A salesman's most powerful tool

There are many reasons why sales people have gotten into sales. It could be because we love money or love people but most of us love to talk. Being able to talk and talk a lot with confidence and conviction is very important in sales. But it's not the most important piece of the puzzle. Did anyone ever tell you talk too much? I know I've been told that. Our mouth is important but a lot of times it's counterproductive in sales. In my opinion our most powerful tool is our ears. My most productive meetings are meetings where I asked questions most likely open-ended questions and listen to the answers my prospects and customers give me. This will allow you to uncover where their real needs are and how to best provide and present your solution to them. If you are constantly talking and not giving the customer time to think about how they want the solution to be solved you might never get to the end result. Try in your next meeting to talk as little as possible. Go against the grain on giving a ppt presentation right off the bat. Ask them a bunch of questions prior to the presentation and I will guarantee the meeting will be much more productive.