Having these answers laid out enables you to avoid moving too fast through your sales conversation and/or miss an answer you needed or opportunity to influence buyer decision criteria with your differentiation. Every time you’ve developed great discovery questions and a question flow, ask yourself: What’s the answer you want to get to before you move on to the next question?ĭefining the answers you want to hear is a simple way to improve your pre-call planning routine and help you ensure you’re digging deep enough in your discovery conversations. Remember, buyers don’t like to be persuaded, but they rarely argue with their own conclusions. Preparing to actively listen and being audible-ready (or prepared to respond based on what you’re hearing) will help you map the conversation in a way that gets the buyer to come to the conclusions you need them to get to. Sellers often spend a lot of time considering, “What questions can I use to uncover negative consequences, positive business outcomes, before and after scenarios, etc.?” Great preparation can help you develop an effective question flow if you’re actively listening to the answers and responding accordingly. This communication technique is key to overcoming the Seller Deficit Disorder, which we often refer to as the bias buyers have where they immediately believe salespeople don’t listen and don’t understand their business problems. Instead, you’re truly listening, in a way that will help you build rapport, and allow you to help find a solution to the prospects’ business problems. You’re not waiting simply for your chance to talk. By actively listening, you can better engage with your prospects, asking more relevant questions and keep them interested in sharing bigger concerns (which mean bigger dollars).
#Active listening definition how to#
In sales, active listening means giving your full attention to the speaker and their answers, so you can understand their position and how to further the conversation. Understand what preparing to actively listen looks like and how you can refine your listening skill set to sell more, faster. Many people think they are good listeners, but sadly miss the mark.Īctive listening is a key skill that elite sellers possess - and they are able to speed up their deals and close at better margins because of it. Listening is just as crucial, yet not always the easiest to master. And that common ground cannot be established without respect for the words as spoken by the speaker, for whatever reason.Great discovery questions can only get you so far if you’re not prepared to really listen to the answer in a way that enables you to dig deeper or pivot decisively. Dialogue, understanding and progress can only arise from that common ground. Nevertheless it is common ground, once accepted as understood. Common ground can be false, i.e., a person says they feel a certain way but they do not. Successful communication is the establishment of common ground between two people-understanding. A search of the term reveals interpretations of the "activity" as including "interpreting body language" or focusing on something other than or in addition to words. There are many opinions on what is "active listening". Active listening is a structured way of listening and responding to others, focusing attention on the "function" of communicating objectively as opposed to focusing on "forms", passive expression or subjectivity. When interacting, people often "wait to speak" rather than listening attentively.
Freebase (3.67 / 3 votes) Rate this definition:Īctive listening is a communication technique that requires the listener to feed back what they hear to the speaker, by way of re-stating or paraphrasing what they have heard in their own words, to confirm what they have heard and moreover, to confirm the understanding of both parties.
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