As a salesman it is pretty much imperative that you control the conversation with whoever you are meeting or trying to sell to. The guest speaker this week, Dan (sorry I forgot his last name), really hit a lot of really good topics such as improv and other sales strategy, but one of the things he really emphasized on was the duty of a salesman controlling the conversation. Controlling the conversation is important because it helps to guide the prospect and/or client to a decision. A common and efficient way of controlling the conversation is by asking a lot of questions to the client and then listening to what they say. Slowly their answers will guide you towards narrower and more specific questions, and you have then just controlled where the conversation was going with the client. This whole class has heavily encouraged doing sales this way, by asking questions and listening more than we speak. It has actually been a total 180 for me as an insurance salesman. I will sell accidental death benefits (ADB), where I cold call clients and try to get them off the phone quickly. The phone conversations are short (only about two minutes long), and I am doing about 90% of the talking. It is what I was trained to do for this type of sale, and it is efficient in this context too. Even though the customer is only talking about 10% of the time, answering short yes or no questions mostly, I am still completely controlling the conversation. The big difference I think is that I am not exactly leading the client to a decision, but quickly telling them what they are “eligible for” and allowing them to say yes or no. Most of the people I call will say yes to the sale too, but I found it interesting that this class has emphasized listening and asking more questions because it is the opposite of what I’ve been doing. However, I am still controlling the conversation as a salesman.
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mccarthyAJ24 5 thoughts on “Controlling the conversation”
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Dan had many valid points when it came to being a valuable salesperson. As a salesperson controlling the conversation is a crucial part of a client’s decision. His incorporation of using improv implies being able to create conversation and relation on the fly which is very valuable a well.
Controlling the conversation was the biggest thing that I took out of his lecture as well. That’s something that I could be working on, I feel like I can never think of good questions on the spot. I think that in your case, what you’re doing with cold calls is a little different. It’s fine if you’re doing a lot of talking if your goal is to set up a meeting. Then once they’re interested and you’re in a scheduled meeting, you can let them do more of the talking and ask questions.
I loved this class discussion, and all of the class discussions we have had about how to control a conversation. It is important to be in control of the conversation when making a sale, but it is interesting to see examples of how people control conversations. A salesman can easily control a conversation without doing much talking if they use good questions.
I took a lot from this as well. I really like what he had to say and his demonstration using Kate and what high school she went to really intrigued me that it is that simple to control the conversation just by asking questions. I never really thought of it that way, but it really changed my perspective.
Being in control of the conversation is often difficult because it doesn’t necessarily feel like you should just continue to ask questions but with practice and the way that Prof Sweet and Dan display this works really well.