Really listen to your customers remains one of the most revolutionary-and economic-to give a boost to your business. And if you believe, attempts to answer these questions:
- How much time / effort / money you’ve lost correcting wrong things you did not listen carefully to the request?
- How many misunderstandings have been because you have not confirmed which was exactly what customers expect from you?
- How many business opportunities, potential new projects, you have overlooked because you have not paid attention to what your client was telling you?
Benefits of good listening
Play well (really) allows us to move forward with safe passage in our projects, we discover new business opportunities and strengthens our relationships with customers:
CLARITY. Play gives us clarity and avoid misunderstandings with our client. It is the best way to ensure that both are aligned in the project.
NEW OPPORTUNITIES. When you listen carefully, you can discover what your customers think and need. This allows you to detect new needs-projects-often you can solve yourself. May even discover you or your client contact you with new customers. Just watch.
LONG TERM RELATIONSHIPS. A clear and fluid, based on genuine dialogue, has a good chance of staying over time. You can turn it around: it is difficult for someone to want to continue working with you when not even hear …
Listening is not the same as hearing
We tend to think that listening is something very simple we all know and usually do, a reflex that we are accustomed. Not so. Listening is not heard. Is much more:
Empathy. Many times we do not look at what the speaker wants to tell us, and fall into the mistake of staying exclusively with what we want to hear: the part that we like, or reinforces our views and our values. And that is not listening.
Play involves a willingness to understand the other person. If you think there is a lot of empathy in the act of listening, because to understand our partner, we put ourselves in their paper.
The rush does not help. It is becoming increasingly difficult to hear. And this is normal. Every time we have more stimuli, and our attention remains limited. We ran from one place to another, from one activity to another, and finally we are unable to devote our full attention to what someone else has to say. This lack of attention we must add that our memory is weak, and remember that at most get half of what they tell us.
In short, learn to listen a little training required. In FreelanceSwitch offer us some good techniques to improve our ability to listen:
1. Listen also body language
Verbal communication is like the tip of the iceberg of what the speaker is expressing. If only you look at the words, can you’re missing half the message. Notice the gestures, tone of voice, facial expression, movement of hands, speed and emphasis of the speech.
These tracks may tell, even better than words, what is really the frame of mind and intention of the client. Do not forget we are trained enough to say what we mean, but we are not as good control our body language.
2. Responds to the partner knows you’re there, listening to what he says
For there to be communication, there must be at least two actors. If one speaks in a vacuum, that’s a monologue. We are all aware of it, and so grateful for the timely intervention of our interlocutor.
Eye, because in this case, answer is not to offer your view. That we always do well …
This is to check that you have correctly understood the speaker’s viewpoint. And the easiest method is to try to formulate in your own words what the speaker has said, a kind of recapitulation, so that he will confirm that is what he meant.
For example: “From what he says, are worried because you think that I can not deliver work on time.” Or: “It seems that you are not satisfied with the job.”
(Of course, not everything will be negative messages. But it’s good to be alert to items that generate discomfort in our customer, and we often difficult to detect / accept).
3. It raises key questions
To find out, there is nothing better than to ask. After patiently listening to what the customer has to say, you know much more by making the key questions:
- What do you want?
- What can I do for you?
- What do you expect?
If you noticed, all questions are open. This makes seeing our partner we are open to your answers, whatever. It is a way to give freedom and confidence. He sees that we do not try to take a road marked. And that is always appreciated.
4. Do not offer your advice ahead of time
Do not interrupt your partner to offer advice, or to give your opinion. It is very common to fall into this trap. Your involvement may be interpreted as a lack of interest in his views. And though often you’re convinced that the answer even before hearing the entire question-at the end of the day, because you’re a professional consultation “is likely to be mistaken.
Your answer will always be much better when you have all the data that the client wants to communicate.
What is your experience? Think you know a good listener?
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