What’s one sales skill that you will work on this year? Your listening skills can be improved if you are like most salespeople. As you begin to make sales calls this year, evaluate who is doing most of the talking during your sales calls. You are fine if your customer is doing 80%. You might need to work on your listening skills if you are doing 80% of the talking. Why? Because you’re not uncovering enough customer information. You know what you know. You don’t know what your customer knows. You don’t want to talk yourself out of a sale.
You may be making it harder for your customers to listen to you. You may be communicating in a way that makes it more difficult to understand what you’re saying. Why would you do that? You wouldn’t, unless you didn’t realize that you were. Too many salespeople don’t understand how to communicate more effectively. Avoiding negatives would be a first strategy to implement. Using more visuals would be a second strategy. Not offering too many choices would be a third.
Best wishes for your successful selling in 2014! Be sure to sign up for The Selling Newsletter for more monthly sales ideas.