How to Develop Listening Skills

If you’re interested in improving your salespeople’s listening skills, try the following exercise in your next sales meeting. Take an experience with a customer from your career, and in the role of the customer tell a 10-minute story about your business, the challenges you face, the problems you’ve had with the current supplier, etc. Intentionally leave out key parts of the story while providing extraneous information as well. Use body language to depict excitement, unease and indifference at appropriate parts of the story, just like a real customer would. During the story, have your salespeople take notes on the story then, when you’re done, have them write down the following:

1) The three most important points in the story

2) Key areas to follow up on

3) Parts of the story that are less important

4) What your body language indicated about your feelings at key points

5) Questions that might encourage you to open up and provide additional helpful information

Use their answers to spark a discussion on the topics above, as well as ideas for developing effective listening skills.