Asking, Listening and Telling

Asking, Listening and Telling are the 3 primary elements of any sales interaction. Can you guess which element is most widely used by most sales people?

Yes, sales people by nature like to talk, and research shows that telling is the predominant activity they like to engage in.

The 3 elements are loosely defined as follows:

Ask: When you probe for circumstances, needs, effects, and pain

Listen: Listen for needs, expressions of pain, possible opportunities so we can drill down and guide the conversation
Tell: Once you confirm a need you provide a solution

Great salespeople put energy into all three components and they do so while maintaining balance among all three. Too much of any one element can result in a very one-sided conversation.

Balance allows for a 2 way conversation that involves the customer. Too much asking and the customer may feel they are getting hammered with questions, too much listening when the discussion is not relevant means the customer is controlling the entire conversation, too much telling means the call is about your needs not your customer’s needs.

A fun and impactful sales experiment if you have access to recorded sales conversations is to listen to several calls. On a piece a paper create three columns labeled A, L, and T. Every time you hear a question by the sales person place a check in the A column, every 5 seconds or so of the customer explaining something uninterrupted gets a check for L, and every 5 seconds of the rep telling something gets a check for T.

If you're the salesperson, you have some objective data you can use to change some potentially unproductive habits. If you're a coach you have objective data that will help you determine if the sales person has a sales effectiveness issue.