How to Improve Your Active Listening Skills and Enhance Customer Engagement.
It’s a good sign in a relationship if you are able finish each other’s sentences right? Well, it isn’t a rule that’s set on in stone. It’s an awesome trait to possess when you are around your significant other, but is really bad manners when you are interacting with someone you share a professional relationship with.
This in particular is true when you are in sales. Excellent command over the language and having clarity of vision are great communication skills to posses if you are a sales person. There is this one interpersonal skill that has the potential to compliment and fortify your reputation as a salesperson with brains and heart - it’s called active listening.
I’m always amazed at how enthusiastic and talkative prospective customers become when they are around salespeople. The eclectic mix of the topics they can talk about is often mindblowing. Technology, arts, books, sports, politics, economy, poetry (oh yeah!) - it’s an endless list. With such a veritable mix of areas to chat up, you’ll expect time to fly by right? Expect Except that it won’t.
With the goal of closing a sale in mind, anything other than “lemme cut you a cheque” isn’t music to most ears. To avoid boredom, it isn’t uncommon for people to tune out of the conversation and take a mental nap. There isn’t any harm in not listening to a conversation when it has nothing specific to do with your business right? Nope, you can’t be more wrong.
Think of active listening as listening with all your senses and not just through your ears. Instead of just keeping your ears open and waiting for your turn to speak, it involves keeping your eyes and mind open during the conversation as well. It’s It isn’t selective listening or partial listening, it’s listening all the way. And remember, there are no shortcuts to listening!
What Can Go Wrong if I’m Not Listening?
Face is index of your mind. And, it definitely shows when you tune out of a conversation. Besides, not actively listening leads to missing the cues to steer the conversation your way and to pick up from where the customer left off. You’ll suddenly lose the chance of being remembered by the customer as “John, a fantastic chap”, to a salesperson who didn’t give a darn. It’s bad all around.
The rule of the thumb is simple. Are you ready to paraphrase what the customer was talking about when it’s your turn to speak? Then, you’ve earned yourselves an atta boy! Else, it’s no big deal. Let’s just quickly run through what it takes to develop your active listening skills.
3 Virtues That You Need to Excel at Active Listening
Patience - Now, that’s one unsung virtue. If sales is the career of your choice, then patience naturally becomes the virtue of necessity. It would be so meta if I told you need to be patient to learn patience. But, that’s the truth! It’s an art that you master over time. Take long walks and try staying quiet a few minutes everyday instropecting. Practice meditation or yoga. Gradually, you’ll notice that patience improves not just your active listening skills, but the quality of life itself!
Empathy - It’s the capacity to recognize emotions that are being experienced by others. I don’t want to sound cliched, but you learn about empathy when you start showing empathy. It really helps a lot if you stop seeing the customer as a walking cheque book and start looking him as a person trying to make an honest living.
Focus - Stay unplugged when you are in conversation with your customer. I mean it in every sense of the word - keep your mind open and turn off the mobile phone. Winning the customer’s trust is the goal and work towards it. If you are easily distracted, try taking notes during the conversation to drive the message home.
4 Things To Do To Break Active Listening Barriers
Well, that’s quite an ominous suggestion, don’t you think? What I mean is that, don’t rush to judge people right off the bat. Prejudice clouds your judgment and you won’t be able to give your customer a fair chance at explaining his side of things.
People have their own of ways getting the message across the table. Some might precisely address the point. Some might end up telling a story in the guise of explaining stuff to you. Tone, style of delivery, diction, dressing sense - there’ll be many avenues for you to brush a person aside without a second thought. Start counting to 100 and keep them off your mind.
There are major discrepancies in the ways people communicate their thoughts. If you start thinking, “Oh God! How stupid can he get?”, you will shut off your mind from that conversation.
The quickest way to crash land your active listening mission is by closing your mind before all the cards are laid out on the table. Don’t jump to conclusions at the first chance you get. Reserve your judgment till the end of the conversation and when you do, please be sure to keep it to yourselves!
Adjust Your Body Language and Maintain Eye Contact
Verbal communication is the key to active listening. But, that’s just one half of the equation. Non verbal communication is the other, significant half. With proper body language, you can accurately convey that you are indeed listening to what the other party has to say.
Nod your head in agreement, politely laugh at their jokes, express surprise, bewilderment or whatever emotion that’s appropriate through body language. By doing this, you encourage the speaker that you are all ears and slowly start gaining his trust.
Face the speaker straight and maintain eye contact as long as you’re sure that you’re not in a staring contest. Averting eye contact is alright at times, but looking around the room without purpose or glancing at your watch multiple times will distract the speaker.
A relaxed posture is one way to break the active listening barrier. It’s often comfortable to cross arms or legs when the conversation goes on for a bit. Unfortunately, it is seen as a psychological barrier indicating disinterest or closed nature. Similarly, slouching and adjusting your position constantly will make the speaker feel uncomfortable.
