Summarise a buyer's situation in their own words and check with them that you have it right.
In most sales conversations there is a point, after you have asked your discovery questions, when the buyer pauses and it is your turn to speak. Most sellers use that pause to start presenting what they sell. The better move is to tell the buyer what you heard first, before you suggest anything.
A summary is a short retelling of the buyer's situation, in their words, followed by a check that you have it right. It takes under a minute, and it is one of the most useful things you will say in the whole conversation. Module 5, Run your first sales conversation, uses the summary as the bridge between asking questions and suggesting a next step.
It proves you listened. Buyers are used to sellers who nod along and then pitch something that ignores half of what was said. When you play the situation back accurately, including details the buyer mentioned only once, they can see you paid attention. This adds to intimacy and credibility, two of the trust components covered in Lesson 2.1, What trust is made of.
It gives the buyer a chance to correct you or add something. Hearing their own situation described by someone else often makes people realise what they left out. A buyer who says something like "Yes, and actually the bigger issue is..." has just given you very valuable information. A summary invites that kind of addition more reliably than another question does.
It gives you both the same starting point. Whatever you suggest next will be measured against the summary, by you and by the buyer, so the summary has to be accurate.
Grace (an invented example) runs a tuition centre in Bishan with two other teachers. She is talking to a seller about scheduling software. After twenty minutes of good questions, the seller summarises what she has said:
She has about sixty students across three teachers. Bookings arrive by WhatsApp, in a paper diary, and sometimes from a parent stopping her at the door. She sorts out the timetable on Sunday nights, which she called "the worst part of my week". Twice this term a student turned up when nobody was free to teach them. She is less worried about cost than about the parents, who are used to messaging her directly, and she does not want them to feel pushed onto an app.
The seller ends with: "Did I get that right, or have I missed anything?"
Grace replies that it is exactly it, and that the parents issue is actually the big one. The seller now knows what to talk about next: how parents would book. That matters more to Grace than anything on the software's feature list.
Use the buyer's words rather than the language of your industry. Translating what they said into a product category can be accurate and still feel cold to the person hearing it. Suppose a buyer tells you they lie awake worrying that if something happens to them, their kids will have to leave their school. A seller who summarises this as a "protection gap" needing "income replacement cover" has turned a parent's worry about their children into the seller's product category. The buyer will hear that the seller was listening for a sale.
Keep their words especially for the problem and for how it feels. If they said "the books are a mess", say "the books are a mess". Saying "you need better financial record-keeping" describes the same thing in words they did not choose. Lesson 1.1 made the same point about the problem sentence: the buyer's own words are what make them recognise it.
If the buyer mentioned a specific person or a specific number, put it in the summary. Grace's seller quoted "the worst part of my week" exactly and included the two times a student arrived with no teacher free.
Notes make this much easier. When a buyer says something memorably, write it down word for word during the conversation. Those verbatim phrases become the backbone of your summary.
A summary without a check is only a statement, and buyers will often let a wrong statement pass because correcting the seller feels rude. The question you close with should make correction easy.
"Did I get that right?" works. "What did I miss?" works better, because it assumes something was missed and makes adding to the picture feel normal. After you ask, wait. Do not fill the silence, even if it lasts a few seconds longer than feels comfortable.
If the buyer adds something, fold it into your understanding. If the addition changes the picture, summarise again briefly so you both have the updated version.
A reply like "that's exactly it" tells you the buyer agrees you understand their situation as they see it. At that point you have earned the right to suggest something. Before it, any recommendation is a guess about someone you have just met. After it, your recommendation is a response to what the buyer told you, and the buyer knows that.
If the buyer says "sort of", or corrects something important, you have not earned that right yet. Ask another question, listen to the answer, and summarise again. The second summary will be more accurate, and the buyer will notice that you took the correction seriously.
To put this in order: finish your discovery questions and resist presenting when the buyer pauses. Retell their situation briefly in their own words, using the phrases you noted, the people and numbers they mentioned, and the details they said only once. Close with a question that makes correction easy, then wait. Fold in anything they add, summarise again if the picture changes, and suggest something only once they confirm you have it.
For now, practise this outside sales, where the stakes are lower. Pick someone you will talk to properly in the next day or two, such as a client, a colleague with a problem, or a friend making a decision, and plan to listen with a summary in mind.
After your next conversation with a client or colleague, write a three-sentence summary of their situation and send it to them to confirm.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).