Pace...One of Many Magic Words in Selling

My dad always used to tell me, "Don't keep selling someone once you've got their buy-in..." As with most advise my father has shared with me over the 50+ years of my existence, he was generally dead on with most of his wisdom. I suppose that comes with real life experience, learning through trial and error, and ultimately mastering your craft through persistence.

Pace is a subject that is extremely underserved in the sales training industry. I would challenge you to find credible data (advise) on how long a sales call should last. Throughout my 30+ years of professional selling, I can tell you, when it comes to the appropriate timing of a sales interaction, we've all pretty much been left on our own to figure the timing piece out. Pace is an extremely vital component of effective selling- once again a topic that we deep dive on throughout the training and implementation process in the 10-SW selling system.

While the goal here is to gently touch on the countless talking points that come into play when committing to a career in professional selling, I believe this one may rank up there in the top few necessities in terms of skill set. Most of the time, early on in the process of launching a career in selling, there tends to be an overabundance of talking and a lack of effective questioning and listening. Case and point- as I continue to produce and train superstar producers in the electronic payment space I encounter selling opportunities where the entire communication needed to secure a new client has fallen short of 10 minutes. On the contrary, I have potential clients in my wheelhouse that been on the playing field for 5-6 months.

What distinguishes an instant sale from a long term "don't give up" type of prospect? Simply put, the prospect. From the instant you've looked a future client in the eye he or she is providing you with a ton of non-verbal communication, energy, and visual indicators as to how quickly or patiently you should advance the ball. For example, you may walk into a strong referral appointment only to here something along the lines of- "I'll give you 5 minutes and that's only because my good friend spoke highly of you." Do you have an effective reply? Ok, I won't leave you hanging on this one...my reply is always going to be something along the lines of- "tell you what, I'll take two and leave unless you ask me to stay."

Timing is everything. One of our greatest obstacles, in most cases due to our insatiable need to "talk", is learning the art of EEL (extreme effective listening) in order to dial in on the absurdly obvious clues our prospects subconsciously serve up if we are paying close attention. Listening is in fact a "teachable" art form...much like talking, most who label themselves as "professional" in the selling world are winging it one meeting at a time.

A closing point worth making- there is no manipulation here...actually, it is a method of showing your future clients the respect of being a great listener to what they're attempting to communicate. 10SpokeWheel. com