High-Performing Reps Talk Less, Speak Slower and Listen More

By Mark Roberts 

Do your salespeople ask good questions that demonstrate market knowledge or “show up and throw up”? Are your salespeople selling past the sale when they keep talking? When your salespeople are on a call, do you attend or listen in if it’s a virtual meeting or phone call? If not, the data shows that you definitely should as salespeople are talking too much, too quickly, and not listening. Furthermore, it's affecting their prospect relationships, client relationships, and the likelihood of closing. Let's dive into the data to see what it tells us!

When your sales reps are on a call, how much of their time is spent talking? Is your gut telling you they are talking too much? According to a survey conducted by Gong.io, your intuition is spot-on. The average B2B sales rep speaks 65-75% of the total time on the call. While many salespeople would try to explain this as a typical discovery call, it's a problem if you focus on the call's value. Florida State did a study with buyers and found in a one-hour meeting with salespeople buyers only valued…. wait for it…..only 6 minutes. Six minutes? Could this be another reason why it’s so hard to get meetings with new prospects today and possibly why more salespeople missed quota this year than attained it? I believe so.

I'll let you those statistics before I hit you with another mindblower.

Do you think most salespeople speak too quickly? Well, the answer is, they do. Objective Management Group (OMG) 's Dave Kurlan benchmarked 3,000 sales reps on their pacing and sales competency and are reporting a total words-per-minute range of between 40-230. The salespeople that had sales competency scores that were higher than 93% of all the reps had a WPM pace of 110. The ideal range was between 100-120 WPM, resulting in a sales competency score in the 85th percentile.

And as for listening? It's not happening. Sales Strategist, Marc Wayshak theorizes that chatty salespeople are swamping prospects with information. His research shows that the average rep talks 81% of the time in a selling situation. 

While these stats are disheartening, I believe some coaching can turn this situation around. Here are some suggestions:

●      Get your messaging correct and teach it to the reps- Kurlan suggests that the reps babble because your messaging (as the rep understands it) is "weak and vague." In a former life, I had one of the corporate subject matter experts run a series of workshops for some of my reps on how to apply messaging to our targeted personas. She would present the messaging first, then the sales rep(s) (after given time to prepare) presented back. The group then gave feedback. Overall, the sessions were a mélange of role-playing and Toastmasters. It was very effective. The reps pacing slowed way down because they understood the "whys" of the messaging, so they were less nervous. Additionally, because they understood the personas, they were able to ask more (and better) discovery questions, so the reps spoke less. The next quarter, the reps that attended the workshop were at the top of the leaderboard!

●      Work your messaging with marketing- The line between sales and marketing has grown less distinct. While marketing messaging and sales messaging are not precisely the same, if you both work together, it benefits the overall corporate messaging. One area to dial in is how to differentiate between you and your competition. Sales reps own valuable information because they are speaking directly with the opportunities, and marketing has useful data on campaign response rates. Working together, the teams can nail this messaging.

●      Teach your reps how to listen- Based on the talk-to-listen ratio of top performers, Gong.io was able to determine the ideal ratio for the most successful sales calls. The ideal talk to listen ratio is 43:57 in favor of listening. It doesn't have to be by much, but the conventional wisdom holds listen more than you talk. Good active listening is a skill. The salesperson cannot allow themselves to become distracted by whatever else may be going on around, or by forming counter arguments while the prospect is still speaking. Nor can they let themselves get bored and lose focus on what the other prospect is saying. The salesperson should respond to the prospect in a way that will encourage them to continue speaking so that the salesperson can get the information that they need. The sales representative should ask an occasional question or comment to recap what has been said because it also communicates that he is listening and understands the prospect's needs. Don’t ask too many questions. Chorus recommends no more than five in their State of Conversation Intelligence 2020 report. 

Hubspot offers an excellent four-step summary on how to listen:

●      The sales representative should genuinely listen to the prospect.

●      The sales representative then feeds back the content and feeling of the prospect's words to the prospect. "If I understand you correctly……….is your situation/problem."

●      The salesperson confirms they heard the prospect correctly. "Yes, I understand."

●      The salesperson should ask a relevant follow-up question to clarify their understanding of their situation further.

●      Get your salesperson comfortable with not-knowing- Inevitably, the salesperson is going to get asked a question he doesn't know how to answer. Frankly, I think this is why salespeople speak so quickly; they are afraid they will look bad if they are not the font-of-all-knowledge. Coach your reps that it is perfectly fine not to know the answer to a prospect's question. They should simply say, "I am not sure, but I'll find out and get back to you ASAP." And then, of course, get the correct answer and respond to the prospect.

Sales Leaders, do you listen to your team's discovery calls?

Do your salespeople talk too much or too fast? 

Are your salespeople selling past the sale?

Do you see problems with their pacing or talk time? 

What did you do about it? 

Please respond in the comments.