In this segment of Jake Burhans' coaching video, he explains why sales conversations can feel like a rigid process when sellers hear frequent pauses, filler words, and checklist‑style language. He argues that such cues make prospects feel they are being interviewed, which shortens their patience and delays the offer. Burhans advises salespeople to keep the dialogue flowing naturally—eliminating unnecessary “mm‑hmm,” “let me see here,” and long pauses—so the prospect perceives the interaction as a genuine conversation. By speaking in a conversational tone and asking questions fluidly, the seller stays engaged, the talk time is maintained, and the salesperson can move more smoothly toward the offer.
Chapters
It makes it feel like it's not a conversation. It makes it feel like we're just, we're going through the process. So yes, there is a process that we follow, but we don't want it to feel like to the seller that it's a process, right? So the pausing, right, which I've noticed is definitely one thing. So you are pausing, right? Pausing in the wrong spots. Yeah. But some of those spaces in the conversation, right, we want it to flow naturally because when we're pausing like that, okay, let me see here. Okay, yep, that checks off, that checks off, okay. He feels like he's in an interview or something, and that's why his patience runs out. He's like, dude, just get to the offer, right? But when you're just in a conversation, you don't have pauses, it tricks their brain into thinking that you're just having a conversation. You can easily get that talk time, right? You easily get through everything because, oh, this is just the natural flow of the conversation. But as soon as we start giving those long pauses like that, and mm-hmm, and saying things like mm-hmm, "Yeah, let me just see here, let me look through here. Okay, got it, got it, got it." It seems like he's getting, like I said, interviewed, or you're going down a checklist, and he's like, "Dude, I don't have time for this." But if we're just asking questions in a conversational way, and we're just flowing through the whole sales process, they don't think twice about it, and you can get through the whole thing, right?
