JULIAN SAYS…

Salespeople have often been attributed as having ‘the gift of the gab’, although I don’t see that as a positive. In my experience, agents with that habit are prone to do too much talking and not enough listening – a dangerous combination.

Having said that, in the same way that very few people admit to being a poor driver or a poor lover, I have not met anyone who admits to being a poor listener but there are plenty of them out there.

So how can we ensure we are great listeners? The first thing to do is recognise that it is an activity not something that just happens to us.

There are seven elements to excellent listening which will help you get all the answers.

‘Answers’ is the key word here as its initial letters are the fi rst letters of each of the seven techniques to make you a more effective listener:

ANSWERS

So what do they each stand for?

● The A is for “Aim to get inside their head” – when you are talking to a customer, have a clear goal that you want to fi nd out all there is to know about them – after all, the more you know, the easier it will be to sell to them.

Be nosey. My wife is an estate agent too and many years ago she won the Top Sales Negotiator of the Year Award for the Corporate Agent she then worked for.

The MD invited her up on stage to collect her award and then said, “You might be wondering why Caterina wins this award so regularly… it’s because she is the nosiest person I know”. He was right. That may not sound much like a compliment, but the point is that through her nosiness, she has the ability to find out everything there is to know about her customer and can truly put herself in their shoes and genuinely understand what they will or will not buy.

The more you know about the client the easier it is to sell to them.

● The N of answers is for “Neutralise your feelings” – don’t let your emotions get in the way. If you allow this, then a big part of your brain is busy being emotional rather than focusing on the job of listening attentively – this emotional sidetracking can occur because you don’t like the look of the person you’re talking or because you form an opinion about them on the basis of their accent or diction, or a comment.

● The first S is for “Stay Focused” – in a busy environment, it is easy to allow your attention to wander but great listeners tune out from the background noise and make the person they are conversing with – whether face to face or over the phone – the centre of their full attention for the duration of that conversation.

● The W is for “Wait for the speaker to finish speaking” – such a basic rule of listening, but how many times has someone has interrupted you or finished your sentence for you! Not a great listening technique and ill-mannered too.

● The E is for “Encourage the speaker” – if face to face communication then nodding, smiling, eye contact and tilting your head to one side all show the speaker that you are engaged. Over the phone it is all down to audible encouragement – “Uh Huh”, “Really?”, “That’s interesting” and so on.

● The R is for “Reflect Information” – the concept is that when the speaker has imparted  information, you may want them to expand on certain elements. Reflecting information is simply taking a snippet of what you’ve been told and throwing it back to them. For example, your applicant says, “We need to move by the end of September because I’m on a job move from Aberdeen.”

You respond, saying, “A job move?” telling the customer that you have you taken on board what he or she said, but that you are most interested in, and want to know more about, one particular element… a great technique to keep the conversation fl owing and keep control.

● The final S of the words ANSWERS stands for “Summarise what you’ve heard” – once you think you understand the full picture, check! “Can I just check that I understand fully… you’re looking for a three-bedroom semi-detached or end of terrace… it has to have…” and so on.

This is a Win Win technique as the customer realises how well you’ve listened and it may even get you more information as the customer opens up further. “Actually, there was one other thing….”

On a final note, the genius observation of Stephen R Covey that, “Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply” is one which a good many agents should take on board. As is the old classic “You have two ears and one mouth – use them in that proportion.”

Julian O’Dell is founder of TM Training & Development