926. "Hold The Pause." feat. Catherine Brown's "How Good Humans Sell."

In this episode, I riff off Catherine Brown’s book How Good Humans Sell and connect it to a powerful point from Mike Weinberg’s conversation with Ahsan Wardak: most salespeople aren’t actually selling—they’re presenting.

What separates the pros from the pack?
 The pause.

Pauses aren’t awkward—they’re powerful. However, too many salespeople fill the silence, killing the moment when the customer is thinking, trusting, and preparing to reveal what really matters. I break down why learning to hold the pause is one of the most underrated and transformational sales skills—and how to put it into practice starting today.

If you want to be the kind of salesperson who guides rather than pitches, and builds trust rather than transfers information—this one’s for you.

Because sometimes, the most amazing things happen when you wait for them.

Grab a copy of Catherine Brown's book, How Good Humans Sell 

Connect to Catherine Brown on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/catherineleebrown/

Transcript

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All right. 3, 2, 1. Let's get it. Welcome to episode 9 26 of What's Your Problem, the Podcast. If we have not met, my name is Marsh Buice I'm so happy that you are here. If we've met a time or 10, thank you so much for being a part of What's your problem? And today, man, I wanna, I wanna riff out of, uh, a friend of mine, Catherine Brown's book, how Good Human Sell. Catherine has been on the podcast before, and I, I wish you were sitting here with me, man, because. Just thumbing through the book if you wanna look at it. Those of you who are looking at it on camera, like, I have it dogeared. I have it, you know, I have writing all in it. I'm, I'm just, I just dove and, and in, and, and ripped apart the book and I got the inspiration for today's episode. Um, ironically from episode 9 25, episode 9 25 was a riff on Ahsan Warick and Mike Weinberg's podcast. Uh, on, uh, was a riff on Mike Weinberg's conversation with Assan Warick. And I think this episode ties in beautifully. Um, with those two, because Asan really brought up the good point that I had not thought about most salespeople are not selling at all. They're, they're presenting, they're marketing, and they're just hoping that the features and benefits will somehow just connect the dots, but it does not help the customer connect the dots between what their problem is and what the, what the solution is. And so as I was writing that podcast and, uh, episode and, and sharing it, I started thinking about Catherine Brown's book and go back to that. I start thumbing through her book and the section I came across was about holding the pause see, selling isn't about doing all the talking. It's about guiding and guiding requires their unfortunately to be silence. See, it's that pause. But see, the pause is where the magic happens. And I think Catherine really. Paints the picture beautifully. She says, sales is like being a tour guide, and your job is to help the customer find their way at their pace, even though you're the one handing them the map. And that journey is gonna include stops and turns and yes, even pauses. Now lemme rewind it a little bit. Back. When I started selling 27 years ago, the internet wasn't even born yet. I tell, I tell new salespeople that today, back in my days, man, when I was selling, they didn't even have the internet. I sound like one of 'em, OGs. But it was, I mean, the internet was, was just coming on the scene. So the information that customers needed. They had to come to salespeople like me. We were the gatekeepers to all the information. But today, your customers already know pretty much everything about your product, about your company, hell, even about you. So why as a salesperson are you throwing information at 'em that they can simply Google? I here's the thing, your customer can't search for your ability to ask thoughtful questions. Your ability to actively listen, your ability to help guide them through a decision. And sometimes that means that you ask deep open-ended questions and then say nothing. You just wait. Hey bro, that can feel like eternity. See that silence feels very long and very uncomfortable, especially when you're newer in sales. Or even dude when you've hit a sales slump. I know experienced salespeople, myself included, who have been on a slick spot and just out of fear, we just feel like that we gotta fill in the gap. It is those times, man, when you've just lost the momentum, your deals seem to be falling apart. Hell, if you offer to buy a form, they wouldn't even buy it. And it feels like, like every customer you talk to is a no. So obviously in those moments, the silence feels threatening. But that's exactly the time when you need to lean into it. Now, in face-to-face sales, you can read a customer's body language, but when it comes to like video calls, like Zoom or FaceTime, bro, that's a whole different skill set. And a lot of times in both instances, we misinterpret the silence. We assume that the customer's not interested, that they're not gonna buy it, that they're not understanding you, that you're overpriced, that they're bored, that they're trying to get it over with. Like you just feel like a complete flop. So. Out fear, we just start talking again. And in doing so, you self-sabotage. You jump in too early, you answer questions that weren't even asked, and you bring up objections that didn't even exist. You actually created them and then you got more problems.'cause they're like, oh, you know what? I didn't even think about that. Well, now that you said that and now you're like. Oh, snap. You feel like Homer Simpson don't. Catherine writes that inexperienced salespeople oftentimes panic and they end up revising their questions while the prospect is still thinking, or even worse, they just abort the conversation. They end it early. Because they can't sit in the silence, and that's tragic. I mean, what if the customer is just thinking, what if you gave them the space to actually do that? What if they're debating whether to tell you something important? Maybe it's some inside information that they got from your competitor or something deeper. That you didn't even plan for in