11/2/2023-Listening

Growing your ability to listen better in a customer pitch meeting is not based on how well you know your talk tracks, it’s based on the quality of the questions you ask.

Of all the requisite sales skills and traits, listening is the hardest to master.

There’s just too many distractions and too much noise in the world. For sellers, listening is partly stunted by the many things we think we have to say. That goes for client meetings and internal meetings, too.

Listening takes real concentration.

MySalesDay often writes about listening because an on/off listening switch does not exist.

However, of all the cheap tricks that one can use to focus your eardrums, one is tops among everything else.

Asking your customer smart, strategic, open-ended questions forces you to listen intently. (You can’t help but listen sharply.)

Today, create at least three questions for each of your client meetings. Write them down on your meeting agendas…and be sure to ask them in your meetings!

That’s it…that’s today’s DO.

You may still have to pull out all the other tricks to help you stay focused, but writing down your questions guarantees you’ll hear what your customer says.

Most sellers have been taught a pitch script and are then instructed to give the same pitch to each client.

Do you think your prospects will notice they’re getting a one-size-fits-all pitch?

In your customer meetings, you will always need to pitch an idea, a concept, a solution, or a feature of your offering, but be wary of spending too much time in performance mode versus conversation mode. The goal is to listen to the customer, and it’s hard to hear them when you’re pitching.

Some might call that consultative selling, and they’d be accurate. And yes, it takes discipline to spend more time in asking and conversation mode, but you’re smart; you can do it. Appreciate what a customer-centric sales call should look like; mostly, it means THEY talk more than you! A lot more.

You’ll know you’re successful when you start hearing better information and more insights that help you sculpt good solutions for the customer. And, of course, you’ll start to see trust grow, too…who knows, perhaps your phone will start ringing more.

The 19 minutes you’ll spend with Julian Treasure’s Ted Talk on listening is worth it if you want to sharpen your skills.

Julian offers, "We spend up to 60% of our communication time listening. And yet…our listening comprehension is just 25%, which means that three words in four spoken to us just disappear."

It’s easy to feel some fatigue about this issue – you’ve heard you need to work on your listening since you were born. (Your mom meant well!) But if you’re constantly worried you’ll miss something crucially important out of your customer’s mouth, keep working at it.