Listen Up!
“Hello, can you please tell me who is responsible for making your freight decisions?”
This was a “cold call”. I was a 23 year old Account Executive for Reimer Express Lines very keen to do a fabulous job. It was my job to sell Reimer’s services – to ensure their trucks were used by businesses to ship their products across the country.
“That would be Mr. Roy our owner.”
“May I speak to him please?”
“Who shall I say is calling?”
“Dave MacLean from Reimer Express Lines.”
She got on the phone, buzzed Mr. Roy to let him know I was there, and inquired whether or not he would like to see me.
“Mr. Roy will see you immediately.”
“Awesome! I am getting to see the man in charge – he’s going to like me right away and give me all his business. Why wouldn’t he? I am going to be super successful doing this”…were the thoughts running through my head as she ushered me into Mr. Roy’s office.
I greeted Mr. Roy with an enthusiastic introduction, a warm smile, and a firm handshake. How could not like me right away? I was excellent at building rapport. However, his greeting to me was not nearly as enthusiastic as mine was to him. It soon became very evident that he had not invited me into his office to give me all his freight. No, he had other plans for me…
Unbeknownst to me, in the pre-deregulation trucking age in which I was selling, Mr. Roy had appeared in court on behalf of his preferred trucking company to support them in their application to haul freight on a route on which he wanted to ship goods. This route was currently being served by Reimer and a handful of other trucking companies. These carriers were opposing the application by his trucking company to begin hauling on this route.
When he was on the stand testifying for his preferred carrier the lawyer representing Reimer and the other carriers had done his very best to devalue Mr. Roy’s testimony, and indeed had treated him very disrespectfully. This infuriated him. The next day, I just happened to walk into his office.
He unloaded on me.
He went up one side of me and down the other. He yelled at me for a prolonged period of time and vented all the rage that had built up over the last 24 hours. He later told me he came within a hair’s breadth of physically picking me up and throwing me out of his office. Thankfully it was only words and emotion he was throwing at me.
I did the only thing I could do: I listened.
I took it. I let him vent. I then showed empathy and asked him some questions to clarify. I apologized for the way he was treated and told him I was going to talk with our management to let them know how he felt about his treatment. I then asked him if I could come back to see him and report what I had learned.
He said, “Yes”.
To cut a very long story short, I did come back again and again and again, each time listening to more of his needs. And wouldn’t you know it, over the course of 3 years I ended up winning all of his business.
It all started with listening.
I thought of this story recently when I was in a sales leadership training session with John Asher of Asher Strategies. John emphasized the importance of listening in the sales process and gave us the following 3 points to become the “perfect listener”:
- Focus 100% on the prospect’s perspective – ask questions.
- Ask permission to take notes – then take notes.
- Summarize what you have heard, then feed it back to them to confirm you have heard them correctly.
These simple 3 steps increase sales success dramatically. How can we effectively provide solutions that will meet a customer’s needs if we have not listened in order to understand their needs?!
Like Stephen Covey said, “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”
If you want be successful you have to listen up.
