During your next sales presentation, try pausing – just stop talking. The silence can have a stronger impact on your prospect than anything you can say.

This kind of pause can be incorporated easily. A good sales presentation has a pace to it, a rhythm that the prospect picks up without even realizing it. If you interrupt that rhythm with a thoughtful pause, it will jog your client’s attention and concentrate it on what’s coming next. And it will do something else. Generally speaking, people like to do business with people who think. They associate the trait with seriousness of purpose, trustworthiness and many other desirable qualities. To achieve the desired effect, break eye contact with the prospect and look away for a moment, as if consulting your mind. Count to five, then continue your presentation.

The Thoughtful Pause Is An Intelligent Approach

The thoughtful pause also has a place in your sales dialogue. Before responding to any question, you can buy time (if you need it) to formulate a reply and simultaneously pay a subtle compliment to the prospect’s intelligence. A well-prepared salesperson usually has ready answers to most of the questions that he or she anticipates from prospects. The tendency is to fire off the stock answer to the stock question and thereby dazzle the prospect. But this can backfire. The prospect, rather than being impressed by your quickness off the mark, may instead find the ready response unsatisfying. After all, who wants to ask an easy question?

I personally like making the kind of thorny inquiry that stumps the Answer Man, or at least causes him to squirm a little. It makes me feel as though I may not be completely unintelligent. I think a lot of prospects feel the same way. Pausing before you respond, even if you’ve got the answer on the tip of your tongue, satisfies their need to feel on equal footing with you and at the same time tells them that you acknowledge their capacity to make a worthwhile contribution to the exchange.