Sales calls are often full of noise and you need to filter it out and not be distracted by it. I define noise as anything that distracts you from the goal of the sales call or is not helping to move the “ball” down the field. Sometimes the prospect will give you lots of irrelevant information about the project but is shies away from talking about his actual motivation for moving forward. In other words, at the end you know a lot about the project but no idea whether there is a compelling reason to move forward. In that case you were distracted by the noise. Sometimes prospects (and salespeople) talk about personal stuff to excess leaving no time to discuss the pain they are in and the decision process they need to go through to get the deal done. If that is the case, then, as important as bonding with the prospect is, you were distracted by the noise (personal information or sports stories) on this sales call. There are many other examples such as excessive detailed information which is irrelevant to the sales process but I think you get the idea. You need to listen through the noise to pick out the pain indicators or other hooks to get the conversation back on track and moving toward achieving the goal of the sales call.
