Make Your Sales Numbers
We recently conducted a workshop for sales reps and when we showed them the results from Hear! Hear? Your Listening Portfolio®, they were both shocked and enlightened. Their individual and group reports revealed them to be more interested in hearing themselves than listening to their customers.
Their comments ranged from: “Are you sure you tabulated these results correctly?” To: “Holy smokes, no wonder we don’t have such great relationships with our customers.”
The following day we showed the group report to their managers, without divulging anyone’s individual results, and there was a lot of head nodding. The managers, rather smugly said things such as, “I tell them over and over to listen to their customers, but they’re in too much of a hurry.” Or “Maybe that’s why they struggle every month to make their numbers.”
It would have been very easy to let it go at that, but we knew the managers were part of the problem. They had taken Hear! Hear? as well. We asked what they expected their results to look like. “Just the opposite of our reps. Our Extra-personal listening will be much stronger. We listen to others.”
That’s not what their results indicated. They were equally Inner-personal focused-listeners who cared more about their own interests than their customers, in this case the reps, not external customers. While there’s nothing the matter with being an Inner-personal listener, especially for technical people who have to connect new information to what they already know, that modality was not most fitting for those sales folks. The reps had to fully comprehend their customers’ needs, and the managers had to know what was going on with the reps.
We brought everyone together, managers and reps, to examine their listening habits and their impact on sales performance. No need to go through the whole process here with you, but let me tell you the three techniques we taught them to practice with clients to improve their sales numbers by being more flexible when they listened:
- Inquire.
- Check for Understanding.
- Go slow to move fast
Inquire: Clients are always flattered when you ask about their business goals, challenges, and history. It shows you’ve done your homework when you go into a sales call with some excellent thought-provoking questions already prepared. Most customers will gladly answer intelligent questions. If you show up with good inquiries, you will most likely be seen as interested, smart, thoughtful and on their side.
Check for understanding. Far too many sales people jump off an interaction too early. They think they “get it” when what they’ve gotten is their own interpretation of the task or problem, not necessarily what the customer has to share. “Let me see if I understand” should be the sales person’s mantra. Reiterate what the customer said, but in your words, not parroting, but paraphrasing. Both the rep and the customer should walk away from an interaction with clarity and confidence.
Go slow to move fast. What the sales managers said about the reps being in a hurry is the downfall of many sales pros. They want to Make the Sale, but that’s a transactional view of selling rather than being relationship-oriented, which is the more satisfying way to work with customers. We show our participants how to use body language to control the speed of an interaction and create comfortable space-sharing. It might take an up-front investment of time to establish a relationship, but it’s definitely worth it to become the go-to person down the road. Sales people who take time to get to know their customers build trust, which is a powerful sales tool.
The salesforce and managers in this anecdote are working on using all four of their listening modalities to gather the most information possible from customers, establish real relationships, and use well-vetted information to provide first-rate solutions.
