Listening

Of the myriad of techniques, closes and communication skills all needed to make a sales person successful, nothing is more simple and more essential that the act of listening. Nor is anything any more difficult.

The key to success in any selling situation is to know what your client needs and the best route to their needs is through their knowledge and ideas. Your solution, no matter how common, needs to be based on the requests and spoken needs of the client. By asking questions about their current situation, past experiences, desired changes, and dissatisfaction, we can open the door to knowing the critical needs and expectations of every client. This is basic sales.

However, if we are too focused on the questions we might ask, preplanned responses and presentations, we might just fail to use the one most critical tool in our sales bag: our ears and minds. We must listen to the client. We must not only hear their words, but listen to the emotion, or lack of emotion around the topics. As we tune in to this exchange, we gain the valuable information we need to truly understand what we have to offer to this person, group or company.

The old adage is true enough, "We were given one mouth and two ears." So listen twice as much as you talk.