No Psychics in Sales

Recently I was having a conversation with one of my friends about who knows what when I started to become irritated. Any time I would say something, he would try to predict what I was saying/where I was going with the conversation and would out loud say the last few words of what I was saying. By doing this, it seemed that in his mind, I was taking too long to get out what I was saying. This made it feel like he wasn’t listening to me, nor did he care what I had to say, he just wanted me to wrap the whole thing up.

This reminded me of Rule #13, which is No Mind Reading. Any time we are in a sales conversation (or any conversation), we should not be assuming facts about the client or person we are talking to. In my personal case, I would have greatly appreciated if my friend refrained from doing this. It got to a point where instead of fully saying what I wanted to say, I cut myself to short replies which quickly killed the conversation. Knowing how it feels from the client’s position, I can easily see how this is a turn off for prospective buyers. If I am trying to sell a product to a client, but don’t listen to them and try to predict what they are saying, it makes it a lot harder to complete the sale.

Instead of trying to mind read what the client means, we should ask leading questions to encourage them to provide more information. A leading question such as, “and that’s important because..?” shows that you are listening to the client and gives them the opportunity to explain what they mean without prying. I know that I personally will refrain from trying to mindread in conversations if I catch myself doing it from now on.