Trust and establishing a connection with your networks is what gets you into a sales conversation. A recent research in Psychology Today found that there are 6 habits that break a connection during conversations. Here are a few of them and a look at those that affect Sales Conversations.

Interrupting

This one seems like a no-brainer as a connection-breaker. It smacks of lack of respect and patience. It means that you don’t value what the other person is saying or the person themselves. As much as possible, try to side-step this one. But you’ll be surprised to read later on in this article that it has its place if used strategically in a sales conversation.

Story-Topping

One-upmanship in story telling during your conversation isn’t just annoying, it breaks trust and connection. This often comes from a sense of competition and wanting to feel like you have done something better or longer than the person who is telling you their story.

Bright-Siding

While there is no denying the power of positive thinking and positioning, sadly according to research, it comes across as lack of empathy. And that breaks the connection.

Being Right

The need to be right (which often turns into a debate or an argument) is ego based and very hard to endure while you’re engaged in a conversation with someone. It doesn’t matter if you’re an expert in the topic, it doesn’t matter if you think they’re dead wrong. The trick I learned from the famed book “How to Make Friends and Influence People” was to say “I could be wrong but…(your point of view)”. That way, no hard feelings.

Being All-Knowing

The second cousin to Being Right, this is about proving yourself superior to the person you’re in conversation with. Even as a marketing coach, when people are spewing non-sense about what I know to be the truth, I will never call them out on it. It breaks connection. Instead, I say “that has not been my experience” and leave it at that. Nobody can argue with my personal experience.

Advising

As a certified professional coach, the key thing we had been taught was to never advise or coach anyone if they didn’t ask you for it. Period. And that’s for people who make a living selling their advice. So regardless of how you make your living, stop advising during conversations if you don’t want to tamper with the trust bond.

Sales Conversation No-No’s

Similar to the regular conversation deal-breakers, Sales Conversation No-Nos can kill trust and connection cold. The first Sales Convo No-No is to lose control of the conversation. For example, if the prospect has verbal diarrhea or takes over the agenda, you have to politely interrupt them and steer it back to your mutual agenda. Otherwise you can’t close that sale.

The next No-No is not quantifying their pain in Dollars. For example, if the lack of diversity in the workplace is hurting a company, ask them in what way that pain is manifesting (ie. attrition) and how much that’s costing them per year. It’s a game changer.

Lastly the biggest No-No of sales conversations is not leaving without a next meeting date. Unless it’s a complete mismatch and there is no remote possibility of ever working together, get an appointment before leaving. It definitely beats chasing and chasing the same prospect to land another meeting with them.

If you can avoid these conversation killers in your next networking or sales meeting, you’ll be sure to connect strongly with your targets and land that deal fast.

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