Get Active...Listening

Both passive listeners and active listeners listen with their ears and their eyes. So what’s the difference?

Active listeners let the person speaking know that they they are listening. They do that verbally and non-verbally. And by doing so, they cause dialogue to continue longer than passive listeners. Active listeners come across as more credible and trustworthy than passive listeners too.

There are several ways to let the person talking know that you are listening:

Verbally, you can paraphrase, ask clarifying questions, dig deeper on their statements, and provide encouraging words like “I see”, “Uh-huh” or “Mmmm”.

Non-verbally, you can smile, lean forward, make good eye contact, take notes, and nod or shake your head.

Still, there are many obstacles to us being consistently great listeners. The key word is consistent.

Because most, not all by any means, but most salespeople are good listeners. Whether it comes naturally to them or they’ve learned how, the importance of listening as a key part of selling has been drilled into them.

Yet, not that many are great listeners. And very, very few are consistently great listeners.

Why is that? Because it’s hard work! It’s fatiguing. It requires a ton of mental discipline.

Every listening problem we have is mental. Hearing is physical. Staying focused on what you hear is mental.

Being distracted by noise, temperature, physical discomfort or being preoccupied with other thoughts while engaged in dialogue is a listening problem. But we’re the ones who have made that mental decision to be distracted.

Fake listening (sending positive verbal and non-verbal signals to the speaker that you’re listening, but you’re really not) is a listening problem. You’ve decided not to fully listen.   

Interrupting someone while they’re talking is a listening problem. Whether we’re bored with the topic, or they’re moving at too slow of a pace for us, or even  if we’re afraid we’ll forget what we were going to say, interrupting is a listening problem. Once again, our decision.

In order to become a consistently great listener, you have to first make the decision to become a consistently great listener. And then you begin building or improving the skill and discipline. Try it this week.

Have a great week!

Bob

P.S. Active lIstening is included in several classes I teach and I’m trying to decide if I should offer this as it’s own mini-course. What do you think? Just email me “good idea” or “bad idea”. [email protected] Thanks.