The Over-Talked Trap: Why We Sell Ourselves Out of the Deal
I’ve watched brilliant salespeople bomb presentations with the best products in hand. I’ve seen it happen in boardrooms, over Zoom, and across dusty coffee shop tables. Why? Because they treated a sales conversation like a monologue instead of a duet. We get nervous, right? We feel the pressure to prove value instantly, so we fill every single silence with more features, more jargon, more… noise.
Let’s be honest. If you’re talking more than 50% of the time in a discovery call, you’re probably losing. You’re not selling; you’re lecturing. And nobody buys from a lecturer.
The Tyranny of the Immediate Answer
Think about parenting for a second. When our kids ask a difficult question, our instinct is to provide the perfect, immediate answer. We feel responsible for having the solution right there. Sales coaching often mirrors this; we train reps to counter objections instantly. But sometimes, the most powerful response isn’t a response at all.
It’s the pause. That uncomfortable, charged silence after a client drops a bomb—like, “Your competitor is 20% cheaper,” or “We aren’t sure we need this right now.”
Mastering the Sacred Space of Silence
In sales, silence is where the truth surfaces. It’s the fertile ground where trust actually takes root. When you ask a deep, probing question—something genuinely insightful about their business pain—you need to give the prospect time to process it. If you jump in to clarify or fill the gap, you erase the weight of your own question.
Here’s my hard-earned philosophy: Never be the first one to break the silence after asking a powerful question.
Imagine you’re selling a complex enterprise solution. You finally get the VP to admit, “Honestly, the integration process terrifies us.” Instead of launching into a three-slide deck on your implementation team, you just breathe. You let that word—terrifies—hang there.
What happens next is magic. They usually start talking again, and what comes out next is the real reason they will or won’t buy. They might say, “…because last time, it took six months and crippled our Q4 operations.”
See the difference? In that initial moment of silence, you moved from a feature discussion to a core business anxiety discussion. That is gold.
The Internal Battle We All Fight
Why is this so hard? Because our brains are wired against it. We equate silence with incompetence or awkwardness. This fear of the vacuum translates directly into the sales floor. We equate speed with efficiency.
But great sales isn’t about speed; it’s about depth. It’s about creating the right atmosphere for buying. And atmosphere requires space.
- Practice Controlled Discomfort: Intentionally count to seven after asking an open-ended question in your next practice session. It will feel agonizingly long. Do it anyway.
- Listen to Respond vs. Listen to Understand: If you are formulating your counter-argument while they are still talking, you are not listening. You are waiting your turn to speak. Stop waiting.
- Leverage the Pause for Validation: Use silence after validation, too. If they say, “That sounds promising,” don’t rush to the contract. Just nod, maintain eye contact (or camera focus), and let them absorb the momentum.
If you want to transform your sales results, stop working harder on your pitch deck. Start working harder on your ability to be quiet. Give your customer the gift of space. I guarantee they will fill that space with the information you need to close the deal.
