Five communication pitfalls that can ruin a sale

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by Miller Heiman

There are a lot of ways to blow a sale. And just about all of them have to do with poor Foul up the lines of communication between you and your buyer, or send the wrong message, and you can all but forget about that fat commission.

Over the years, we noticed five common verbal danger signals that are the techniques for a salesman to shoot himself in the foot.

1. “Think about it.” There are two basic problems with this extremely popular “pre-closure” directive. The first is that it’s vague. You always want to leave your customer with something specific to do as a way of demonstrating his or her commitment to continue the selling The phrase “Think about it” – whether it’s used in the middle of a call, or as a parting gesture – gives the buyer absolutely nothing specific to do. The second problem with “Think about it,” is that it is a subtle put-down. When you direct somebody to some (more) thinking about a topic, you’re implying that he hasn’t done any so far – or that the thinking he has done has been so inconclusive that he’d better get himself in gear and do some serious thinking.

2. Mimicry. Somewhere along the line in sales training, the “experts” have gotten the idea that one good way to indicate to a person that you’ve heard and understood what he just said is to give it back to him verbatim. Mimicry of the last crucial phrase spoken by the customer runs a very high risk of coming off as condescending. You may not mean it that way. But it’s risky business all the same. That’s why you should avoid parroting back a comment unless there’s a pressing need to verify factual information or clarify very complex ideas.

3. “Yes . . . but” When a conversation includes a high level of “Yes . . . but” or other give and take statements, the probability is very good that the conversation is stalled. When a sales call is going nowhere, this phrase becomes a frequent refrain – on both the buyer’s and the seller’s part. Almost always it indicates the rejection of a just proposed idea or train of thought. For this reason it tends to derail productive exploration, and to set up a broken-record syndrome, where the buyer’s objections are countered by the seller’s, and vice versa – and no real information gets exchanged.

4. Rhetorical questions/tags. A rhetorical question is often preceded by, or followed by, traditional “tags.” Three such tags are extremely common. They are the introductory “Don’t you think that . . .” and the suffixes “Isn’t it?” and “Right?” The not-so-subtle purpose behind the use of such verbal persuaders is to get the listener to go along with what the questioner has already decided. The purpose is to close off the customer’s options rather than opening them out. Using a rhetorical question is at best a useless “filler” tactic. At worst, it’s an aggravating presumption that serves to alienate any potential customer who does not want his mind made up for him.

5. “Why?” This little word can quickly put people on the defensive. If you are uncertain about why a client has said or done something, we advise you not to phrase your clarifying questions in the “why” or “why did you” form. Instead, use the equivalent, but not nearly so challenging, word “how.” This might seem like a small and insignificant change. It’s not. There is a considerable amount of communications research that indicates that a questioner can nearly double the amount of useful information received from a question if he or she prefaces it with the set-up word “how” rather than “why.” Because “how” is perceived as less threatening, it can actually get you the information, while asking somebody to explain “why” a given decision was made may get you nothing but evasion, rationalization, and defensiveness.

Avoid the five pitfalls we’ve juts outlined, and you’ll go a long way toward keeping the flow of information going between you and your customers.