Pause Before You Answer

Several years ago, I was in upstate New York meeting with a large contractor who was interested in learning more about my software. Myself and my sales engineer were there to conduct a discovery. A Q & A session to better understand the customer’s needs and how well of a fit that we might be. I was young, new on the job, and knew very little. But not my sales engineer (thank goodness for him!). Dave was a master. He had been doing Sales for years and knew our product inside and out. He was even A CFO for another contractor that was in a similar line of business with the customer that we were meeting with. We won the deal that day during the discovery and here is why…

As we did our Q&A session, the controller for the company was asking us (mainly Dave) lots of questions. Dave would listen patiently and then proceed to answer very slowly. There was one particular question that my customer asked that I will never forget. The customer explained this ideal report that he wanted to have in the new software. He went through great pains articulating exactly what he had envisioned on the report. Dave immediately got the sense that this one report was pretty important to have in the new software program. Dave listened very closely to the customer as he described his request. The customer then asked Dave (after about ten minutes of describing what he wanted) if we had such a report.

Before Dave responded, he paused, and judging by his facial expression, he expressed deep thought absorbing and digesting what the customer had just described. Dave then began to speak by slowly saying, “I think I know the report that you would want. I think we can do that.” Dave then went on by describing the report that our software could produce and had essentially reiterated exactly what the customer had asked for. After doing that and gaining agreement that they were both on the exact same page with what this report had to have on it, Dave said, “Yes, we have that report and I would be happy to show you it during our demonstration.”

It was the pause and the careful listening that won the sale. Meaning, after the customer described what he wanted and asked the question if we had it, it was Dave’s pause in responding instead of quickly answering with a prompt and thoughtless “yes” or even worse, cutting the customer short and answering with a “yes we can do that,” that won the deal. Dave paused which allowed him to think about it some, relaying the thought to the customer that he knew that this was important to have. He then responded with a yes confirming that we could give the customer what he wanted to a seemingly very important request.

When you do this a few times, you win the deal. We later went back and presented our software to the client, Dave drummed up the importance of this report that the client had wanted and then showed the report. It was exactly what the customer wanted. The customer responded with, “That’s it! That is the exact report that we need.” BOOM! Sale coming in! I knew right there this was our deal.

Remember the importance of pausing and reflecting before speaking. So many salespeople will listen to a customer and then cut them off almost mid-sentence and say, “ya we can do that.” When you do this, you diminish value. An important request/question asked by the customer demands deep thought before responding as it sends the message that you gave this some thought as you know it seems important and yes indeed, you can do it. That adds value and wins deals!

-Happy Selling

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