{"id":2577,"date":"2015-05-29T07:36:00","date_gmt":"2015-05-29T12:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/?p=2577"},"modified":"2015-06-03T10:10:36","modified_gmt":"2015-06-03T15:10:36","slug":"silence-kills-deals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2015\/05\/silence-kills-deals\/","title":{"rendered":"Silence Kills Deals?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My mouth is still agape after reading this article in the MSP Business Journal \u2013 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bizjournals.com\/twincities\/how-to\/growth-strategies\/2015\/05\/how-to-close-a-sale-more-effectively.html?page=all\" target=\"_blank\">How to close a sales more effectively<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The first howler:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Anyone involved in sales knows silence can kill deals. If you present your best recommendations to a prospect and stop talking, he might say, \u201cThat\u2019s food for thought. Let me think about it. I\u2019ll get back to you.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>What?\u00a0 No, not true.\u00a0 The problem the vast majority of salespeople have is the <em>inability<\/em> to use silence.\u00a0 A pregnant pause is a powerful tool that helps bring forth information.\u00a0 It is important to remember that the person asking the questions is actually the person controlling the conversation.<\/p>\n<p>The second howler:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>They are all closed-end questions. When faced with a \u201cyes or no\u201d choice, the uncomfortable answer is \u201cno.\u201d Read the questions, answer \u201cno\u201d and see how you feel. It\u2019s likely a negative answer requires justification and you can\u2019t immediately think of reasons.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>These suggestions come from the financial world which is predominantly based on selling to \u201cconsumers.\u201d\u00a0 Maybe things are different there, but in the B2B world open-ended questions are necessity.\u00a0 It has been my experience that prospects are comfortable and adept at saying no.\u00a0 My experience has been that close-ended questions quickly move you to the \u201cthink it over\u201d response from the prospect.<\/p>\n<p>The author clearly has a different approach to selling and perhaps it works well for him.\u00a0 My take is that these tips would lead to atrocious results in the B2B world.<\/p>\n<p>If you want to close more effectively, invest all, and I mean <em>all<\/em>, of your time in developing your qualifying skills.\u00a0 At the end of the day, qualified deals close themselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My mouth is still agape after reading this article in the MSP Business Journal \u2013 How to close a sales more effectively. The first howler: Anyone involved in sales knows silence can kill deals. If you present your best recommendations to a prospect and stop talking, he might say, \u201cThat\u2019s food for thought. Let me think about it. I\u2019ll get back to you.\u201d What?\u00a0 No, not true.\u00a0 The problem the vast majority of salespeople have is the inability to use silence.\u00a0 A pregnant pause is a powerful tool that helps bring forth information.\u00a0 It is important to remember that the person asking the questions is actually the person controlling the&hellip; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2015\/05\/silence-kills-deals\/\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"","bgseo_robots_follow":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14,9],"tags":[1415,1067,184,142,1185,687],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5Oho-Fz","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2577"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2577"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2579,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2577\/revisions\/2579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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