In my experience, I have found leaning forward to be a better alternative whenever I feel the need to shift my position. By leaning forward you demonstrate an interest in the conversation.
But, beware though, keep the body language at an optimal level. Just go with positive facial expressions and polite head nods.There is no room for the academy award material method actor inside you to make an appearance!
Reinforce with Positive Verbal Cues and Ask Questions to Understand Things Better
There are so many ways you can communicate your interest in the conversation verbally without speaking much. You’ll be surprised to see how far small verbal cues like “Mmm-hmm”, “Ah” and “Huh” take the conversation forward. It’s way better than staying quiet for a long time and look creepy!
Throw in a few, “Right”, “I see”, “That’s interesting”, “Go on”, “I agree” and see the speaker respond positively. It’s important to keep rotating the verbal cues to avoid sounding monotonic. I ask questions at regular intervals to clarify things or to seek additional information.
Watch out for the timing of the question though. Give the speaker time to pause or complete the sentence before putting across the question.
Better yet, give your feedback to the speaker. Felt great hearing that story when the speaker chased away a cheetah? It’s alright to tell him that he is freaking awesome. You might also express disbelief in a positive way. As along as the speaker isn’t offended, it’s all good!
I know that it’s totally boring to be a spectator. When I get that feel, I have found pitching in with a piece of information, a story or a statistic to reinforce the speaker’s argument work like gangbusters. No, I’m not asking you to “Yes Sir” your way through the conversation. Instead, offer insights that encourage the speaker’s argument when you actually have one.
Calling out him or her of being inaccurate or counter arguing the case to prove your intellectual superiority is totally unproductive. Stay out of it!
Paraphrase and Make Things Clear
I learnt paraphrasing and it’s importance the hard way - by actually doing it during each and every one of my telesale calls. Forgetting to paraphrase the customer’s lengthy rant or missing a few points meant messing up my KPI and getting a boatload of stinkers from the higher ups.
I get that it might look ridiculous repeating what the customer has just said, but ironically, that’s the whole point. I have seen customers soften up after hearing a pitch perfect paraphrased version of what they’ve just said. It shows that you actually understood what they are talking about.
Even the most aggressive customers tend to come around when they start to believe that you have understood what they are talking about, which is the first important step to get things sorted out. As an additional perk, you end up setting the expectations right. And, that’s a huge deal!
To get good at clean, perfect paraphrasing, you should ask the customer all the questions you have in mind. By getting all your doubts out of the way, there is no room for confusion for either one of you.
After getting all the necessary clarifications, start working your magic! Recite what in your perception the customer’s message was, and what’s it all about. If the customer offers a correction or has something more to add to your version, make a note of it and rinse and repeat the process.
The mission here is to align your understanding in line with the customer's intentions. And, the goal is to get there by asking the right questions every single time. A customer cannot get a better proof of your understanding of his problem!
What good is an advice that asks you to handle all the heavy lifting? Here is a list of tools that can assist you become an effective listener:
Go old school and carry with you a notepad. Take notes when the customer is speaking and put all the pieces together when you paraphrase. It’s also a nifty indication to the customer that you’re actually paying attention.
There are many limitations when you use a notebook though. As time flies by, you will find it difficult to find the right notes that could help you grasp things quickly in a follow up conversation. Misplace it and all your efforts go for a toss. That’s why you should look into the next tool in this list.
If you are into selling and not using a CRM, you are doing things the wrong way. The whole point of mastering active listening is to get better sales pipeline management. Technology does distract from active listening, but at the same time, it can help you become an expert listener in no time if used right.
By tracking leads and conversations in a CRM, you’ll never miss a beat even when engaging with a customer after a long period. Thanks to the notes you have saved in the CRM, you’re up to speed with all conversations you’ve had so far. Armed with that information, you’ll be in a better position to listen and understand, without having to play mental catch up with your own self!
Alright, this one is for extreme scenarios. Using digital voice recorders isn’t mainstream yet, as many customers do not like the idea in the first place. But, with the advent of smartphones and voice recording apps, it isn’t as crazy an idea as it used to be.
Voice recorders can come in handy when you are new to the concept of active listening and have a tough time keeping track of things. I personally prefer using Evernote for recording and playing the clips from multiple devices. A word of caution though - do not record a conversation without getting the consent of all parties involved in the conversation. I reiterate, it’s for extreme scenarios only and relying on recordings all the time will only hinder you from becoming an active listener.
Lending an ear to your customer isn’t such a bad thing. It isn’t rocket science or an art form. Rather it’s a courtesy that we should extend to our fellow human beings.
Thanks for actively listening to my arguments. Now, it’s your turn. Have you tried experimenting with active listening? Got a super cool tip to share? Sound off in the comments section!
