In life and especially in sales, you need to know when to shut up

In life and especially in sales, you need to know when to shut up
A very prominent psychologist once said that “we are always in danger of telling others more about ourselves than they are interested in knowing”.
There is a well known story in the venture capitalists world about a conference in which a brilliant young inventor had to explain his latest invention to some of the venture capitalists attending that convention precisely to find projects in which they could invest in.
As you may imagine, the minds of these investors were open since they were there precisely to listen to intelligent people who had brains and worked hard but had no money.
This was a very important meeting for this young inventor, it was his big chance, his opportunity to get his story across and influence this group of people with the money and the connections to buy and then manufacture his invention.
Shortly before 2pm, it was the inventor’s turn to present. He started off by dwelling on the exhilarating conception, the painful birth and all the money he had to spend so as to develop the idea he was presenting.
He then went on and on, drawing complicated charts on a flip chart and a lot of numbers and formulas.
After about two hours, one of the venture capitalists exploded. He told the inventor that they had been patiently listing for more than two hours about his scientific adventures, all the difficulties he had, every single hole he had gotten himself into and how he had come out every single time. And even after two hours, they still didn’t know what the invention was about and what problem would it solve for consumers.
The inventor said that he would eventually tell them but that he thought it was important that they knew about all the obstacles that he had to clear in order to be standing before them that afternoon.
One of the investors couldn’t take it anymore and told him, “look, people are not interested in processes. People are interested in results. People will never know what you have been through and what’s more, they couldn’t care less”
He told him that everything that happened to him had to remain within himself especially when he had to present the idea to other people. He taught him a very important lesson that we must all learn very well in today’s business world.
People only care about what a product or service will do for them. In other words, people care about the benefits of a product, not its features.
Very funny but very true is what the three time all star baseball pitcher and then coach Johnny Sain said: The world doesn’t want to hear about the labor pains,” he said. “It only wants to see the baby”.
Even though this young inventor didn’t realize it, he was a guy trying to make a sale. If you think about it, we are all salespeople because we are always trying to sell something. We are trying to sell our products and services, but even people who are not in sales, are trying to sell their ideas, their methodologies, their ways of doing something.
A janitor in a company is not a janitor; he or she is a salesperson. It just so happens that someone has to clean the bathrooms. The president of that company wants that janitor to tell other people what a great product or service their company has instead of describing how he cleans the bathrooms.
In some of my conferences, before I start, I ask how many people in the audience are in sales. Only the salespeople raise their hands. Then I tell them that everyone should have raised their hands because we are all salespeople.
Leaders must be excellent salespeople because they need to sell their ideas to others and persuade them to follow or get out of the way.
For those of us that are extroverts, it is much harder to shut up and keep quite. We simply like to talk quite a bit, especially me, since I earn my living by talking all the time. But we must not forget that we must listen more than we talk, especially if we want to sell something or convince someone to act.
Asking the right questions and listening carefully for the answers is the most important skill that leaders and sales people must possess.