How to get your salespeople to actually listen

It’s no secret that customer focus is one of the key differentiators of highly effective sales teams. In fact, in her conversation with us last year, Tamara Schenk of CSO Insights shared that 94% of world-class sales teams work a “customer core” approach versus 39% of all respondents.

A truly customer-focused approach means that the marketing and selling process is aligned with how customers prefer to buy. And it also means that each individual salesperson, in each individual interaction, focuses on what each individual customer wants.

In other words, true customer focus can’t happen as long as your salespeople are too busy shoving products and features at the customer for the customer to get a word in edgewise. In fact, one of the most important things salespeople can do is learn to listen better. Here’s why, and the key skills you want to train in your people.

The sales value of good listening

We often tout the benefit of salespeople becoming trusted advisors. But what if your salespeople were more than just trusted by prospects? What if they were loved? That may seem far-fetched in an industry that the public loves to hate, but actually… that’s what listening does.

Psychologists tell us that when a person is listened to closely, their brain processes the experience the same way it processes the feeling of love. In other words, when a person feels listened to, they feel loved. This happens naturally, with no additional effort.

Yet many, perhaps even most, salespeople fail to harness this simple tool to build rapport and gain trust.

Why your salespeople are really bad listeners

Without training, very few people are naturally good listeners. And salespeople are notoriously bad. Why? Many people enter the sales profession because they’re extroverts. They like to be around people, and they like to talk. .

When they do listen, they usually make one of these mistakes:

• They jump in before the prospect is done, thus missing crucial information and often frustrating the customer.
• They “listen to respond.” In other words, they’re just waiting for the right moment to jump in and make their point.

But it’s not their fault. The way our brains are wired makes it difficult for most people to listen well. The study of heuristics looks at how our brain creates “shortcuts” that allow us to process the massive amounts of information we encounter on a daily basis. These shortcuts help us filter out unnecessary information so that we can focus. Unfortunately, they can also cause us to filter conversations looking for the “point” rather than allowing us to fully focus on what is being said.

When we give in to the shortcuts, however, we lose the opportunity to really understand our customer, to learn how we can best help them, and, importantly, to build a bond that is akin to love.

How to help your salespeople listen better

Listening is often talked about, but rarely effectively trained in sales departments. We tell our salespeople to “listen more” or “listen actively,” and then expect them simply to do it. Or we hire people hoping to get “good listeners,” not realizing that listening is not an inborn trait, but a set of skills that must be trained, practiced, and reinforced.

Here are nine key skills that constitute good listening:

1. Be fully present
   It sounds like something out of a Zen meditation, but “presence” is actually a scientifically measurable brain activity. It happens when the brain is fully focused on what is happening right now, rather than thinking ahead or thinking back or judging. It is also sometimes called being “in the zone.” Salespeople must learn to get “in the zone” of being fully focused on the prospect in order to effectively listen.
2. Learn to refocus attention
   It’s natural for the mind to wander during conversation. A skilled listener learns to notice when their mind wanders, and to bring their attention back to what the other person is saying.
3. Ask probing questions
   Listening is not just the act of shutting up and paying attention. It’s also an act of curiosity, and being genuinely interested in the speaker. Probing questions help guide the conversation and show that the salesperson is paying attention.
4. Shut up more than you open up
   Sales gurus often tell salespeople to build rapport by sharing stories and commonalities with the prospect. While it’s nice to share common interests, the truth is that you will gain much more traction simply by shutting up and really paying attention than by sharing your own anecdote about that time your nephew fell in the lake trying to pull in a giant bass. Many experts recommend talking no more than 30% of the time and letting the prospect talk the other 70%.
5. Embrace silence
   The typical salesperson cannot bear silence for more than one to two seconds. After that, the instinct to jump in and fix the awkward silence with words becomes overwhelming. Good listeners, on the other hand, embrace an occasional silence. Silence gives the prospect time to think, space to breathe, and the opportunity to present more questions or thoughts that may be key in progressing the deal.
6. Use the right body language
   Crossed arms, tapping fingers, and knitted brows can indicate impatience, rather than good listening. Good listening is often attended by uncrossed limbs, leaning forward, and eye contact. These can be difficult to master, as it’s easy to overcompensate and be too open and make too much eye contact.
7. Use the right words
   Just like body language, the spoken language is extremely important. The words people use provide clear pointers about how they think and what motivates them. If someone uses visual metaphors, they probably make sense of the world visually. If they say that they need to “get away from the mess”, instead of expressing the importance of “reaching our goal”, they might be more motivated by solving problems than achieving future outcomes (although they’re two sides of the same coin). Make sure to match their language and you will create rapport much more easily. That’s why #8 is mirroring…
8. Mirror
   Mirroring refers to the act of observing the prospect’s body language, gestures, words, tone, and pace and modeling your behavior on theirs. The human brain contains neurons called mirror neurons that help us to recognize when someone is “like” us and therefore can be trusted. Mirroring the prospect shows that you’re paying attention and triggers the prospect’s mirror neurons to tell them that you can be trusted. It also shows that you are fully present and paying attention.
9. Summarize and reflect
   Good listening is not just about being quiet and paying attention. It is also about how you respond when you do have the opportunity to speak. When a prospect has shared important information, effective salespeople respond first by summarizing the information and checking to ensure they’ve heard it correctly. This lets the prospect know that you were really listening, and that you understood them. It also gives them an opportunity to make corrections that otherwise could cause problems later. Reflection refers to the act of contributing your own thoughts to the information provided by the prospect, and opens the opportunity for the salesperson to begin co-creating a solution with the prospect.

Coaching Advice: Ask your salespeople to take quotes, not notes

Because our brains are overloaded with information, we filter, generalize and adjust what is being said to match our world view and intent. This is why salespeople can come from a meeting saying, “Wow, that was great. They are ready to go!”, while the sales manager - participating in the same meeting - leaves thinking “This was a pretty useless meeting!”. Most of the time, sales managers are not in the same room, which makes coaching salespeople about how to become better listeners and ask better questions is difficult.

My recommendation is to ask your salespeople to write down the actual words coming out of their prospects mouths instead of their personal interpretations. Users of Membrain should have their salespeople use the “why box” to “capture quotes instead of notes”. An open-ended question like “Why would delaying this project be a problem?” could generate a response (quote) like: “we’ve pushed this out multiple times, causing customer dissatisfaction. If we delay it further, we might start to see churn”. A salesperson with happy ears might stop there and note: “they need to buy our solution, or they will start to lose customers”, which is not what was said...

If the quote was written down, the salesperson should know to ask: "what would churn mean?", "how big of a problem could that become?", and "who would feel that pain?", etc. If those questions were not asked, the sales manager would know to coach accordingly. If your salespeople sell using phones, or web meetings, their calls can be recorded to assist with necessary coaching.

As you can see, effective listening is not a skill that can be trained once and learned overnight. It must be trained, coached, practiced, and reinforced. Highly effective sales teams recognize the importance of this skill, and build systems to ensure their people get the training and coaching they need, and are held accountable to the practice required to master the skills.

How well are your salespeople listening? What are you doing to help them gain this valuable skill? And is your technology supporting these efforts? Feel free to contact us to discuss how Membrain could help increase sales effectiveness.