Pt 17 – Listening Is Different From Hearing

When any new business call is made you can be guaranteed that 9 out of 10 times what you hear can differ from what is actually being said.

Take for example the call made to a prospect. It’s quite clear that the prospect is pushed for time and gives only slight credence to the call. The majority of times the take would be to arrange a call back at another time which may or may not happen.

But what if the question was asked “what’s causing the time issues for you?  Now you’ll either get a no time to talk further or you’ll get war and peace. This war and peace may well highlight business issues where the prospect is crying out for some help so why not offer exactly that particularly if it relates to an area of your business that you were calling about. Not exactly rocket science but all of a sudden you have valuable traction and the prospect may well already be seeing a valuable connection.

So what you initially heard was different from what was actually being said. It’s a matter of paying attention but we all know that in any given working day when searching for opportunities this is easier said than done. It’s not enough to hear you really have to listen. People say more than they actually say.

This approach tends to get lost in our every day working lives but it is such an important one and can so often generate an opportunity from absolutely nowhere.

Thanks, always, for reading.