Is anyone really listening?

One of the most powerful skills you can develop is your ability to listen. You may have heard me say, “The best way to be interesting is to be interested. The reason this principle is essential is because it makes your customers feel important. This feeling is so powerful it will help your customers filter through your competitors to find and connect with you.

We have all met people who are poor listeners, and we judge them as being either ignorant or arrogant. And fair enough some of you may say. But just because someone doesn’t listen intently to you, doesn’t necessarily suggest they are not interested in you. It could simply mean they absorb information in a different way.

Put simply, human beings learn via three key styles:

1. Auditory: enjoy listening to learn, ie. radio, iPod or someone speaking to them;
2. Visual: prefer to learn by seeing things mapped out in pictures or diagrams;
3. Kinaesthetic: touch and feeling, prefer to play with things to learn.

The first step to understand how to communicate to others is to know your own learning style. In my case it’s all three, but predominantly, kinaesthetic. Never buy me something from IKEA, I won’t ever read the instructions and then spend the next three days frustrated playing around trying to build something that should have taken an hour. But I enjoy it.

Understanding how you absorb information is important because this gives you an insight into how others take in your information. When I sell I employ a combination of communication styles to encapsulate all three learning preferences. I also have methods for learning about my clients prior to a meeting and importantly during so I can adapt my style accordingly to focus more on the predominant learning style.

To learn about your customers’ styles you need to ask them questions and then really listen to their responses and gauge their reactions. 55% of their response will be via their body language, 35% tonality and 10% words. So what they say can be very different to what they actually mean. Their body language and tone will help you understand what’s really being said.

For example, half way through a verbal pitch (auditory) if you see your customer’s eyes glazing over then change your approach, stop the conversation and move to a whiteboard or pad and start mapping out your ideas (visual) so they can see them. If that fails, then offer to give them an opportunity to play with your ideas (kinaesthetic) somehow.

What and how you do it is up to you, just don’t make the mistake of delivering one communication technique to varying learning styles. Remember, words are meaningless without emotions and your relationships won’t be meaningful until you start really listening.

For more Selling Strategies advice, click here.

Trent Leyshan is the founder and CEO of BOOM Sales! a leading sales training and sales development specialist. He is also the creator of The NAKED Salesman, BOOMOLOGY! RetroService, and the Empathy Selling Process.