Listening skills are often overlooked in any sales role. You often see sales people being portrayed as loud and talkative or being described as an extrovert. These characteristics are true for some sales professionals but in order for these people to be really successful in their role, they have to also have great listening skills. People new to sales coming from the lab might think they need to be pitching product and selling all the features and benefits specific to your solutions. You might be getting trained on all the products right now and you are excited to tell your first customer all about it, but I am encouraging you not to do that. Think about when you get pitched a product you have no interest in buying, at least for me, my mind starts wandering and I am eager to just walk away from the conversation, maybe you feel the same? Your prospects will be thinking the same thing especially if you start the conversation by pitching all the features and benefits of your product without understanding their research goals, plans and challenges. So stop pitching and start actively listening. You will need to get good at asking insightful questions specific to the prospects research goals, plans and challenges. Most importantly, you will need to actively listen to the prospects answers and intuitively ask follow up questions to ensure you fully understand their goal.
Here are two key points to think about:
- By asking insightful questions it will allow you to create trust and it will allow you to understand the customers main priorities and challenges
- By using active listening skills and confirming with the customer that you understand their research goals, plans and challenges, only then can you position your products as something that could potentially bring value to the customer
If you want to learn more about how you can improve your active listening skills, check out the links below to see how you can incorporate these skills into your next medical sales call.
- Sandler - Active listening skills article
- HubSpot - Marketing and CRM SaaS Company Sandler - Active listening skills guide
- Positive Psychology - Active listening: The art of empathetic conversation
- Korn Ferry - Interesting perspective about the science of listening
