How To Listen People Into Buying

Once you are listening instead of talking, you will be ready to enhance your listening skills. Listening is a skill that can be learned and continually improved, but most of us have never been trained to listen. For example, which do we do most during the day, read or listen? Most of us generally listen more than we read, yet how many listening lessons did we get in school? It is not surprising that most people need help in becoming skillful listeners. The many evaluations we have conducted in our consulting work consistently show salespeople with miserable scores in the areas of listening skills.

Sales managers need to be especially mindful of the listening skill levels of your youngest salespeople who have grown up in today's fast-paced world of rock videos and Music Television (MTV). Their ears may have been deluged with more words in their young lives than many sales managers have ever even heard! As a matter of mental survival under a barrage of hyped-up verbiage, many young people have nearly turned off their listening skills.  They have certainly had little motivation to develop them.

Here are ten great pointers that can help sharpen listening skills in any situation:  

• Open your eyes, mind and ears to be truly receptive to the messages the other person presents.
• Begin listening from the very first word and give the person your undivided attention.
• Focus on what the prospect says. Avoid trying to figure out what the person is going to say; you may miss what he or she actually says.
• Do not try to read meanings into what you think the person is saying. Actively help the other person convey his or her meanings accurately to you.
• Never interrupt! Interrupting is offensive and rude. Also, it sends a subtle message that you are not serious about listening, possibly cutting off the dialogue flow.
• Control outside interruptions and distractions.
• Use questions to encourage people to talk and to clarify your understanding of what they mean.
• Make notes of important points. Look for connections between apparently isolated remarks.
• Get your whole body involved in listening and show that you are paying attention. Look the person squarely in the eye, using facial expressions and other non-verbal clues to show that you hear and understand what they say.
• Remain calm. Never overreact to highly charged words and tones. Hear the person out, then respond. Most people will cool down and begin to talk calmly once they vent their anger and frustrations.

Remember, your objective is to listen your prospect into buying. You do not need to remind yourself of what you think, you must find out what your prospect thinks. There is not one sales principle that requires you to "get your two cents worth in."

Perhaps a little listening would also help as we look around the Triad at everyone who is desperately trying "to be heard." Anti Fed-Ex groups, Pro Fed-Ex groups, Anti and Pro Randleman Dam groups, pro-school and anti-school redistricting groups...the list goes on. How about your customers.  Aren't they just trying to be heard, too? Think about it...and start asking the right questions.