Anyone who reads my blogs or participates in my seminars or coaching programs know that I am passionate about the importance of effective communication skills in the sales process.  A recent series of questions that I posted on LinkedIn.com reveals that, as a profession, we are still not learning to do this effectively.  A simple question, “What is a bad sales behavior or trait you see too much of and would like eliminated or corrected?” revealed a wide range of responses.

Most of the responses focused on the fact that sales people are simply not utilizing effective communication skills to build the connection, listen to the client, or recognize and understand that there is no real business opportunity.  Here are some excerpts from those who submitted responses:

• Sales is about listening, not steamrolling someone with all the reasons you think they should buy.
• They are talking at their audience, not engaging them in a dialog. If they understood the real power of using different types of questions to solicit participation from their prospects, they would not waste valuable time, create better relationships with their customers and close more business.
• Sales people who talk more than listen, and then keep talking.
• Reps should try shutting up and listening a bit more, we have one mouth and two ears for a reason! They should know this and remember it.
• The Show Up and Throw Up technique. Sales people that just fire product/service pitch after service/product pitch at their prospect in hopes that something sticks. Or, The ‘I have the perfect solution for you! by the way, what’s your problem?’ technique.

We all get the idea.  If you want to join in on this conversation, please feel free to answer the open question on LinkedIn.com.  The bottom line is that people do not have time for sales people who are more interested in selling their stuff than they are about learning about and solving the real problems of their clients.  Until we, as sales people, start doing a better job of this, we are going to keep getting branded as pushy, aggressive, talkers that no one has time for.  One of the submissions to this post provides a great close: “Selling at its heart IS communication. When a salesperson is listening actively and is truly interested in what is being said, the sales resistance from the client is often diminished and the customer feels understood–creating the environment for a sale to take place. No listening = No sale.” —Paul Comi, Jr. Right on Paul, enough said.