Hear ye! Hear! Active listening applied to sales

Active listening is a psychological technique mainly used in the world of human resources management.

But it is also very useful in customer relationship management, particularly during the prospecting, sales and after-sales service stages.

At a time when the customer experience and customer concerns are at the heart of every strategy, active listening is the ideal way to reassure customers, understand and respond to their needs, and build customer loyalty.

What exactly is active listening? What are its objectives, its benefits and the method to be applied?

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Active listening: definition, origin and challenges

The concept of active listening originated in the United States, more specifically with Carl Rogers, a humanist psychologist and pioneer of non-directive techniques.

Among his works, this communication technique, also known as benevolent listening, consists of :

• listening attentively to the other person, without interruption, interpretation or judgement,
• paying attention to both verbal and non-verbal communication,
• then using :
• questioning to make sure you have understood the message or the expression of need ;
• rephrasing to demonstrate understanding and summarise the exchange.

☝️ It is the latter which is particularly used by the sales team during the sales meeting, particularly during the discovery plan.

Fundamental values

How do you adopt an active listening attitude? By conveying these values

• sincerity
• patience
• availability,
• observation of body language and non-verbal behaviour,
• respect,
• openness,
• objectivity, or at least recognition of one's own subjectivity,
• non-directiveness,
• empathy.

The objectives of active listening

🎯 The aim is to obtain validation, confirmation and trust from the person expressing themselves, to rule out any possibility of misunderstanding or waste of time, and to go further in the exchanges, which are also qualitative.

In the fields of HR, training and personal development, the advantages are :

• Creating a climate of trust, conducive to expression,
• overcoming potential blockages
• defusing and improving conflict resolution.

☝️ This technique is used during annual or professional interviews.

It is clear that the benefits of this method can also be applied to customer relations in terms of :

• understanding needs
• removing obstacles to purchase,
• establishing a relationship based on trust,
• managing customer relations in the event of complaints or disputes.

🎯 Customers give you more time and develop their arguments, taking you into their confidence.

What are the techniques of active listening?

Active listening involves 4 stages. It can be easily adapted to different sales techniques, whether the QQOQCP or SONCAS method, in the phases of discovering needs, buying motivations and obstacles.

Stage 1: Listening

You need to be attentive, but not passive.

How do you do this? Some people call it positive silence. It's all about gestures and behaviour, such as smiles, nods and concentrated gazes.

If the silence seems to bother or worry the other person, you can also punctuate their arguments with encouraging and reassuring words, such as "yes, I understand".

Stage 2: Clarification

After listening comes the questioning stage.

This involves :

• Clarifying the key ideas, feelings and/or points of view of the customer,
• understanding the meaning of the words used and avoiding any misunderstanding, which could be due to poor expression on the part of the sender but also poor understanding on the part of the receiver.

Examples of questions:

• What do you mean by...?
• Can you rephrase it?
• Could you give me an example?

🤓 Of course, during the answers, you switch back to "active listening" mode.

Stage 3: Investigation

You've clarified the meaning of the words used, now you can delve deeper into your customer's words, situation and emotions.

There are several types of question that can help you do this:

• open-ended questions: "Why is this important to you?
• factual questions: "What impact has (success/problem) had on your production?
• survey questions, asking for the customer's opinion: "In your opinion, what is good customer support?

They have the merit of :

• help you to identify the importance of needs or objections, their origins and begin to envisage solutions;
• encourage the person you are talking to to go further in their own thinking.

Step 4: Reformulation

Reformulation is the result of all the listening, clarification and investigation work:

• not only does the customer feel reassured that they have been listened to and understood, and can even provide clarification if necessary,
• but the sales person is sure to have all the information they need to respond, either with a sales argument, a new offer or by closing the case.

Rephrasing what has been said provides repetition, enabling memorisation, synthesis and conclusion.

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Understanding for better selling

Between what I think, what I mean, what I think I say, what I say, what you want to hear, what you hear, what you understand... there are ten ways in which we can have difficulty communicating. But let's try anyway...

Bernard Werber

Active listening is a fundamental sales technique. Unlike older, more insistent methods, you put yourself on the same wavelength as your customer and encourage their commitment. At the same time, you stand out from your more hurried (and pushy) competitors.

Even when you're used to it, active listening isn't easy for salespeople, especially when they have targets to meet.

However, contrary to appearances, it saves you precious time.

Last but not least, take notes and record everything in a CRM, like Salesforce Sales Cloud, so that you don't forget and lose all that listening. You'll be able to refer back to it when you have new discussions.

Don't hesitate to consult our directory to discover other CRM solutions.