The most effective sales strategies for your pitches often revolve around communication and how to maximize its potential. Without effective communication, a sale can never be made. Ever. Period.
As the most fundamental skill in sales, it should pique your interest to learn that communication is deeper than you think. If you want to close deals faster, you’ll want to navigate this newfound depth with skill and finesse.
Both of which can be learned by mastering a simple two-syllable word: silence.
“Silence is Golden; it has divine power and immense energy.”
The Sound of Silence
The golden rule in sales is to let your prospect do the talking. If you’re speaking too much, it generally turns people away. It sounds like you’re coming on too strong and baffling them with bullsh*t. People can see through it. You want them to buy something and they want to resist.
But by utilizing the power of the pause, you can gain power in the conversation by giving your prospect the illusion that they’re in control. They’re the one doing the talking. They’re the one telling you their problems. They’re the ones expressing their needs. You’re just there to provide the solutions.
This obviously needs time and practice to set up. You’ll need to get the prospect comfortable sharing all this information, for starters. But the point is: it is done through you being silent. More accurately, what you do in your silence.
Listen. Listen Good.
So how do you listen better? Is there some magical button that you can press to show you the root of all your problems?
You’re not far off.
That button is called Record.
By recording your sales pitches, or even your internal calls, you can take control of your own growth and truly focus on your own learning. You can use call recordings to find calls where you spoke for too long or weren’t actively listening enough, and make notes on how to improve. You can analyze your sales strategy from a distance and see it in an entirely different light.
Call recordings are a source of endless learning.
If there’s one way to close deals faster, this is it.
Ready. Set. Record: 5 Ways Call Recordings Can Boost Your Listening Skills
Now you know the secret in theory, let’s delve deeper into what makes call recordings so special.
1. Review and Analyze Call Recordings
If you regularly record sales calls and review them with the sales team, it’s not just you that benefits. You can encourage team members to share their insights and observations about the calls too. By analyzing real-life interactions, salespeople can identify areas for improvement and learn from successful pitches.
But more importantly, you have the ability to take your growth into your own hands. There is no limit. Not even the sky.
With tl;dv, you can record your calls on Google Meet and Zoom for free, transcribing them with accurate speaker recognition too. Leave timestamps, make highlight reels using tl;dv’s state of the art AI, or simply keep all your meetings organized in one special place.
2. Identify Listening Gaps
During call analysis, pay attention to moments where you missed vital cues, interrupted the prospect, or failed to grasp their needs. You can check their body language to see if you understood them correctly. Bad listening skills break trust in the business relationship. And less trust means prospects are less likely to buy.
Highlight these instances to raise awareness of potential listening gaps and opportunities for improvement. As mentioned above, with tl;dv you can edit directly from the transcript to create clips, reels, and highlight footage. Pluck moments from several different meetings together into one reel so that you can rewatch your listening mistakes in order to succeed next time!
3. Make Use of Transcripts and Annotations
Go through tl;dv’s automatically generated transcript and AI notes to highlight essential points, emotions, and any relevant non-verbal cues. Salespeople can learn to pay attention not only to words but also to tone, pace, and other subtleties in the conversation. By reading the transcript alongside the video footage, you can piece them together like layers, understanding in real time the effect of the voice in expressing words.
Similarly, you can read the transcript independently to see how much of the content that the prospect gave you is rock solid in words alone. Chances are high that a great deal of what they communicate is non-verbal. These kinds of exercises will help you identify where the prospect expresses the crux of their point.
In a way, this is a good method to develop more empathy for your prospects too. By rewatching your sales calls, you will understand their meanings a lot more. You’re not interacting in the conversation, thinking on the spot, or trying to pitch them anything. You’re just watching a recording. You will spot things they said that you missed. You’ll likely spot body language they expressed that you didn’t notice. And you’ll almost definitely comprehend their meaning on a deeper level.
Do this enough times and you’ll naturally pick up on it more during the live call. You’ll know what to look out for.
4. Spot Your Strengths
Self-assessing your call recordings doesn’t have to be all bad. You’ll pick up on some great things you said or did too, and you’ll be able to watch your prospect’s reaction to the things you say or the questions you ask, in a new light.
By finding what you’re good at, not only can you boost your confidence, you can know what to keep in your pitches. This can be just as important as knowing what to add or take out. If you rewatch many calls, you’ll start to notice patterns of behavior in your prospects based on what you’ve said or done. This will give you even more confidence the next time, creating a positive feedback loop.
You can even use tl;dv’s highlight reel feature to merge clips of you smashing it. Watch one of these reels before your next sales pitch and you’ll have a big boost of confidence.
5. Set Listening Goals
We’ve already established that by rewatching your calls you can identify where you could’ve listened better, but now you can set yourself goals to do better next time. After all, growth doesn’t just happen overnight. You need to put in the work. It comes from repeated attempts, taking the new knowledge into account.
You can set goals such as:
- Repeat the prospect’s pain points back to them to clarify that you are on the same page
- Understand objections deeply before responding – perhaps even asking a clarifying question before providing your response
- Ask more questions
The goals will really depend on what you’re doing well and what you can improve. But it’s always a healthy method of self-development to set constant goals and always strive for better.
Get Recording
Download tl;dv for Google Meet or Zoom today and start recording in moments. The set up is strikingly simple and tl;dv’s free plan is incredible. Relax in the knowledge that you can fully try it out before committing to anything more long-term.
By self-assessing your listening skills through video calls, you will close deals faster and enter sales pitches with a ton more confidence. So what are you waiting for? Get started now.
