Holding your breath.

How long can you hold your breath? I don't think I can hold it for more than a minute. Tom Cruise trained for months, and he can hold it for about 6 minutes, but I'm not Tom Cruise.

Why is it important? It's important because to survive in sales, you have to be able to hold your silence for as long as it takes. In yesterday's post on silence, I said, "Most people can't hold it for more than 5 minutes." I misspoke. I meant to say, "Most people can't hold it for more than a minute." Even a minute is difficult for many people. Like holding your breath, it takes training. Now you might say that most of us don't need to train for this, but I would argue that you're wrong. Holding the silence is a valuable skill that anybody can learn, but few people do. It's not only valuable in sales but also in life. Knowing when not to speak is as important as knowing when to speak.

To inject a little bit of humor here, I think it was Winston Churchill who said something along the lines of "Better to hold your tongue and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."

The other important thing to take away from this post is that when you're speaking, you're not listening, and listening is the most important thing you can do. Many years ago, I came home from work, and my mother regaled me with something that had gone wrong for her that day. Because I'm a man, I immediately went into problem-solving mode and told her what she should have done. She said something then that I have never forgotten. "Listen, Buster, if I wanted advice, I would have asked for it. I just want some damn sympathy."

#artsales