How Listening Behavior of Salespeople Affects Relationship Outcomes: Listening Skills in the Workplace
I came across this piece of research and thought two of the fresh points add to our discussion about listening. Although the research was aimed at salespeople, the findings are relevant to everyone.
Summary of the research:
Rosemary Ramsey of Eastern Kentucky University and Ravipreet Sohi of University of Nebraska, Lincoln, conducted research to determine how the perceived listening behavior of salespeople affects relationship outcomes. They defined several components of sales representatives’ listening. You can use these components to demonstrate that you are open to your customers’ needs and available to answer their questions. The components of salesperson listening as defined by Ramsey and Sohi include sensing verbal and nonverbal information, evaluating the information provided by the customer, and responding appropriately. Characteristics of an appropriate response include responding at appropriate times, giving enthusiastic responses, providing relevant answers to questions, and answering in full sentences instead of providing one-word answers.
The two points that caught my attention are:
- giving enthusiastic responses
- answering in full sentences instead of providing one-word answers
They didn’t elaborate, so I had to do some digging to understand how those behaviors would translate into being characteristics of an appropriate response.
An enthusiastic response is heard as caring, tuned in, and intelligent. Sitting facing the person, smiling lightly, fluctuating the tone-of-voice, making eye connection, indicate that the listener values and is enthusiastic about what the speaker has to say.
I’m writing a novel and one of the characters too often responds with few words, which annoys the protagonist who doesn’t really get much meaning from such brevity, but she sure assumes a lot. That’s exactly what happens when the salesperson doesn’t share his thinking with customers. The customer is often left without enough information to make a good buying decision, and consequently, might go elsewhere, make an unwise purchase, or assume lack of interest.
Selling is dependent upon creating relationships and these two tips are excellent to practice. They’re visual, physical and auditory relationship-builders.
