Want Better Results? Align Your Sales Strategy With The Communication Curve

I fly on planes – a lot. I’m not much of a talker on a plane; I prefer to put on the noise-cancelling headphones and cocoon.

I confess that to me these gadgets are “people-cancelling” headphones.

However, I can still kinda sorta hear the conversations around me.

So I’m on a plane recently and there are two guys behind me engaged in a conversation.

Only it’s not a conversation; it’s a monologue.

One guy is being polite and the other guy is doing all the talking. ALL the talking.

Let me tell you – this guy had an incredible knack for stringing together seemingly random thoughts for endless verbal barrages.

That situation identifies, by the way, the reason I tend to cocoon on planes.

Some of these flights are several hours long.

Can you imagine being stuck with that guy?

I was thinking about Chatty Chuck and the poor sap next to him, and wondering how he could be so utterly clueless as to his own ramblings.

Of course, my mind went to salespeople who display similar behaviors from time to time.

That really got me to thinking, how much should I be talking during my sales presentation?

The answer: probably less than I do.

There is a time to do the talking, and a time to let the customer do the talking.

We could take the various stages of the sales process and assign appropriate percentages.

Consider your own answers for what percentage of the time you should talk in each stage of the sales presentation:

• Greeting
• Discovery
• Demonstration
• Pricing/Financing
• Overcoming Objections
• Closing

What if we plotted these on what we could call a “Communication Curve”?

You would see an arc that carried through your conversation, talking less at the beginning and the end of the presentation; most in the middle.

But the top of that arc would never exceed 50%.

This is critical for sales success because of the threats to the sales process:

Issue: Danger:

Talking too much early in the greeting. No trust; no relationship

Talking too much in the discovery. Can’t learn the true pain

Talking too much in the demo. Feature dumping.

Talking too much in the $ discussion. Unresolved issues

Talking too much on an objection. Don’t learn the real issue

Talking too much in the closing. Tough to make a decision

It might be time for a bit of self-analysis on your part.

Perhaps we need a throttle on the sales conversation, or even a quota on the number of words we deliver.

Understand that you are not the star of the show. And it is the star who gets the most lines.

Follow the communication curve… and you can change your customer’s world.