Like peanut butter and jelly, Fred and Ginger, or bees and honey, listening skills and sales skills go together perfectly.
In fact, they are truly an inseparable pair.
To be effective in the sales game, it is necessary to optimize two key areas of business communication: talking and listening. Unfortunately, getting the most out of the words that salespeople speak is impossible if they don’t get much, much more out of the words they hear during meetings with prospects.
So why don’t salespeople listen better?
For one thing, people tend to think at a much faster pace than they talk. Which means that as a prospect is speaking, the salesperson’s mind is likely to be taking off in multiple directions that go beyond the words heard by the ear.
Another factor, according to some studies, is that most people remember only about half of what is said to them during regular conversations. And for the career professional who’s looking for a boost to their sales skills, that 50% of un-retained information can easily make the difference between winning or losing an order.
Listening skills, then, are clearly critical to success in sales. Such skills can be mastered, but only over time and with strong dedication to continuous practice and education.
But as difficult as mastering listening skills may be, it starts with one simple commitment – that being to make listening (instead of talking) the number one priority in business meetings. By making that simple commitment, you’ll be on the way to improving your sales skills dramatically.
Seems almost too easy, doesn’t it? Well, we think it’s a lot easier said than done. There are at least a dozen different things you have to do well in order to enhance your listening skills. We’ll give you the first one now:
Verify, Confirm and Validate: By striving to periodically validate what you are hearing in a business meeting, you are opening up to better listening skills in a continuous way. Most seasoned sales professionals accomplish this by taking detailed notes, and using the lapses in conversation to jot down thoughts and challenges to information that’s presented by your prospect. Then, they ask their prospect thoughtful questions designed to confirm they’ve heard the information correctly. This constant verification of facts in real time keeps you engaged, informed and above all, it demonstrates your interest and credibility in the prospect’s eyes. In other words, they will readily see that you are listening and participating when you ask for clarification about information they offer.
There’s a lot more to better listening skills than just “validation,” but it’s a great first step. Stop by the bestsalesmantraining.com blog frequently, and we’ll continue to pass on our ideas for making you a better listener.
If you want to improve your listening skills, I highly recommend the resource below!
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