Filling a Silence Gives Back What It Won

Imagine a florist named Ottilie who meets Mrs. Vanterpool about a wedding in September. The ceremony is under an arch in the garden, and dinner is at 12 tables on the lawn. Mrs. Vanterpool asks what the arch and the tables would cost. Ottilie has her sketch on the table. “The arch in garden roses and the 12 tables are $9,800,” she says. “I’d need your flower list by the first of August.”

Mrs. Vanterpool looks at the sketch and says nothing. Four seconds pass.

Ottilie cannot stand it. “I could include the bridesmaids’ bouquets in that,” she says. Then, “If roses feel like a lot, I can do the arch in hydrangea for less.” Then, “And if the budget is tighter than that, I can look at the tables again.” She talks for six more minutes. Mrs. Vanterpool, who was deciding on $9,800, now has four offers in front of her. She says she will think about it. She books a florist whose quote had one price in it.

Ottilie’s first answer had won the job. The quiet was Mrs. Vanterpool deciding. Each sentence after it gave her something new to weigh, and each one told her that the first answer needed help. After a price, the sentence that fills the quiet is the discount offered into the pause. After a pitch, it is the six minutes. The cost is the same in both cases. The silence had won the job, and the words gave it back.

A sales engineer talked himself out of half the orders he had already won

Jim Schleckser spent much of his career in sales and marketing. In 2019 he wrote in Inc. about a sales engineer who worked for him. Early in a conversation, a customer would say, “Yes, let’s do it. Put me down for an order.”

The engineer “heard that ‘yes’ as an opportunity to keep talking, and talking, and talking.” He wanted to tell the customer about everything else the company could provide. “He couldn’t help himself,” Schleckser writes.

“He ended up talking himself out of the sale 50% of the time.” Either the engineer wandered into a question he could not answer, and had to follow up later, or the customer said, “Uh, we’ll get back to you.” In Schleckser’s words, “He had the sale and he lost it by continuing to talk.”

The engineer’s extra talk did two kinds of damage, and both are in Ottilie’s six minutes. It raised a question that had no answer in the room, which gave the customer a reason to wait. And it kept the customer in the chair after the decision, which gave the decision time to come apart.

A sales trainer says the extra pitch is where the second thoughts start

Michelle Weinstein is a sales trainer who writes as The Pitch Queen. In a post on her site, she describes the moment after a client says yes. Instead of “Let’s get you started,” the seller goes straight back to pitching, repeating the benefits they just listed. The client who was a sure thing ends up “backing out, turning around, and running out the door.”

The second thoughts, she writes, are what undo the deal, and they start in the extra pitch. It is “the moment where the client that was sold starts having second thoughts.”

Her reasons for the extra pitch are short. Sometimes the seller doubts their own ears after the yes. “Other times it’s excitement or fear.” Underneath both, she writes, the seller has made the sale about themselves rather than about the client.

So the words that fill a quiet are for the professional. They settle the professional’s nerves, and they give the client a second look at a decision the client had already made.

A designer says he said too much because he was nervous

Matt Olpinski designs websites and apps in New York. In a post from February 2023 about his early client calls, he writes, “While most calls ultimately went well, I often said too much (usually regarding cost or timeline) simply because I was nervous.”

The cause, he writes, was that he was not prepared, “and, as a result, I didn’t communicate with confidence.” His fix is to write out the answers before the call, including the answers to questions the client might ask.

Olpinski’s extra words came at the same two moments as Ottilie’s: the price and the dates. Those are the moments a client goes quiet to think. They are also the moments the body treats the quiet as a threat, and reaches for more words to end it.

Negotiators who let a pause run three seconds reached better deals

In 2022, Jared Curhan and four colleagues published five studies in the Journal of Applied Psychology on pauses in negotiation. In recorded negotiations, pairs who let a silence run three seconds or more reached agreements with more in them for both sides. When the researchers told one or both negotiators to pause that long, the agreements improved the same way.

