Taking The Time To Sell

When I was a kid, I noticed that some salespeople would let their customers talk their ears off. And I mean talk their ears off. Grandma So-and-so goes into the fabric store and spends a half hour talking with the owner about her grandkids: what they eat, what they read, what they burp . . . way too much information, if you get where I’m coming from.

Why was this woman wasting her time? Didn’t she have anything better to do?

Maybe she did have other things to do, but she wasn’t actually wasting her time. She was merely investing it in sales that day and in the future. There were, at the time, a half-dozen similar stores in the neighborhood. Grandma So-and-so came to that one because the owner cared about her. Listening meant that the person cared.

In hostage negotiations, the negotiator shows the other person that he cares all the time. It’s part of building rapport. No words are wasted words; even the most innocuous comment can help you reach your goal. And a lot of this happens without a script.