The value of selling is the value of listening. Sales like management, leadership, and business is based on communication. Many business and leadership training programs especially in colleges and universities focus on audience engagement, audiovisuals, and identifying with the audience. The value of listening is rarely emphasized. Usually the important skill of listening is not even mentioned in business training programs especially university training programs. Yet, listening is the most important skill to develop and maintain not just for presentations, but for any method of communication including public speaking. Listening, like any skill, requires practice to develop. Without practice it is not possible to develop listening (or any skill), which largely explains why listening is so poorly developed even in professions like teaching, training, managing, customer service, sales, etc., where communicating is vital to the profession. Many sales people, both telephone sales representatives and retail sales associates, spend very little time getting to know customers and clients, and if any time is spent in getting to know the customer it is typically of a superficial nature centered around how much money the person has, the zip code they live in, and their buying horizon. Anyone that is perceived not to have much money at the time, or who may be interested in purchasing at a later date, is dismissed. Customers are extremely sensitive to this type of treatment. No one likes to be treated dismissively, yet this is very common in the current business climate. This is inverted for two reasons. First, customers represent the primary source of business revenue; therefore, customers represent the primary source of business profit by basic business logic. Second, appearances can be misleading. Sam Walton, one of the richest people in the world often dressed and drove by simple means. And, the book The Millionaire Next Door https://www.amazon.com/Millionaire-Next-Door-Surprising-Americas/dp/1589795474/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1548373002&sr=8-1&keywords=the+millionaire+next+door+book underscores that millionaires are often very plain in their appearance. Moreover, millionaires are often living right next door without any fanfare. Sales and customer service are like sowing seeds. The ones that grow are the ones planted much earlier and that received the most care. This is not to imply that screening is not necessary. It is important to know that a customer can afford to purchase a particular product and wants to pay for the product. However, part of the process of customer relationship management is to develop a rapport with the customer over time, and to determine their needs. If this approach represents the basic business value and culture, then it will be integrated in the business training program. In other words, people will not have to work at customer relationship management, they will always take care of the customer in every policy, practice, and procedure, or at least taking care of the customer will represent the standard against which to measure policies, practices, and procedures.
Listening is the most effective way to determine customer needs. Once those needs are determined, which includes the ability to pay and the customer’s interest level, then a much better sales and customer service solution can be recommended based on the product and service offerings. In other words, getting the know the customer properly and as a rule rather than an exception, leads to a much better pairing between customer and product or service. This is selling for value. It is getting the right product or service to the right people as a policy not as as fluke. Changing the attitude towards customers changes the approach toward customers. A sales presentation then is not just a pitch, but a real conversation with real people about real value.
It is crucial not to underestimate the power of concepts in shaping results. How a manager or leader understands his or her basic ideas like effectiveness, efficiency, and productivity, the better equipped that manager is to effect a positive change in results. More importantly, without insight, it is not possible to know that a change is necessary let alone how to implement the change. For example, if effectiveness is poorly understood as just about every university business training program encourages, it is impossible to adjust practices to improve the level of effectiveness. How can sales effectiveness be improved if no one understands what it means to be an effective sales associate? Is an effective sales associate one that hits goals every month? Maybe. But, people cheat, fudge the numbers, and do a whole range of things besides developing greater competence in selling through enhanced product knowledge, improved customer knowledge, and a thorough business knowledge. One approach is short term oriented, the other is long term oriented. Unfortunately, there is a lot of pressure on sales and customer service representatives for example to hit numbers not to develop customer, product, and business value. To challenge that pressure requires a significant level of inner-balance, inner-strength, and self-trust or what is defined in the Shinsei Method™ as the three pillars of individuality, well-being, and profitability ™. Notice that three things are encapsulated in this approach: value, a long term perspective, and listening.
So, what does public speaking have to do with call centers? Everything. Because the principles are the same. In the previous example several important principles were necessary for effective communication: research, analysis, confirmation, verification, competence, feedback, and creativity were all necessary for effective communication and all of these depended on the ability of the communicator to listen. Without listening, understanding is not possible. Without understanding, it is impossible to match people with results.
The call center environment is a very useful model for demonstrating the importance of listening. Call centers strive toward efficiency. Call times, problems solved, customers contacts, can all be objectively measured. Therefore, improvement and productivity are very easy to measure. Call center representatives do not have the advantage of face-to-face contact as retail sales representatives have. On the other hand, many retail salespeople from large retail outlets squander their most important competitive advantage over online retailers: face-to-face interaction. Therefore, one of the primary goals of the retail outlet should be–by basic business logic–to accentuate this competitive advantage. Listening is the way to achieve this, and listening is not simple standing in close proximity to someone who is talking. Listening is to become actively engaged in a conversation by hearing message. So, all of the retail salespeople who simply stand stiffly or idly while customers enter and exit are not practicing the value of listening. These retail outlets will not be in business very long. That is the beauty of the logic of business: take care of the customer and you take care of your business.