The researchers also looked at why. The negotiators who paused showed more signs of thinking the problem through. They let go of the assumption that one side’s gain had to be the other’s loss. A second explanation was that a pause works by making the other side uncomfortable. The results fit the thinking explanation instead. There is one limit. In one study, the two negotiators clearly differed in standing, and the pauses of the negotiator with less standing did not help.

The negotiators in those studies were on two sides of a deal, and some were told to pause as a tactic. Ottilie is not using a pause on Mrs. Vanterpool. The pause is Mrs. Vanterpool’s, and she is using it to decide, which is what the quiet had won. The step from the studies to her garden is the course’s own. Ottilie’s first sentence into the four seconds took them away.

A pricing adviser says the recruiter who discounts first is negotiating with himself

Jon Brooks advises recruitment firms on their prices. In a post from August 2022, he describes recruiters “so apologetic about their prices that they discount them before they even start talking about them.” The sentence he hears is, “My rate is 25%, but for this role I can do it for 15%.”

The client, he writes, finds this confusing, even a client who wanted a discount. “After all, how do you start negotiating with someone who is already negotiating with themselves?” The recruiters he has helped to stop apologizing tell him, he writes, that they negotiate less, even though their fees are higher.

The recruiter’s second clause is the fill that arrives before the quiet has started. He handed back 10 points before the client could weigh the 25. The quiet after a complete answer belongs to the client, and so does whatever the client would have said into it.

Why filling the quiet with options goes wrong

Imagine a music teacher named Benedikt whose student, Maren, is 11. Her father, Mr. Haugen, asks whether she can be ready for the grade five exam in May. Benedikt has heard her play. “Yes,” he says. “Two lessons a week from January, and she’ll be ready. It’s $3,200 for the term.”

Mr. Haugen is quiet, working out the weekday afternoons. Benedikt means to help. “Or we could keep to one lesson a week and aim for the November exam,” he says. “There’s also a summer course I run, which would get her there by then. Some families prefer the other exam board, which has an easier sight-reading paper.”

Mr. Haugen now has four plans. He says he will talk it over with his wife. A week later he writes to ask which of the four Benedikt would recommend. Benedikt gives the answer he gave in the room, and the lessons start a week late. Mr. Haugen tells another parent at the school that Benedikt seemed unsure which exam to put her in.

The four plans felt like help, and the quiet was Mr. Haugen deciding on the first one. The answer that works is the one Benedikt gave, and then the quiet. If Mr. Haugen asks whether there is a slower route, Benedikt can give it then, because the question is his to ask.

Leaving the quiet alone is not being cold

Sitting in a client’s silence can feel rude, as if you have stopped helping. The client is looking at a sketch, and you are saying nothing.

Weinstein’s answer is the sentence she gives for the yes: “Let’s get you started.” Nothing in it is cold, and nothing in it is a pitch. The same is true of the quiet before the yes. Ottilie can look at the sketch with Mrs. Vanterpool, and she can answer a question the moment one comes. What she does not do is speak first. Warmth comes from attention, and attention is quiet.

How to finish your answer and leave the quiet to the client

1. Before the meeting, write the complete answer to the question the client is most likely to ask. It says what you would do, what it costs, and when it starts. Olpinski writes his out before every call, and so can you. For example, a private chef can write, “Dinner for 12 on the 20th is $2,600, with the shopping included. I’d confirm the menu with you a week before.”
2. In the meeting, say the answer and stop at the end of the start sentence. The next sentence in your head will be an extra, a cheaper option, or a reason. Leave it there.
3. Look at the client, or at the plan between you, and let the client be the next to speak. The quiet is the client deciding, and the decision is theirs.
4. When the client asks a question, answer that question and stop again. For example, a photographer who is asked whether the price includes an album can say, “No. The album is $900 on top, and it arrives six weeks after the wedding.”
5. When the client says yes, say what happens next, and nothing more about the job. For example, an event planner can say, “Good. I’ll send the agreement tonight, and we’ll meet at the venue on the 3rd.”
6. After the meeting, write down every sentence you added after a complete answer, and what the client did with it. Keep the list with the habits from your recording. The extras are the ones to catch before they leave your mouth next time.

Next: You will measure how long you can hold a quiet before you fill it, and train that number up to five seconds.