Why Listening is more Important than Talking on the Phone

Good sales people have the gift of the gab don’t they? They can sell ice to an Eskimo. Or that’s what we were told in the past. The problem is that’s a fundamentally flawed assumption. Who likes being spoken to at high speed, making you feel like you’re being sprayed with words by a high pressure jet wash?Fast talking sales people come across as slimy and insincere and buyers won’t put up with that style of sales patter. Today, buyers have so many purchasing choices. Good quality

Telemarketing is much less about talking and more about listening. It is about quickly demonstrating an understanding of buyer challenges. It is about showing empathy and demonstrating genuine benefits rather than overt selling. Good sales people get to the heart of buyer concerns and issues and help them to solve them. If you want to sell more of your product and services at a higher value, you’d better stop selling and start solving. If you want buyers to engage with you, the following are the things you must do:

1. Listen actively without being distracted and with a view to genuinely understanding first and selling second even if that means no sale is forthcoming
2. Signpost that you are listening by appropriate comments such as ‘I understand’ so that the speaker knows you are in the conversation.
3. Intersperse the discussion with relevant questions that are for clarification and understanding and not in order to work out how many more of your products you can sell.
4. Summarise what you’ve understood and check if that is correct.
5. Steer the conversation using questions but don’t have a predetermined outcome in mind. Yes, you want to sell but you can’t sell if you don’t know whether your solution fits the buyer needs.

If you can build a bridge to your clients by listening and understanding, they will

1. Like you more
2. Engage with you more
3. Tell you more
4. Find a way to use your services
5. Recommend you