85. When should you use a carefully planned pause?
When you use the pause, you freeze the sale for a moment. You step away, physically or psychologically, to review the work you have done up to that point and check over your plan for the rest of the presentation. You take a break. It may be purely mental, it may be imperceptible to the customer, but you give yourself whatever time it takes to review matters before you continue.
Using a pause gives you the opportunity to review the entire process of the sales presentation and to make sure that you are not overlooking anything. It allows you to avoid getting boxed into a corner. By using a pause, you keep your emotions from ruling the presentation.
Everyone has a different way of using a pause. Sometimes, how you pause depends on the situation.
In a selling situation, having someone with whom you have to consult before giving a final answer is a convenient excuse for pressing the pause button. Simply say, "I will have to run this by my partner (or consultant, sales manager, etc.) and get back to you at 9:00 tomorrow morning."
Taking notes is helpful at many points in a sales situation. One of the best times to pull out your pen is when you need to pause. Writing down statements that are confusing or upsetting is an excellent way to use the pause. Rather than stating an inappropriate remark, tell the customer to hold on while you write down the statement. Ask the customer to check what you have written to be sure that you got it right. The process of putting those words on paper almost always causes the customer to backtrack, amend, or, better yet, erase the words altogether.
Use a pause at each critical moment to review the presentation or to decide when to close a sale. Use a pause whenever you are feeling pressured or under stress.
Sales people can get caught up in the emotions of making the sale. They are afraid to lose. They fall in love with the idea of the sale and ignore facts that are important to decision making. They let their own moods, or the moods of the prospect, rule the presentation, causing things to wander off course. These problems disappear when you use a pause.
Pause before you give into a price discount. Your moment of reflection gives the price discount some significance. You must treat the discount as significant, or you are not perceived as having given a discount. No price discount is unimportant. By emphasizing each discount in your own mind, you have not given ground for nothing.
The obvious and easiest example is conceding a price too quickly. Too often, a quick response robs the customer of the good feelings that they get after making a good buy. It leaves the customer feeling that they could have gotten more if they had been smarter. Although that may be true, what advantage is it to you that they feel that way? None. Worse, now they are out to prevent that mistake from occurring the next time you negotiate, or they compensate by taking a hard line on another aspect of the sale.
Some buyers use pressure to get what they want from a sales person. Sometimes, the pause tactic is your only defense against being pressured into making a decision based on the buyer's deadline.
Comments:
Theatrics is a big part of the sales call, if you do not have props or samples, your actions and voice become your props. I sell in an area that is not familiar with my company, and it is important to listen to the customer, by pausing at strategic times, it gives the perception I am listening, and gives a chance for the customer to tell me what they need, sometimes without asking.
Gary Caudill
When you ask for the sale make them answer. Put out the question and then don’t say a word. How you do it is ultimately up to you and how you think it will best fit the situation. If you break the silence you lose. I busted one of my customers yesterday for having a cooler full of my competitors product. I told him he was busted and asked him why. Then I let him answer. At the end of the meeting he said he would think of my company first for the products I carry. The silence forced him to realize he was “cheating” me of the sale.
Dave Ferren
A pause is a important tool in the selling process. In some cases when a customer is using it, a salesperson needs to understand this may be the customers way to take a moment to work through the information you have just give him or her. Sometime you will find that during this ‘pause’ it is not the time to jump in and keep talking, or offering more things. A pause for a salesperson is to reflect the information the customer has given us, and as this lesson states, it helps the salesperson to control the sales call.
David Vize
The pause works for both the buyer and the seller. Many times I have given a quote and the customer does not respond. This creates a tremendous desire to ask what they are thinking. Is the price too high? Is there something I could add to the deal to make it work for you? Ideally, you would like the customer to just say “okay, this looks good. Where do I sign?” And then you ride home thinking about where to spend your commission. It rarely works out this way. Let the buyer respond first and you have gone a long way to gaining the upper hand with the deal.
Crocker Smith
I had an incident in my previous job where I knew the client for a few years, and I knew they needed our product for their station upgrades. I made my presentation, and he said he needed me to come down on my price. I said that I had already given him a discount and I could not go down any further, along with all the benefits he would receive from the upgrade. Then the silence came. As uncomfortable as it was for me to sit there silently, I needed him to come to me with his response. We sat there in silence for 8 minutes! While I would never suggest doing that with a new client, I was comfortable enough with this client and his situation to know that he needed our solution and could pay our price. As I sat there in silence I was formulating other objection responses in my – but at the end of the 8 minutes ( and I did discretely time this ) he spoke first to break the silence and moved forward with the sale at my price.
Danielle Antonacci
After a customer comes back at you with a price that is below your target, its good to pause and let them think about the what they are asking of you. A long pause can kind of make them feel guilty for asking AND will usually prevent them from trying to whittle the price down further. It shows that the decision requires thought, and if you pause it doesn’t make you look like you are so easy that you will reduce the price without question. A pause also allows you to formulate a response without speaking too hastily.
Marquesa Ortega
I really like the idea of taking a long pause before giving a price reduction. Of course, you should take some time to consider it, but when you extend it, it gives the impression that it is a really SERIOUS drop in price that you are thinking about agreeing to. Like the article said, it gives the customer a sense of satisfaction to know that they got you to agree to a drastic price drop, even if it isn’t really all that drastic to begin with.
Laura J. Czajka
This is very interesting process. I never thought of using a pause when under pressure or feeling cornered. When I working in retail sales in the past the customer would try to get you to come fuller down on a product that was already discounted. Me being the manager at the time, I did not have someone to tell the customer I needed to consult with. I had to tell them no and take a chance of loosing the sale or make the decision to give them a bigger discount my self.
With Ambassador if someone calls me wanting to do business with us or wants a quote I have to get all there information and pass it on to our office sale manager. So using a pause to be able to write down everything I can get form the prospect for my manger helps a lot. The more information you can write down with help you or the sale manager be more prepared for the presentation.
Laura Arnett
"Silence is a tactic used by seasoned and experienced sales people. If you find that you are doing most of the talking, the customer is probably using your information to see how much they can find out about you or your company. If you ask a question and fail to get an answer from the customer, do not jump in and answer for them. You will end up putting all your cards on the table before the game begins. Instead, use the power of the pause."