The noise of the day competes with our ability to listen. Those five-lane highways from our ears to our brains create the same congestion you’ll find in mid-town Manhattan on a Friday afternoon.

What goes into your ears competes with many other inputs, and we’re just not built to shift gears quickly. Negotiations expert Chris Voss says, “We can process only about seven pieces of information in our conscious mind at any moment. In other words, we are easily overwhelmed.”

The TOP 10% are those who understand how to avoid performance mode and get into listening mode when meeting with customers. Performance mode is delivering a 34-slide deck from beginning to end. Maybe breathing along the way, maybe not. Just because your marketing team built the presentation for you and your peers doesn’t mean you must deliver it linearly. Unless you’re presenting to scores of buyers in a formal, assembly-hall-type setting, ignore the pull toward performance mode and get yourself into conversation mode. Only when you’re in conversation mode can you start to show off your impressive listening skills.

Conversation mode, a.k.a. consultative selling, requires listening, not pitching. (Not performing.) The main path towards a successful shift from performance mode to conversation mode is to do your homework and develop strategic questions that can open the mouths and thoughts of your customers. Listening is an acquired skill, and you can start to get better at it by remembering one of the golden rules in sales: buyers want to be heard.