into the account feeling good about the outcome as I was able to speak to both sides before the meeting and kind of set things up a bit.

Then to my complete and utter surprise, he started rambling. He told them about himself, where he lived, what he did before, what he is doing now and how he was going to manage their account and on and on. He then laid out our plan with a series of questions I had prepared for him, but he went on to the next point before letting anyone else speak. I literally counted twelve questions that he asked and continued talking through without letting the customer answer him. The worst part of this was his own final comment, "and we can beat anybody's price!"

I literally counted twelve questions that he asked and continued talking through without letting the customer answer him.

When we made it back to the car I was bright red and very upset. I told him that he asked all these questions, but he never stopped to let the customer answer him. I asked him what he thought he accomplished and he kind of nodded and agreed that he messed up. He was surprisingly humble and took my grief in the parking lot. He was gone within a years time.

Ten years later I was the Vice President of Sales and watched as a potential client walked by our booth. One of our sales guys stopped him and walked him through the entire product line. He did a great job with all the features and benefits, was spot on with the applications for the product line and left nothing about our offering un-spoken. I pulled my guy aside and asked him a question, what did this potential client want?

"Well I told him about this and that, and went over this and talked about our price and..." but what did he want I asked?

"Well I told him about this and that, and went over this and talked about our price and..." but what did he want I asked? He could not tell me what the guy wanted. I asked him how he didn't know if the guy was just looking for the bathroom? He smiled and I knew he got the point. He went on to be a killer salesman at another company and I heard he was consistently the best salesperson they had.

Now I have made some mistakes in front of clients, and believe me a few of them are epic, but I have a major issue with "professional" sales people today. That issue is how much they talk! I mean fifty slide pitch decks for an hour meeting kind of talking. I have watched as senior level sales people drone on for hours without ever engaging the person they are pitching to.

When did it become fashionable to tell the client how the metal was mined, prior to it being machined, and then sent on a journey of a million miles to make a watch, train the child how to read it, watch him grow up, just to tell the time?

I think it almost goes without saying that most buyers today, whether they be professional procurement or an assistant with a P-card, know more about your company and in some cases you before they ever took the meeting. They don't need another meeting they need a solution to their problem.

So here is my charge to myself and all the other professional salespeople out there: Listen to your customer, probe for needs, ask where their pain points are, find out what will really help the client before going to a conference room and puking your canned corporate pitch all over them. If you are talking the entire time you are not listening. Even if you think you know what they want, ask them anyway, you might be surprised how that works.