Today’s guest blogger is Rob Mosley, Senior Director of Training & Development for Next Level Exchange. Rob comes to Next Level from MRINetwork™ Corporate in Philadelphia, PA, where he served as the Chief Learning Officer, responsible for all leadership training and sales development of 1,100 offices worldwide. We’re excited that Rob will be one of the featured speakers at our 2016 Global Conference.
Part 1 of 3: Great Dialogue in our business is the cornerstone of our craft. And great dialogue has four distinct elements; Probing, Listening, Responding, and Alignment.
These four elements are like the chambers of the heart; each section or chamber is a unique and critical part of the communication process with both clients and candidates. In this three part series we will focus on one of these critical skills; listening. Listening is considered a soft skill, which is ironic considering that it is one of the hardest things you will ever do. If you don’t believe me, ask your significant other. Our purpose is to better understand active listening as an integral part of what is really behind the heart of great dialogue and why great communication drives great compensation.
If I were to invite you to a two-day listening seminar, most of you would opt for a slow, painful death. Let’s face it, the skill of listening does not always get good press. It’s not one of the more exciting aspects of our jobs. However, nothing is gained by probing and qualifying unless we have first learned how to listen effectively. You see, the best sales people aren’t smooth talkers: they are smooth listeners. Think about it. How much can you learn from what you are saying? Not much. You already know it, so by speaking, you’re repeating yourself. But everything the client or candidate says is potentially valuable.
The good news is that we can train ourselves to be good listeners. (Just ask any mother if she can discern her baby’s cry from others in a crowded nursery.) You can learn to tune in the important and tune out the extraneous. Think of how it feels when someone’s not listening to you. You feel ignored, unimportant. Instead of liking the other person, you think he or she is rude or self-interested. Conversely, people who feel they are being heard are easier to deal with.
Let listening be an end in itself. Sometimes, simply hearing the client’s issue may not only enable you to find a solution, it may be the solution!
