Hey Sales! Stop pouncing & start pauuuusing.

In interviewing a lot of sales leaders recently about their biggest cringe when listening in on sales calls, one of the things I heard was it's when the reps on their team pounce instead of pausing. The pounce is the wrong move because you're pitching too quickly before you really give the conversation a chance to breathe. I know you're in a rush, your clock is racing, you want to get the deal moved forward, but by pouncing, you're actually shutting the customer or prospect down a little bit because you're showing them that you're more interested in advancing the deal than you are in uncovering their real pain. And so customers, like the rest of us humans, they like to feel heard and understood. So pouncing and going to your slide 1 of 37 or whatever it is, is not the right move. Pausing. We talk about it all the time. Gong and others have published statistics that talk about the benefits of just a 2-second pause. Why? Because when a customer is speaking and a prospect— or a prospect is speaking, they have something I refer to as a verbal ellipsis. The ellipsis, dot at the end of a sentence. A verbal ellipsis is the same thing. It's just that I'm finished my words, but I may not have finished thinking, or the words I just said, I'm reflecting on and thinking that I need to clarify or add more as a prospect. And if you don't pause, you're going to miss what I have to say after the verbal ellipses. And also the fact that not just leaving the other person feeling heard or understood, but getting that crucial insight, not just you saying, oh, I'm going to pounce because that's exactly what we do. And you say to them, that's exactly what we do. Pausing lets the conversation and breathe. It's more human. So stop pouncing, start pausing. Just do it once or twice on every call you have coming up this week, and you'll see it's pretty magical what happens.