People need to trust you in a selling situation. They need to feel comfortable opening up to you and sharing their concerns, fears, and hopes. You need to be viewed as a trusted advisor to succeed in sales.
An important part of gaining someone’s trust and being a good communicator is to be a great listener.
Next to survival, one of the greatest needs we have as human beings is the need to be understood.
Known for their “gift of gab,” salespeople, unfortunately, seem to spend most of their time in
transmit
mode when they should be in
receive
mode.
Poor listening habits can lead to numerous misunderstandings and conflicts. Research indicates that, on average, we retain about 50% of the main content of a ten-minute speech immediately after listening to it. A conservative estimate is that most people retain no more than 25% of what they hear after two days. People often listen with the intent to respond, instead of listening with the intent to understand. Basically, we communicate in four ways. We speak, we write, we read, and we listen. The first three we learned in school, but we were not taught the most important part of communication – how to listen. As a result, most people are poor listeners, even though it is one of the most prized inter-personal skills. We typically listen at one of the following levels:
Prospect says, “We won’t hit our numbers this year.”
Add some of these types of active listening responses to your repertoire and watch your ability to communicate more effectively skyrocket.
Self-Study Assignment:
Are you a good listener? Are you dominating the conversation, or practicing active listening? On your next call, make a concerted effort to be a better listener, and see how much more information you are able to get.