sales. And if you jump in too quickly, bro, you're gonna lose that. And that's the opportunity. Back to the book. Sometimes the most amazing things happen when you wait for 'em. And that's so true. I love that. See, it's in that pause that builds the trust. You create the space and if you've asked the right question. And if you've done your job, may, maybe the customer all of a sudden jumps up, shuts the office door and says, okay, lemme tell you what's really going on. That's the rush. That's the magic moment Catherine offers a technique that I think is gold. Instead of filling the pause, ask a clarifying question, then count to five, but don't count to five. Like a stopwatch, kinda like an hourglass. One, 1002, 1003, 1000. Four, 1005, 1000. Let that productive tension. Just sit with the customer. That's an art. It's not pressure. It's not pressure. That's an art to it man. It's productive pressure. It's the space you let 'em wrestle with their thoughts and that's when clarity happens. So here's what I would suggest to you. This is key man, like key in on this. When you want to ask for something like a meeting, a sale, the close count from five to one, it's Mel Robbins rule. She wrote a whole book on it you count down from five to one. So before you get to one, you, you, you, you don't hesitate, you just, you, you blurt it out. Because you're gonna get into negotiations with yourself. You're gonna talk yourself out of it. But when you wanna listen, when you're asking a meaningful question, count up from one to five and hold the silence. That's where your professionalism really shows. It's that emotional maturity that you've built, and you gotta build this man. This takes reps. It takes a lot of experience, but you'll get better at it. And one tool to do that when you wanna close more deals, five to one quickly, like a stopwatch when you ask a clarifying question. Don't fill the silence. Let the silence linger. Put some productive pressure in there. Count up from one 1000 to five. Then see what happens. Silence. Silence isn't a gap. It's a tool, And your job is to help the customer find their way at their pace, even though you're the one holding the map. Don't jump in. Let the silence do the heavy lifting. Now I'm telling you, this is hard. It takes a lot. It takes a lot of faith in yourself, but you're going to get these aha moments. You're gonna get these holy shit moments where you're just like, oh my God, that worked. And something magical is gonna happen. But you have to consciously put this into practice. It's not something that just set it and forget it. It's a practice. It's an art. It's a skill, and if it's a skill that means that you can improve on it, but it takes reps. All right. Check out her book, man. Her book is phenomenal. Like those of you who are looking on camera, it's super, super short. It's not very long at all. And I'm all about, man, just short, powerful books. She's a great person to connect to on, uh, LinkedIn as well. Super, super great person, super, super great human and she's gonna show you how good humans sell isn't. That's you. Now we'll preface this too, even if you're not in sales. Selling is a life skill. It's not just a profession. So even if you're not in sales, don't, don't look at this episode, don't listen to this episode. Or not grab the book'cause I'm not in sales. No, we're all selling our way through life. Selling is getting someone to accept your product, service, or idea. And at the very minimum, you're the product selling a service or an idea. It's what it is. We're all selling our way through life. Thank you so much for all the work that you do. Catherine thank you, the listener, the watcher. Thank you for continuing to come back. I look forward to episode 9 27. Don't even know what it's gonna be about, but stay tuned. I'll, uh, I'll make it spicy for you. Actually, I think I, I, I think I do know, um, I think I'm going to riff out. I got a couple of ideas out of, uh, Jeremy Renner's new book, he was the actor on Mayor Kingstown. He wrote a, uh, he wrote a book about surviving, um, a snowcat that ran him over his own snowcat. He jumped trying to stop it,'cause somehow the lever. Got pushed forward and it was barreling toward his nephew. He jumped on there and missed, and when he did the 14,000 pound Snowcat ran over him. And amazingly, bro, he's still here and he's not only just here, like he's back acting. So you might wanna check him out on Joe Rogan. Uh, that was, uh, that was a great episode. That was the trigger that made me get the book. I had read a little bit about, uh, an article in Men's Health Magazine. He was on the cover a few months ago, and then I listened to, I think it was like a three hour episode with, uh, with Rogan. And I was like, bro, I gotta check the book out. But really got some, got some, uh, some takeaways from that. So hopefully, uh, Lord said the same. I'll be sharing, uh, that with you, uh, coming up next. So with that, share this episode with one person who needs to hear it. Uh, also, if you would. Be kind and rewind. No. Also, if you would, uh, leave a rating or review and a review, uh, it just takes a, a, a few minutes. I know you're super busy, man, but these reviews really help. Um, the ratings help, but the reviews even more so because they're words. And there are like 4 million podcasts out there, so over 4 million. And so there's just, it's, it's podcasts Overwhelm, man. So it could be your words. That causes someone to check out the episode and then they begin to change the course of their life. And that's, that's what we're all about here. Um, dealing with the three problems we all face in life. All of us deal with the same problems, adversity, uncertainty, and complacency. And so I hope with each and every episode you learn how to, handle adversity, embrace uncertainty, and never settle again. I. Using the five skills they're all within communication, curiosity, creativity, continuous learning and action, and productive confrontation. So the better you work at these skills, again, it's another skill. The better you work at these skills, then you'll be RFA, ready for anything. Do you know everything? No. Can you handle anything? Absolutely. All right. With that, keep it simple. Keep it moving. Never settle. Stay tough. Peace.