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Follow-up a Great Question with Dead Silence!

Written by: Doyle Slayton

Article Overview: Ask a great question... and just listen... don't fall into the temptation of answering your own question or guessing at the answer.

Follow-up a Great Question with Dead Silence!

Ask a great question... and just listen... don't fall into the temptation of answering your own question or guessing at the answer.

As an example... Let's say you are taking a consultative approach to employee development. Here is what I mean about asking a question, and then just before the client responds... you start guessing at the answer.

"What are your current employee development initiatives?" one second... two seconds... of "uncomfortable" silence... and then you jump right back in with, "Are you focused on building a bench? ...or on retention? ...or are you developing a leadership program?" ...and then you might follow with a little rambling and rephrasing of the original question, "What kinds of things... uh... are you working on to... uh... help your employees be... uh... more successful?"

Now that you've guessed at a bunch of potential answers... the client is completely confused! They are wondering, "What was your question? ...and what were those options again?..." So the client takes the easiest path and picks one of the options you provided... they say... "yes... we would like to improve our retention."

Sales people fall into this trap all the time... without even realizing it! They think they are successfully uncovering needs, but the truth is, they are just guessing at the same old "potential" issues that other clients may have experienced.

The real problem comes when it's time to close the deal. Since the sales person didn't uncover the client's true area of need, there is no value. When the client says they are not ready to buy, the sales person is left wondering, "What happened?!!! I was probing. I uncovered their pain, and everything was going great. How can they not be ready to buy? They have a HUGE retention problem... right?"

Best Practice: Work with your manager and your sales teammates to develop a set of great open ended questions. Focus on asking only one question at a time. Practice and role-play with each other until you master it! The key is to practice "out loud." It always sounds good when you are verbalizing it in your head... but it sounds a lot different when you actually say it out loud.

The next time you are in a meeting with a client, follow-up your great question with dead silence!


Have you ever seen a sales person fall in to this "guessing" trap?

How do you keep yourself from falling victim to this temptation during a moment of "uncomfortable" silence?

Share a funny story of a time when you were in this situation!

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Article Tags: bench, consultative approach, development initiatives, leadership program, open ended questions, rephrasing, retention problem, role play, sales person, teammates, temptation, time practice, truth, uncomfortable silence



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