I was talking to a friend last week and they said, “James, you talk way too much on sales calls!!!?”

I was taken aback.

I mean I spend around 20 minutes of a 60-minute call explaining what we do. That’s fine, right?

Apparently not.

According to this person, professional services businesses should only spend 10% of a call i.e. 6 minutes talking about what they do.

They argued that you can talk through a lot in 6 minutes and it forces you to focus on the truly beneficial components of what you do. Any longer and you can lose people?

Then I came across the research in the image from Sales Insights Lab, which analysed 23,900 sales reps. It completely backed it up!

Since then I’ve pulled back my talking and the reaction has been positive.

So what do you think? Is 10% of a call enough to explain what you do? Let me know in the comments.

Happy selling, James