Listening is crucial for public speaking. For example, many college textbooks on public speaking encourage the speaker to create audience empathy, which just means to find some commonality between the audience and the speaker in order to tailor the presentation to that common ground. It is a wise practice. However, as is often the case in many school training programs, training programs often provide only a fragment of the fundamental principles leaving many trainees (in this case students) misinformed about what it means to communicate effectively. Again, effectiveness is poorly understood. When seeking to establish empathy, it is first necessary to know the audience. This highlights the importance of research, intelligence, and data, but research is nothing more than a variation of listening. Research is listening to the data. Next, this information has to be analyzed for a relevant common theme to be identified. In sales, this is the process of getting to know the customer (i.e. customer knowledge or customer value). When a presenter focuses on listening for value, this is the kind of process he or she goes through in advance. In this case the goal is audience knowledge. For a sales person or a business the audience is the customer, and a sales person is always a presenter. After a presentation is created based on the common theme and a logical sequence of topics, those topics should lead to a logical conclusion. For sales and business this logical conclusion is a transaction, which means a customer or customers exchange money for a product or service. Clearly, for a message to be communicated, the speaker must understand what the message is. Here is another area that school programs are typically weak in training individuals to become effective communicators–or effective leaders, sales people, managers, etc. Teachers in school often do not fully understand the concepts they are feigning to teach. This communicates a message that is often overlooked, but that is far more potent than the actually topics in school. Ineffective communication in teaching teaches that ineffective communication is an acceptable practice. But, the effective leader will examine this coldly and objectively. What are the logical results of ineffective communication: misunderstanding, miscommunication, mistakes, confusion, etc. These all represent costs and often they also represent increased liability. For example, if bank leaders are ineffective in how they communicate to their staff, their staff will copy that ineffectiveness in communicating with their customers. If a lender communicates poorly when evaluating risk while considering a loan, it increases the risk of default. The same applies to professions where safety is a concern such as policing or military combat. Effectiveness is not just crucial for success, it is crucial in minimizing risk and liability. This is a self-evident point never mentioned in school, but it is the logical result of practicing principle rather than following impulse as encouraged in school. Principle naturally leads to constructive value, which means less time (i.e. less cost) fixing mistakes, repairing damage, re-explaining instructions etc. However, principle is nevertheless fundamental to business.
Finally, when giving a speech, a communicator must learn how to listen to the audience. This valuable fundamental is also never taught in college classrooms, but it is one of the most important aspects of communication. In call centers where customer service and sales takes place exclusively on the phone, listening is fundamental to business sales. Customer service is sales; sales is customer service. They are one in the same and they take place at every level of the business. Why? Customers represent the primary source of business revenue and profitability. And, selling is all about getting to know the customer and taking care of the customer, which of course is customer service.
A communicator has to know if his or her message is reaching its intended audience. This again requires listening for value. The value is getting the message across, but not just any old message will do. The goal to communicate a message effectively, which means that the audience (or the customer) understands the message, and that message is conveyed in the most direct way possible to produce the most desirable results. An important sales message is the product or service’s competitive advantage, which is another way of saying the product’s value to the customer. Clearly then, selling and communication are much more than making a series of sounds. Sales and communication have many different levels, and the most effective communication respects all of those levels. One of the most important of those levels especially in call centers is listening, but not just any old listening. Listening for value, which means concentrating, remembering, and understanding the audience (i.e. the customer). Lastly, the effective communicator must be competent enough in the subject to be able to adapt to audience feedback if it indicates that the message is not getting through (i.e communication is not effective). This is analogous to theater actors who get a feel for the audience and can tell if the audience is following along with the story. It speaks to audience knowledge, product knowledge, and business knowledge. Listening for value appreciates all of these levels of value.
Call center representatives do not have the advantage of body language, appearance, and other physical data to use to evaluate as retail operation does. Call center represenatives must depend solely on the the voice. This increases the value of listening significantly. Without listening it is not possible to determine whether or not the message is communicated in telephone communications. Telephone sales and customer service are easy in some ways and difficult in others. Talking on the phone means that an individual’s appearance need not be a deterrent to sales, and it is possible to focus exclusively on one thing: the telephone voice. However, this also makes telephone sales and customer service very difficult because the customer focuses on only one thing too: the voice. The tone, the words, and most importantly the listening ability are the crucial factors for telephone sales and customer service. All of these are affected by the attitude. This is one reason the Shinsei Method™ focuses on establishing a mission or a culture that is supported by the business environment. For example, if staff members are not encouraged (i.e. compensated) to have a pleasant attitude, this will show in their tone of voice and approach to the customer. Needless to say an off-putting attitude leads to an off-putting voice, and both of these negatively impact brand and reputation. Therefore, to establish a winning business culture is more than just setting weekly or monthly sales targets, it is to establish policies, practices, and procedures that support that winning attitude throughout the business culture.
Without listening there is no reliable way to determine if a resolution or an answer has been found to a customer’s concern. Customers call for answers and resolutions. The expect expeditious answers. An 800# referral is not an expeditious answers. A website referral is not an expeditious answer. An FAQ page that does not list the most common customer concerns is not an expeditious answer. These are all put-offs and they also negatively impact brand, reputation, and quality. The more likely a representative is to find a solution on the first contact, the less likely the customer will need to make another contact. In a call center environment this positively impacts service levels. Listening significantly impacts the ability to deliver effective solutions. Fewer contacts means increased efficiency and the potential for more customer contacts. Without listening it is much more likely that the wrong answer or solution is recommended to the customer increasing the need for more customer contact, increased costs, and potentially increased liability. This is an industry standard. There is significant business value attached to listening. Listening provides a strong competitive advantage for operations like call centers or retail outlets. Listening to the customer not only puts the customer first, it provides many excellent opportunities to make an exact match between products and services and the customer. In this way sales people are more like match-makers than anything else, and if a sales person takes this simple “match-maker” approach, listening becomes a natural extension of the process of selling. Why listening is not emphasized more in business, leadership, and management training programs is extremely baffling given just how valuable it is as a skill.