You can tell the quality of the sales call by who is doing the talking. If your customer is doing 80% of the talking and you’re talking 20% give yourself some points. You want customers to feel comfortable with you. You need the information that only they have. You also need to hear if and how your customers understand your message. You can only learn this if they talk with you. If you remember that telling is not selling, you can appreciate letting the customer do most of the talking. Bob Pike, a nationally recognized sales trainer, told me about a very important study of commissioned salespeople. He said the only predictor of success was the amount of talking done by the salesman. The successful salesman talked 12 minutes while the less successful salesman talked 23 minutes.