Denis Campbell - Show Me You Care: The Power of Silence in Selling

The right of Denis G. Campbell to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

Copyright 2021 Denis G. Campbell

This expanded and rewritten 3rd Edition, re-published March 2021

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Originally released in May 2014, expanded 2 nd edition July 2014

as: Show Me You Care: Wining the Customer Excellence Mission

First published in the United Kingdom and United States in May 2014 by

Monknash Media; Ogmore by Sea, Wales, United Kingdom

Monknash Media is a wholly owned subsidiary of

Target Point Ltd, Wales, United Kingdom.

For Dad,

Bill Gear and

Angelo and Ralph Tedeschi

each taught through their example

the value of listening to provide passionate

and dedicated customer care.

Table of Contents

Prologue

Many of us have been through elaborate sales excitement programs where the speaker spirals everyones excitement level up until they race to the back of the room, credit card in hand, eager to be first to spend $5, $10, even $15,000 to take the next step in that speakers program. They are eager, happy lambs led to financial slaughter on the promise of future riches. Holding the participants captive in a large meeting room, the host manipulates their hopes, greed, excitement, and guilt until they jump to just once do something for themselves.

The great showman PT Barnum, the co-founder with Bailey of the Barnum and Bailey circus operation, played by Jim Dale on Broadway, sang the anthem:

There was a sucker, born every minute.

But hey, you might have been the minute in between.

Or said more simply, when a person with experience meets a person with money? The person with experience ends up with the money. And the person with the money? Ends up with an experience!

And our experience of sales is win-lose, pushing and forcing people to buy. The salesman thinks they need it.

Everybody loves to buy. NOBODY wants to be sold to.

Buyers respond to a gentle pull. They hate being pushed into a sale to meet a sellers timetable. We do things in life for our reasons and on our schedule, not anyone elses.

As a teen, I sold Kirby vacuum cleaners door-to-door before going to university. I made $1,600 in the summer of 1975, an enormous amount of money back then. It paid all my fees, books, petrol and for one reason: I listened to the customer.

I ignored the van driver (sales team leader) and exited a home in East Boston, convinced the customer would call back. The van driver said, you are nuts, Denis. During my first month in school, a call came in asking for me. I returned to do a demonstration for the customer and his family. I sold four units to him and his brothers, adding $900 to my pocket for beer parties and meals.

Lets be clear, this was not because I was a super salesman. I just knew instinctively to listen to this client, respect his timetable, treat him with dignity and respect, and he came back. The Kirby distributor wanted me to forego university and join them. I could lead a sales team and earn $20,000 a year (a considerable salary in 1975). I said, no, thank you and expressed my gratitude for the learning opportunity. Karl was furious. He had already convinced two of my team members to do what I refused. Even at age 18, I knew my path would be different.

As I gained confidence in my sales ability, I noticed an aspect of selling that went beyond personality and pushing my way into every room. It was the power of being silent

Theres virtually no silence in our lives today. I now offer a new paradigm where we use the power of silence to dig deeper and provide a solution that fits what customers want.

The old selling paradigm was about getting through the door, push, push, push until the walls fall and they submit to your wisdom and charm.

The new paradigm is to stop and listen with the other human being across the desk. The only way to get that person to open up is not by pushing, rather gently pulling and using silence as the vehicle.

Dozens of books teach push and pull selling. This one is about the silence required to win more than the deal. It is about building trust and becoming a partner clients rely on because you focus on what they want and then deliver it vs. what you may think they need. I will show you how your world will change thanks to the following methodology that shows the client you care by listening to the spaces between the words.

This book is about awareness, being aware of your words and how they help you hear what the client says.

Many were trained that silence is bad. It allows the client to say no. Never give them space because it shows weakness. Too many salespeople think if you are silent, then you dont know what you are selling. You must fill every second of the meeting with facts until they submit and buy.

You may hit a quote doing that. But you miss giving the client the greatest gift there is the ability to say yes because they relate to you and see someone across the desk who understands their wants.

So, I want to transform the limiting ideas and beliefs around silence in selling. I also want to praise and remember the first and the f***-ups. We learn from failure and mistakes or keep repeating the same ones. Einstein falsely received credit for the statement, Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is the textbook definition of insanity.

To me, insanity is to keep running into walls without stopping to examine our contribution to it and never taking a ladder, pickax, or shovel to learn new skills to climb over, break through, or tunnel under it.

My father exemplifies this well. Eighteen years ago, he passed away from emphysema. As a lifelong member of the 40-40-40 club (he worked 40 hours a week, for 40 years, for a 40% cut in pay, back then, a full pension). He believed he failed in life. Bitten by the entrepreneurial bug in his 50s, he leased a small former garage where he opened a Quick Oil changing station a few years before the advent of Jiffy Lube.

Like many, he tried to work two jobs, overseeing the oil change shop by day before going to his 3-11 pm career with British Airways. He was operations manager of the Boston station. His team greeted arriving international flights midafternoon, checked passengers in, and turned the flights around for evening departures, returning them fully loaded across the Atlantic Ocean.

Like most entrepreneurs, he struggled mightily in that first year, realized he needed more money to sustain it, and gave up his dream. It broke him emotionally and then physically.

He had his first heart attack a few years on. Then followed carotid artery surgery and a series of small strokes. He retired early at 62, was on oxygen full-time from 63 onward, and passed away three weeks before his 72nd birthday. Had he survived, this would be his 90th.

As the hospice nurse said two weeks before he passed, Your Dad is essentially trying to breathe through a straw. His body did well to survive for a very long time on 10% of the oxygen it needed. Now it no longer can. He is essentially suffocating from his disease. My analogy was more straightforward: the crushing weight of his perceived failures in life smothered the air right out of him. He gave up living when forced to face his failures.

He was unable to see the good he did in his life. He raised two children, owned a lovely home, put those kids through university debt-free, and built a nest egg that allowed my Mum to live comfortably in an assisted living facility near my sisters home after he passed. He taught us life values of decency and honesty, and they took, even in a world where many shunned them.