Skip to main content
| Sandler | Southern Counties
 

This website uses cookies to offer you a better browsing experience.
You can learn more by clicking here

You might think that the biggest part of Communication is the message. I would like to suggest that in fact it is Feedback. Salespeople are typically terrible at listening. They think they need to talk to sell. In fact, selling and telling benefits are, for many, synonyms.

In contrast, if you have studied with Sandler, you will know that your clients do not care what it is you do; they only worry about the problem that your organisation can fix. In the same way they do not care what you say. Instead they care more about whether you understand them. You probably already know you should spend far less time talking than your prospect. “A prospect who is listening is not buying”. Therefore, you should aim to talk only as much as required. In a sales meeting when you feel your mouth moving you should have bright red warning lights going off in your head and a warning klaxon in your ears and your internal voice should be booming “Find a way to stop talking and start listening!”
The difference to your organisation’s productivity will be enormous if you can persuade yourself and your team to become expert listeners. It will obviously mean you will have to ask questions. Ask great questions and be prepared to listen, really listen.

Listening as part of Feedback means you stop thinking about your next question. You cannot listen authentically if you are listening for a way in for your next question of worse, for a way in to explain your product or service. Mentally put your box of wonderful solutions down on one side and spend the time working out how you can prove to your client that you have listened. There will come a time to demonstrate your expertise, by which time they will have decided to do business with you anyway. You will win far more business by your feedback than by your message.

Proving you have listened comes in many forms. The most obvious is reflecting what your client or prospect has told you through either paraphrasing in your own words or repeating what they have told you in their words. The only way you could use their words back to them is if you totally heard what they said. You did not try to “re-translate” what they said into your terms, apparently there was no thinking about how what they said relates to your product or service, it was pure listening. Of course, what you pick up to reflect back will be entirely in the direction of what you can do for them, but the client will feel listened to in a way they have rarely experienced. For example,when I coach my clients almost always they have the answer for themselves in what they have told me. The same is true in selling. The client often tells you the answer and you just have to listen for it and tell it back to them. This might seem like cheating. We call it professional selling.

Other ways of proving you have listened comes with your body language. Imagine being at a conference mixer or networking event. If you are intensely listening then you will probably have moved so that an ear is turned toward the speaker. You might have leant forward a little toward them. You probably will have stopped moving or be making movements that suggest you are listening like a thoughtful rub of your chin, or a slight rise in your eyebrows. This is all equally true in video networking. All this you probably did unconsciously. If you start to make it conscious then you can force yourself to listen better and reflect that listening better.

Sometimes your proof of listening comes after the event. Once you have had a call or a meeting an email to confirm what was said can be very powerful. If you can precisely identify the Pain, Budget and Decision, using their words and phrases in an email you have captured the power of that interaction and that explains why they have to go on to the next agreed step. Making notes, physically or mentally, of what they said and how they said it is a hugely valuable tool in your selling toolbox.

Active listening is only part of Feedback. David Sandler taught us to stay “Sceptical and Curious”. What we have been exploring so far is what the prospect or client tells you. Feedback also includes what they have not told you. Often students of Sandler techniques tell us that their prospective client did not share with them what the Pain was. There was not enough there to warrant a change from the incumbent or to start using a new product or service.

Giving Feedback means helping our client realise that they have not told us everything they should have. Clients and prospects think they have told their story right, but so often they have not. So it is your job to find what I call “Doorways to Pain” Those “doorways” just need to be nudged open for the full truth to come pouring out. How many can you spot here?

“We are hitting £1m turnover; each of our 4 salespeople are doing about..ooh.. £300k each. We get undercut a lot by the competition. I think our salespeople could be doing a little better than they are, though they are not always hitting the targets we mutually agreed. They are fine once in front of prospects, good at presenting, you know. But what could you do to help them?”

The answer is six. It is not enough to make a good note with a sage nod of the head and a quiet “Aha!” The prospect here has lots of problems, but they are desperate not to admit it to themselves and certainly not to a stranger. They need to be challenged. They privately want to have the excuse to tell the full story, but they will not be the one to come forward. Ironically and incorrectly, they will be relieved, at least temporarily, if both sides come to the conclusion there is nothing that he can do.

Every time the prospect says something that does not make logical sense, declares something emphatically as if it is fact when it is not, uses minimising adjectives, contradicts themselves, says something you know cannot be right, or shows interest far too early in your solution, you have a huge sign hanging off the doorpost reading “Here be Pain!”
Your Feedback has to be to question every one of those. Do not let one get past you. You owe it to your potential client.

Have you noticed how the most interesting dinner guest is the one who listened to you the most? Their insights and stories and whole demeanour make them stand out. You want to spend time with them and listen to what they have to say. In fact, if you analysed what they said in detail, they said very little. They spent their time giving you Feedback, asking pertinent, insightful questions and drawing interesting points of discussion from you. The best speaker is the one who spends a lot of time giving Feedback. You cannot help but be drawn to them and what they are saying, like a moth to a flame. Unfortunately, as humans we like the sound of our own voice, our own opinions are the most convincing and we thrive on “psychological air”. The speaker can challenge our thinking, but we need to feel understood first so that we can then feel safe enough to take on what we hear.

Practical exercises
Practice listening. Ask a colleague to tell you a story for about two minutes, say for example, about their first car. Now repeat back in as much detail as you can and ask the owner of the story to tell you how much you missed out. You will probably have missed out a lot or not got it perfectly correct. Imagine, this was for two minutes about something that did not matter and it is hard to get it right. You must get good at being perfect at listening for the whole of your 60-minute, 90-minute, two-hour meeting.

Get good at note-taking. If you know you are not going to recall perfectly, then make good notes. Perhaps you should record the meeting. Whatever kind of note-taking you choose, make sure you ask permission first. Too often salespeople arrogantly assume that taking notes without asking first is good practice.

Listen for "Doorways to Pain". Do not let your client or prospect get away with anything; remember they want you to find the real problem. Understanding the problem is a long way to solving it.

Practice giving “psychological air”. In a meeting of friends or family, see how much you can keep the conversation going by saying as little as possible. That will mean being very attentive to what they are saying and being aware of how you can drive the conversation where you want it to go without anyone suspecting that is what you are doing. If you can do this comfortably in a social situation you will be mastering giving Feedback, ready to use in a business context.

Follow-up emails. You probably already send follow-up “thank you” emails after your Discovery meetings. Get into the habit of reminding you both of the Pain, Budget and Decision issues that were discussed. Try using their words and phrases as much as possible. If they see the meeting succinctly summarised with clarity and understanding, you will be using Feedback to help the sale proceed. Remember the Sandler rule, “prospects do not argue with their own data”.

 

Conclusion
If you are good at Feedback, your client or potential client will see you as a remarkable communicator. Listening is harder than you might think. Being in control of what they tell you means staying sceptical and curious. Keeping careful note of what has been discussed and sharing that will prove you have understood in a way nobody else has. Ironically being effective in Communication means producing less of your own Content, but being very conscious of theirs.

Make a comment

Share this article: