No More Chit Chat

Americans love to talk. Americans also love to be talked to — listening to the TV or the stereo or talk radio — anything so that there’s no silence. Silence we seem to delegate to those few days a year when we get back to nature. In conversations, especially, there’s a real fear of silence, an awkwardness that sort of permeates the in between spaces where there is no one talking and most people will do anything possible to fill up that silence with noise regardless of whether or not it’s going to damage their chances of selling their product or service.

We chatter. We fill in the spaces with inane nothingness. I know that my students and those of you in sales are familiar with the cliche persona of the classic sales person who looks around his or her prospect’s office and takes note of the photos on the wall or art or whatever, and begins to talk about the husband or wife, how are the kids, what’s going on in the golf game, et cetera, and basically chit chats their prospect into non-compliance. The sale was in the bag, but not signed off on, and the odds are dwindling the more they talk.

Personally one of the biggest breakthroughs that happened for me in my career in sales is when I realized that I didn’t have to spend a tremendous amount of time in chit chat. I can tell you I can’t even count, as I was growing up and starting out in sales, the number of times when chit chat derailed my objective. It was a constant. I would say something wrong or I would go on too long about a particular topic and next thing you know, I was derailed.

I was giving each and every prospect and client a way out of the sale by blathering on incessantly. Why, I wondered, didn’t they like me more? Why didn’t they want to be my friend? Why didn’t they want to talk about day-to-day stuff? Well, the real problem was that they were not getting from me the answer to their burning question.

I realize I have been blessed with the gift of gab. The shift in my thinking came when I realized I had to fashion what I was saying to focus intently on the prospect and their needs and not my own agenda.

So what is the burning question? The question is, “What can you do for me, Kenrick?” Our prospects are ultimately wanting to know, “What’s in this for me? What is it that you’re going to do to help me?” The only way to find the answers to these questions is to elicit their criteria and once you’ve elicited their criteria, then we have to get to the meaning.

Criteria and its meaning have got to be the foremost thing in your mind when making a sale, no ifs, ands or buts. Remember this, and you won’t be derailed.