Listening for Leaks

People leak information while they talk. The good stuff isn't in the answer to your question — it's in the aside they drop on the way to the answer. The seller's job is to catch it.
A play from Stevenson Brooks · Glossary

The mechanic

Your customer is telling you how their year's been. Somewhere in the middle of the paragraph, they say:

"Yeah, 2022 was interesting. My son was born, which kind of changed my perspective on what I want the business to look like. Anyway, so we ended up..."

And they keep talking about the business. But something just leaked. He just told you his son is about two years old. He just told you becoming a father changed how he thinks about his business. He said it as a parenthetical — not the answer to your question — and most sellers will sail right past it because they're waiting for "the real answer."

"They say things like, 'yeah, well, it's been good. In 2022, my son was born. So that kind of changed.' And we just keep talking. But I kind of take a little mental note, like, oh, he became a father three years ago. Interesting. So I've got a follow-up question."

That's a leak. And leaks are where the real material lives.

Industry terms this page covers

What you might call it What I call it
"Active listening" Listening for leaks
"Reading between the lines" Catching the aside
"They mentioned something..." That was a leak — did you catch it?
"Small talk" Often where the biggest leaks happen

Why people leak

A leak happens when the customer is focused on something else — usually answering a different question — and a piece of information slips out on the side because they're not guarding it. The topic they meant to share was the business update. The thing that leaked was the personal context.

"While you're telling me a story, there's going to be some good stuff and some bad stuff that kind of leaks out. You don't really mean to say it, but like, 'and since, you know, my brother-in-law passed away, so what that did was...' And so I hear these little things. I may not jump on them yet, but I'm collecting little things that are leaking out of the conversation that you may not even know you're saying."

People will tell you things as asides that they would never answer if you asked them directly. "What's going on with your family?" is an intrusive question from a salesperson. "Yeah my brother-in-law just passed" dropped in the middle of a business update is a gift — because they volunteered it.

This is also why the information-pull framing works: the more they talk, the more they leak.

"If you're talking, you're going to leak."

So your job is to ask good open questions — then shut up and catch what falls out.

What a leak sounds like

Common shapes. Train your ears:

The parenthetical. "Yeah, so when I got back from vacation — my wife and I did Italy, which was great — we found out..." Leak: vacation to Italy. Wife name potentially available. Recently. Write it down.

The sigh-and-qualify. "Business is fine. I mean, it's been a rough year, but..." Leak: rough year. What's rough? Don't chase it yet, but clock it.

The casual mention of another person. "My partner Ish handles that side." Leak: partner's name. Write it down. Now you know one more person in the cast of characters.

The tense shift. "We used to pour with..." Leak: they changed suppliers. Why?

The off-topic reveal. "Anyway, sorry — been distracted, my dad's been in the hospital." Leak: father's health. They just told you a huge personal thing as an apology for being distracted.

The unprompted defense. "I mean, we're actually doing fine on volume, despite what people are saying." Leak: people are saying something. What are they saying?

Every one of these is data. The seller's job is to catch, not to ignore.

The two moves — note now, follow up later

Critical discipline: don't jump on the leak the moment it happens.

"I may not jump on them yet, but I'm collecting little things that are leaking out of the conversation that you may not even know you're saying."

Why not jump? Two reasons:

  1. It disrupts the flow. They were telling you something. If you derail them to chase the aside, they stop talking about the thing they were sharing — and often they'll close back up, because they now feel watched.
  2. It makes you look like a data extraction machine. Which you are, but you don't want them to feel it. Jumping on every leak telegraphs "I'm hunting."

The right move: mental note now, natural follow-up later. Sometimes later in the same conversation. Sometimes next week. Sometimes three months from now.

The follow-up is the real power. The customer realizes you actually heard them — and not just heard, remembered. That's when the relationship starts to thicken. (Feed the leaks into your fuzzy file the same day or they'll evaporate.)

Bucket-three questions are leak-harvesters

In the 3 Buckets of Questions framework, bucket three is where leaks flow most. Bucket one is surface-level stuff. Bucket two is business-context stuff. Bucket three is where the deeper, longer, story-based answers live — and those are the answers full of leaks.

"Bucket three — what happens is I call this leaking. As we sort of go this way, we're opening up. But they say things like 'we're talking, all of a sudden you say, yeah well it's been good. In 2022 my son was born, so that kind of changed.' And we just keep talking, but I kind of take a little mental note."

Which means the skill flow is:

  1. Ask a good bucket-3 question.
  2. Listen without interrupting.
  3. Catch leaks as they fall.
  4. Don't chase them.
  5. Note them. Move on.
  6. Use them later.

You leak too — be aware of what you're leaking

The mirror version of this: you are constantly leaking information to the customer, whether you mean to or not.

"As much as you think you're a good actor, you may be spreading some information that you don't want the customer to hear about. If it's hard to say, if everything is 'yes, but,' the customer hears that too. Because you say 'here's the thing, but...' — you don't say the 'but' to them, but they hear it. It's in there."

Examples of stuff that leaks out of you:

All of those leak, whether you mean them to or not. Customers catch them the same way you catch theirs — not with a magnifying glass, but subconsciously.

"We're not that good of actors. I'm trying to tell you — it may come out. When you say something with lax conviction, because you know there's a 'but' in there... it's very hard for us to hide."

The fix isn't acting better. The fix is not having internal states you need to hide. Easier said than done — but worth aiming for. Sellers who are congruent (inside and outside matching) don't leak. Sellers who are incongruent always do.

The "leaking into your own check-ins" move

One advanced application: deliberately leak information you want the right people to see.

"When I would write a check-in, so I call it leaking information. I would write the check-in like, 'I met with Tony. We discussed the recent mix design change that I helped him come up with so that we could save this and help that and do this. And he brought up how he would like to do this, this, and this moving forward.' I just put that data in there to make sure that everyone saw it in my check-ins. Now they're reading and they're like, 'oh, he just did some kind of mix design thing with somebody. Interesting.'"

Same mechanic, reversed. If you want your sales manager, QC team, or dispatcher to know something — drop it into a routine note, not a big announcement. The leak reads as natural. A big announcement reads as self-promotion. Both carry the same information, but the leak is better-tolerated.

Homework — the leak log

This week:

  1. On your next three customer conversations, carry a small notepad. Any time the customer drops a leak (parenthetical, aside, off-topic mention), write it down. Don't chase it in the moment — just catch.
  2. At end-of-day, transfer the leaks to the customer's fuzzy file.
  3. At the next conversation with that customer, find one leak from before to naturally follow up on. "Hey, how'd that thing with your brother go?"
  4. Also watch yourself. Note one moment this week where you think you leaked something to a customer you didn't mean to. What was it? What was going on inside you that let it out?

Where to go next

Source: drawn from 9 canonical moments across the live-coaching corpus — including the "if you're talking, you're going to leak" principle, the bucket-3-is-where-leaks-live framing, the mental-note-now-follow-up-later discipline, the "we're not that good of actors" warning about your own leaks, and the "leak it into your check-in notes" advanced move. Voice preserved.