As I was thinking of what to write for my week-end blogging, I did a self reflection of what I did this week. When my colleague asked me about one of my key sales pipelines, I realized that I didn’t have enough information in my hand. I missed the important facts like competition, customer’s decision-making process and the very basic reasons why the prospect came up with the requirements at the first place. As I replayed my conversations with the prospects which were done mostly on the phone, something hit me hard that I didn’t ask enough questions. I was dominating the conversation and coming straight with some solutions. I was taking it as my day-to-day, nothing-so-special, no-brainer problem for which we have a standard and well-proven solution. My listening-to-talking ratio has tipped to the latter. I didn’t listen well and didn’t ask enough questions. Not only I overlooked important aspects, as a result, I may lose this major deal due to lack of info to make strategic sales decision.

John Berghoff was an outstanding salesman since he was young. With his experience in achieving success in sales and breaking many regional and national sales records, in 2002, he started his own coaching and sales training business called Global Empowerment Coaching. In his blog, Without This, People Don’t Buy, he points out the differences between a poor, good and masterful communicator. “A masterful communicator will always start by asking what is his audience currently feeling, thinking or experiencing and how can he acknowledge their feelings, thoughts, experiences in a way that proves he understands them.”

Becoming a master communicator is an essential path to success for every sales guy. Ask a lot of relevant questions and be a good listener. Reduce your ratio of talking to listening. In his book “To Sell is Human”, Daniel H. Pink mentioned about Take Five method, that is to take five seconds before you respond to what your conversation partner says. As we begin to listen in a more intimate way, we will start to hear things that we might have missed. Listen to what is being said, and you may find what is not. Ironically, most of us, we appear to listen well, but instead of paying attention, we are thinking what we are going to say next.

The good sales people is a good talker is a wrong belief. Good talker likes to talk and feels good by doing it. Since they feel good, they will think that their customers feel good as well. John Berghoff says that people don’t “buy” because they understand what you are selling; they “buy” because they feel understood. So stop talking, listen and ask questions !