When communicating with salespeople, I always ask them “what are the keys to effective sales success?” Since they have all been to sales school, their answer usually focuses around listening, asking questions, and building relationships. When I inquire further as to what that means, I receive a wide range of answers that usually miss the mark. I write about listening more than anything else because I find it is the most critical, yet most poorly applied technique in sales.
Effective listening is not listening for an opportunity for you to sell something. Effective listening requires the commitment to explore, understand, and know how you can be a professional resource to your customers, your clients, and your connections.
Here is a segment taken from an insightful blog on effective listening. The message is quite clear. Perhaps hearing this from someone else other than me may help you break those bad habits.
“Because it’s one thing to listen. And it’s quite another to know what you’re listening for. It’s even beyond ‘active’ listening…We call this the ‘passion conversation.’ That’s what we’re listening for. Not the conversation about your product, but the conversation about people’s lives and how you might be lucky enough to fit into it. Because you can do something with those conversations. Not just try to get people to talk louder and more about you. That strategy will fail every time…Be open to what you’re listening for. Don’t monitor the conversation, learn from it beyond what your competition is learning from it. Listen in a way that will help you reframe how and what you do and why you’re doing it.” ~ Spike
I think I have said enough about listening, unless you continue to not listen. The questions, the answers, the passion, the energy, the emotions, and the conversation are all components of the learning process associated with effective listening. Spend more time paying attention to them and what they are saying and less on you and what you want. After all, you are there to learn from them, learn about them, and understand exactly how you can be a resource for them. That is a lot of listening.
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