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This Navy vet and best-selling author on behavior profiling, persuasion, and human influence, Chase Hughes went on Joe Rogan’s and described a CIA technique called elicitation. The premise being: the more sensitive the information you want, the fewer questions you should ask.

His example: a KGB officer walks up to a 19-year-old American sailor at a bar and says our submarines are faster because our propellers are 19 feet wide. The sailor can't help himself. "Ours are 21." Nobody asked him anything. The kid just handed over a number he'd never have given to a direct question.

You may already run a softer version of this. But it hasn’t been named.

Alex Feinberg put it in sales terms. The most talented rep he worked with at Google used statements like this to pull client budget info, and so did his Hall of Fame college baseball coach. The best way to get information is to make a statement and watch how the other person reacts.

People have egos and want to be 100% right. A question puts the prospect on guard. A wrong statement hands them the expert's chair, and correcting you feels like winning.

Someone else in the thread called it "providing a hole." You leave a gap or say something slightly off, and the other person fills it without thinking.

On a call, this looks like:

"Most teams your size are already running this through two or three tools." (They tell you their actual stack.)

"Sounds like this sits with procurement, not you." (They tell you who really signs.)

"Figure you're looking at next quarter at the earliest." (They correct the timeline fast if it's sooner.)

It plays like normal conversation. You float a small, wrong assumption and let their need to set you straight do the work.

Here are two cautions to be aware of:

It's detectable. Lean on it too hard in one conversation and you stop sounding curious and start sounding like a technique. You get one or two of these per call before it turns weird.

And it doesn't work on everyone. As one guy noted, it falls apart on someone who lies in every conversation already. A reflexive liar corrects you with more garbage. With those prospects, statements get you noise instead of signal.

The trick itself is the easy part. The real skill is knowing which number you're fishing for before you bait the hook. Budget, authority, timeline, current vendor. Pick one. Float a wrong version of it. Then shut up and watch/listen for their reaction.

Stop filling silence with another question like every other sales rep. The good ones fill it with a statement they suspect is wrong, and let the prospect prove just how much they know.

Here are some open sales roles to check out:

Have an open role you want to promote? Inquire here.