Ability to Listen

It is a simple fact, the most successful business leaders in the world today are excellent listeners and communicators. Our Ability to Listen and communicate with others will account for our success in both our business and personal life.

All the top salespeople and if we are in business we are salespeople, ask good questions and listen very carefully to the answers. One of the most important skills of listening is simply to pause before replying. When the client finishes talking, rather than jumping in with the first thing that we may think of, take a few seconds to pause quietly and wait.

Excellent listeners are masters of the pause. They are comfortable with silences. When the other person finishes speaking, they take a breath, relax and smile before saying anything. They know that the pause is a key part of good communications.

Pausing before we speak has three specific benefits. The first is that we avoid the risk of interrupting the client if they just stopped to gather their thoughts. Remember, our primary job in the conversation is to build and maintain a high level of trust, and listening builds trust. When we pause for a few seconds, we often find the client will continue speaking. He will give us more information and further opportunity to listen, enabling us to gather more of the information we may need to solve the client’s problem.

The second benefit of pausing is that our silence tells the client that we are giving careful consideration to what they have just said. By carefully considering the client’s words, we are paying them a compliment. We are simply saying that we consider what they have said to be important and worthy of quiet reflection. We make the client feel more valuable with our silence. We raise their self-esteem and make them feel better about themselves.

The third and most important benefit of pausing will be that we will actually hear and understand the client better if we give their words a few seconds to soak into our mind. The more time we take to reflect upon what has just been said, the more conscious we will be of their real meaning. We will be more alert to how their words may connect with other things we know about the client in relation to our product or service.

When we pause, not only do we become a more thoughtful person, but we convey this to our client. By extension, we become a more valuable person to do business with. And we achieve this by simply pausing for a few seconds before we reply after our client has spoken. Pausing allows us to read between the lines and also shows the client that we really value what they have said.

“Remember, Success is always Within Reach”

#terry ogburn #entrepreneur #Business #Business Development #Business Sales #business coach #business coaching