Listening Skills - The Lost Art!

In the view of this author, listening skills are the most important skills a sales professional can possess. Without them, you’ll throw chili against the wall hoping that something will stick with the prospect. Hoping is not a good sales strategy. With good listening skills, you'll understand the prospect's needs better of course, but most important, you will breathe enthusiasm and energy into the relationship between you and the prospect.

An over-used phrase in our profession, albeit true, is that "people buy from people they like." I think it's better to say, "People buy from people who listen." Think about it. Why is your best friend your best friend? I'll bet because s/he is a great listener for you.

But listening is a hard skill to command. Much of what I'll offer in these remaining paragraphs comes from Steven Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and his chapter “Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood.” This chapter is mandatory reading for every aspiring sales professional in my opinion. It will truly teach you how to listen better.

Think about the four forms of communication: reading, writing, speaking and listening. How many years of schooling did you get in reading, writing and speaking? Maybe more than you wanted! How much schooling did you receive in listening? This seems to be a skill that our educators expect us to learn on our own, if at all. Or perhaps it has never been valued as a required skill – much to the demise of the sales pro that must depend on this skill at every interaction with a client. Why? Your prospect really needs to be understood first and foremost. Then, and only then, will they truly start to listen to you. The oldest job interview tactic in the world is to get the interviewer to talk more about themselves and their company than to pull words from you. People love to talk about themselves, their issues and their challenges. Use this same approach in your sales encounters.

It is one of our greatest psychological needs, to be understood. We don’t often need agreement and support for our thoughts and ideas, we only need empathy. Don’t confuse empathy with sympathy. Dictionary.com defines empathy as: “the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.” Simply put, you’re able to put yourself in the other person’s shoes. Rather than respond with empathy in a discussion, us human beings tend to listen with the intent of responding. Just like a tennis match, we’re thinking about our next shot while the opposing player is executing his/her’s.

If we’re thinking about our next response to a prospect while s/he is speaking, how can we possibly be listening? Instead, show empathy by taking what you hear from the prospect and paraphrasing it back to the prospect. Show it in your body language that you care. Be genuine. Don’t worry about your response should be. If you empathize well, you won’t need much of a response. Rather, you’ll see the relationship between you and your prospect grow with energy and enthusiasm. Inevitably, s/he will buy from you because they like you!

TIP: I test for listening skills in the interview process with one very simple question: “How much money do you NEED to make?” Seventy five percent of the candidates come back with something like, “We’ll I’d really like to make $X”. Wrong answer! I did not ask how much you wanted to make, I asked how much you need to make. That’s a big difference! I also like to ask this question because in many sales positions, a ramp up period is before the new hire and s/he may have to live only on a base salary for a period of time.