Never Interrupt Your Prospect
If there were Ten Commandments for sales, one of them would be:
Thou shalt not interrupt thy prospect.
One of the worst mistakes that you can make as a salesperson is to interrupt your prospect.
If you go back and listen to your calls, there should never be a moment when you are talking at the same time that your prospect is talking.
Here’s why:
Every word that your prospect says contains vital information for closing the sale. If you interrupt while your prospect is still talking, you miss out on whatever your prospect had left to say.
It’s also just rude and annoying to have someone talking over you. It will cause your prospect to clam up and be less willing to share information. Or, they will just hang up the phone and end the conversation altogether.
It’s hard enough to overcome the stigma that most people have against salespeople in the first place.
Worst-case scenario: your prospect gets the impression that you are an aggressive, fast-talking salesperson, like a used car salesman who won’t leave you alone on the car lot.
Three ways to ensure you’re not talking over your prospect:
- Talk less in general
- Talk for shorter periods of time
- Allow for longer pauses
If you follow these three rules, you’ll never interrupt your prospect (not even on accident).
1. Talk less in general.
40:60 is a good talk:listen ratio for an inside salesperson.
In other words, you as the salesperson should be talking less than half of the time during a phone call. If you could talk for just 30% of the call, while still saying enough to convey your value proposition, that would be even better.
The underlying principle here is described in more detail in Dale Carnegie’s book How to Win Friends and Influence People. He says,
“Let the other person do a great deal of the talking.”
It’s also supported by research from Gong, which says,
“The highest converting talk-to-listen ratio on B2B sales calls is approximately 43:57.”
2. Talk for shorter periods of time.
This achieves two things.
First, it makes your words more powerful. Like a rare resource becomes more valuable because of scarcity, so should it be with your words.
Second, it gives your prospect an opportunity to talk. If your prospect has a thought about something you’re saying, you need to hear it. In other words, you want to bring your prospect’s internal dialogue out loud on the phone call.
For example, let’s say an amateur sales rep is talking too much, and they make a three-part statement all in one breath.
But what if the prospect had a thought about the first part? It would be awkward to bring it up after the third part, because now the topic has changed. So the prospect just keeps quiet and the amateur sales rep never hears that thought from their prospect.
On the other hand, imagine a pro sales rep who splits that long-winded, three-part statement into three separate, short statements with long pauses in between. Voila! The prospect starts talking after the first part of the statement and the salesperson gets an insight into the prospect’s thought process that would have otherwise gone unsaid.
3. Allow for longer pauses.
The pause should be long, even longer than you would think. Long enough that it’s almost awkward. Between 3-5 seconds is usually a long enough pause.
You should allow for these pauses both (1) after you’re done talking, as well as (2) after your prospect is done talking.
Sometimes your prospect stops to take a breath, but they still have more to say. We don’t want to cut short their train of thought. We need to hear everything that’s on their mind.
Gong writes the following on this topic:
“Humans have a tendency to fill the silence in the conversation. If you hold off from talking for a beat longer than what feels natural, your customer will continue to talk. They’ll often reveal key pieces of information that can help you close the deal.”
As for when you finish talking, you want to hear your prospect’s reaction.
Sometimes it’s as subtle as just a barely audible noise. It might sound like hmph, ahhh, or ohhh—all of these sounds have different meanings and are important clues for how your prospect is feeling and what they are thinking.
Single-word answers (okay, fine, and great) also have very different and important meanings. Make sure you are listening to these and not talking over them.
Talk less, sell more.
If you only remember one thing from this post, remember this: every word that your prospect says contains vital information for closing the sale.
The strategies listed above will help you to gather more of this vital information on your sales calls.