{"id":698,"date":"2007-02-26T17:41:41","date_gmt":"2007-02-26T23:41:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2007\/02\/listening-for-the-close\/"},"modified":"2007-02-26T17:54:50","modified_gmt":"2007-02-26T23:54:50","slug":"listening-for-the-close","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2007\/02\/listening-for-the-close\/","title":{"rendered":"Listening For The Close"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There are many articles discussing the need for salespeople to be good listeners though it seems like a challenge area for many salespeople.  Entrepreneur.com&#8217;s <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.entrepreneur.com\/sales\/closingthesale\/article173380.html\">Listen And Learn When Making A Sale<\/a> provides 4 ways to start working on listening skills.  I am particularly fond of this one:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>2. Dig deeper.<\/strong> Don\u20ac\u2122t settle for what the customer says on the surface; have him expand on his key needs and challenges. This helps me uncover hot buttons (very important points that the customer says and that I circle, highlight or star on my notepad), which I can use later to explain how my product or service will address them. Sometimes it might be hard to get the customer talking, so I use a technique called parroting&#8211;repeating the last few words the customer says in the form of a question so he\u20ac\u2122ll elaborate more on the topic. If the customer says, \u20ac\u0153That\u20ac\u2122s been a major problem for us,\u20ac\u009d you say, \u20ac\u0153Problem?\u20ac\u009d Usually this will prompt the customer to go into greater detail.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Exactly right.  This surface-level questioning is a serious problem for many under-skilled salespeople.  The salesperson knows the proper question to ask, but he or she accepts the prospect&#8217;s purposely vague response.  The salesperson must dig deeper to get to the clear truth.  The author&#8217;s suggestion to repeat the prospect&#8217;s comment as a question is highly effective (a technique I use often).<\/p>\n<p>The author closes with sage advice for any salesperson:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Don\u20ac\u2122t interrupt; resist the urge to jump into the conversation when they bring up something you\u20ac\u2122re knowledgeable and passionate about. Just watch&#8211;you\u20ac\u2122ll begin to learn new, interesting information. <strong>It\u20ac\u2122s hard to learn anything with your mouth open.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are many articles discussing the need for salespeople to be good listeners though it seems like a challenge area for many salespeople. Entrepreneur.com&#8217;s Listen And Learn When Making A Sale provides 4 ways to start working on listening skills. I am particularly fond of this one: 2. Dig deeper. Don\u20ac\u2122t settle for what the customer says on the surface; have him expand on his key needs and challenges. This helps me uncover hot buttons (very important points that the customer says and that I circle, highlight or star on my notepad), which I can use later to explain how my product or service will address them. Sometimes it might&hellip; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2007\/02\/listening-for-the-close\/\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"","bgseo_robots_follow":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14,9],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5Oho-bg","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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