Asking Questions – Active Listening

Dated: 15 December,2010

When qualifying a client you will spend a great amount of time asking questions in order to glean information and, in turn, actively listening to what the client has to say. The best sales people ask a lot of questions and genuinely listen to the answers. By asking pertinent questions and listening much more than you talk, you will learn a lot about your prospect and it will enhance your ability to close the deal.

If you want to connect better with your prospects, nobody will get jealous about this (unless it’s one of your colleagues who has had enough of being beaten to the finishing line by your superb closing skills). However, when in pursuit of a variety of personal prospects, they can be quick to become jealous at the very thought of you sharing your attention with someone else. With your client, there is no better way to connect than to listen carefully to what he has to say. Your girlfriend might tell you the same thing about your relationship – but she doesn’t understand that there’s no commission in the deal for you. Hence your sluggish approach to having your ear bent at her every whim!

Active listening means you will listen patiently and actively pay attention to what the client has to say. Try to understand the feeling that your client is expressing as well as the intellectual content of the conversation. Encourage your client to talk, and then listen, not only for what IS said, but for what IS NOT said. It’s wise not to become emotionally involved in the conversation yourself. It is your task to understand first and to defer evaluation until later.

Your girlfriend, on the other hand may always encourage you to get more emotionally involved in the conversation, but she’ll also want you to understand that it is your task – no, your DUTY – to understand first and to defer judgment until later. In fact, she may well ask you to forget all about the judgment part and to simply keep your opinions to yourself. At least with your clients you can become an expert at listening and absorbing the pertinent information and still earn a decent commission from it when you manage to close the deal successfully.

In short, you can get to understand a customer’s situation, his needs and his wants, by asking great questions. If you master the art of asking intelligent questions, the prospect will tell you what they want and how they want it – which spells out to you exactly how you need to sell the solution. Wouldn’t it be great if the same process and logic could be applied to personal relationships?!

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This is an excerpt from my latest book “Selling Is Better Than Sex”. If you want to learn how to ask the right sales questions to better qualify prospects, get the book today from Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble or Chapters-Indigo in Canada. If you want to get a signed copy, order it directly from me – www.SellingIsBetter.com

Click here to read this post at The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Majer.

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