Most powerful Tool in Sales
Shawn Reilly
AVP Enterprise Sales - A10 Networks | Driving Strategic Growth, Capturing New Business, and Exceeding Revenue Targets Across Enterprise Markets
There are many reasons why sales people have gotten into sales. It could be because we love money, love people or maybe we love to talk. Being able to talk and talk a lot with confidence and conviction is very important in sales. But this may surprise some of you it's not the most important piece of the puzzle.
Did anyone ever tell you talk too much? I know I've been told that many times. Our mouth is important but a lot of times it's counterproductive in sales. In my opinion our most powerful tool is our ears. My most productive meetings are meetings where I asked questions most likely open-ended questions and listened to the answers my prospects and customers give me. This will allow you to uncover where their real needs are and how to best provide and present your solution to them. If you are constantly talking and not giving the customer time to think about how they want the solution to be solved you might never get to the end result. I have seen countless times where sales reps will dive right into the PowerPoint deck they worked on for hours the night before without asking one question to the customer. Before they know it the meeting time is up and didn't uncover the WHY or WHO or WHAT answers.
Try in your next meeting to talk as little as possible. It is not easy to do because we all want to speak our minds. However, go against the grain on giving a ppt presentation right off the bat. Ask them a bunch of questions prior to the presentation. Be sure to think about the questions you are going to ask. Hard and thought provoking questions may seem at first to be offensive but they are not. Customers and prospects appreciate this when you go out of your way to understand the real needs which will ultimately save them time and money in the long run. I will guarantee the meeting will be much more productive. Not to mention you will build tons of value by being viewed as consultative and a real "partner" to the customer.
"God gave us two ears and one mouth so we can listen twice as carefully."