The Impact of Active Listening

If you can balance talking and listening, you have a significant advantage. In driving sales performance, it can be the difference between being okay at what you do and being a superstar.

My grandmother always said, “you have two ears and one mouth for a reason”. She had good reason to remind me of this often.

As a child, I got into trouble for talking too much. It featured in every school report and I am sure that my parents must have sighed with relief once I finally fell asleep at night.

In this blog, I will discuss some of the reasons why it’s important to really listen and how it can affect your business down the line.

“I’ve concluded that the interpretation of a message is 7 per cent verbal, 38 per cent vocal and 55 per cent visual. Therefore, 93 per cent of communication is “nonverbal” in nature.”  Dr Mehrabian

A Career in Nursing Taught Me to Listen

Some of the worst salespeople talk far too much and don’t LISTEN enough. It’s possible to close some deals without being a good listener but you won’t be so lucky every time.

Learning to actively listen will help you throughout your life, not only in sales. Good listening skills contribute to building personal and professional relationships. Listening skills can be learned so don’t worry if you don’t listen as well as you’d like.

I learned how to listen properly when I was in my late teens. When I started my career in nursing, I quickly figured out the value of listening. I had patients telling me that they weren’t in pain, but the readings on the observation machines and their body language told a different story, and therefore I needed to act on more than the words alone.

You May Need to Ditch Your Sales Pitch to Increase Sales Performance

You might have an hour with a prospect to talk about your product or service. To get the most out of that time, spend a greater proportion of the time asking questions so that you truly understand the prospect’s perspective.

I’ve seen very experienced Business Owners, Business Development and Sales professionals sit in front of their #1 target customer and completely destroy the opportunity. Having an hour to pitch their product … and spending 95% of the time on the dreaded ‘death by PowerPoint’ slide deck, and without letting the target customer even comment. Crazy! 

Sales pitches tend to have recycled content with misaligned message or language that's not relatable to those in the room. They’re often delivered on autopilot, without enough attention to the audience’s response or asking pertinent questions. A prospect, who can write a check, or influence the sales process to be closed, will be bored, or even offended. The truth is a sales conversation is almost never one-size-fits-all.

Using the same pitch again and again just won’t do. The goal isn’t the race through the slide deck but rather to get a good understanding of the prospect’s challenge and how you can help. Active listening also provides an opportunity to co-develop ideas.

You Gain More Than Sales from Listening

Sales performance aside, active listening drives a strong team culture. Salespeople become better listeners and it spreads to other parts of the organisation, strengthening communication and collaboration.

By creating a culture where every salesperson has a genuine interest in what’s being said, the understanding of the marketplace and the data gathered from that could be the difference between success and failure. The best strategies and value proposition come from deep listening and market testing.

Great sales is about good questioning and listening not talking and selling. Whether you’re meeting in-person or online, really listening is an invaluable skill that could lead to high-performing sales.

If you’d like to know more about how to identify and rectify gaps in your salespeople’s active listening skills, please get in touch. I’d be delighted to hear from you.