Are you a good listener?
As young entrepreneurs we tend to love our product or service and can talk to no end about our creations because we are so passionate about it. One of the comments I repeatedly hear from top selling business owners is that the best tools they have are their ears - in order to sell you need to be a good listener and understand what your potential customer, partner, investor really wants.
David Askaripour highlighted this point in a recent post in his Mind Petals blog:
Too many people nowadays simply do more talking and interrupting than listening. It’s a shame, because so much vital information is lost when that happens — when someone feels the uncontrollable need to interrupt, argue, and ask a million questions when someone is trying to teach or explain something to you.
I think that some entrepreneurs need to start practicing the art of listening. To be able to really sit back and absorb, consider, and register everything that a person is saying. Because when you do that, you are able to get a better understanding and become a more enlightened person.
You’ll find that most of the questions that you had the urge to ask about will be answered over the course of the conversation if you do more listening than talking.
The next time you meet with a prospect, take the effort to listen and learn about their business and what challenges they are going through.
Do you have any examples of how listening has helped you close a deal?
Evan Carmichael
Evan CarmichaelYoungEntrepreneur.com Blog Manager
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Maybe not closing a deal with a custoomer, but about 5yrs ago(in Japan), I decided to create screenprinted T’s for an Annual Air Show, which averages appprox. 200K people each year.
The T’s would have a custom logo and everything. I started with $500. I don’t remember how many shirts that was going to buy. Not much since I only had $500. Anyway, I knew there was no way I wouldn’t sell all the shirts.
While I was back home visiting family, I couldn’t help but tell family members about my cheap, but exciting business idea.
Fast forward 2 days later… I ended up raising 14K from friends and family to help make my little idea bigger! It was definitely something I didn’t expect, but the money sure came in handy. They were all just as excited as I was about the idea and the potential income it would generate for us all.
So I would say I was able to get family to invest in my idea right along with me, which I guess in a way would be like “closing a deal”… right?
I won’t get into what happened with the idea, but let’s just say the show had their biggest performer(Blue Angels) cancel at the last minute, there was a protest outside the even and I ended up with about 400-500 shirts leftover.
One last note: You learn from the successes… AND the failures.