Steve Trang - Active Listening 2.0: Overcoming Stalls and Objections by Asking the Right Questions at the Right Time

Active Listening 2.0

Overcoming Stalls and Objections by Asking the Right Questions at the Right Time

Steve Trang

Active Listening 2.0 Overcoming Stalls and Objections by Asking the Right Questions at the Right Time Copyright 2020 by Steve Trang

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Disclaimer:

The author strives to be as accurate and complete as possible in the creation of this book, notwithstanding the fact that the author does not warrant or represent at any time that the contents within are accurate due to the rapidly changing nature of the Internet.

While all attempts have been made to verify information provided in this publication, the Author and the Publisher assume no responsibility and are not liable for errors, omissions, or contrary interpretation of the subject matter herein. The Author and Publisher hereby disclaim any liability, loss or damage incurred as a result of the application and utilization, whether directly or indirectly, of any information, suggestion, advice, or procedure in this book. Any perceived slights of specific persons, peoples, or organizations are unintentional.

In practical advice books, like anything else in life, there are no guarantees of income made. Readers are cautioned to rely on their own judgment about their individual circumstances to act accordingly. Readers are responsible for their own actions, choices, and results. This book is not intended for use as a source of legal, business, accounting or financial advice. All readers are advised to seek the services of competent professionals in legal, business, accounting, and finance field.

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN: 978-1-948382-10-6 paperback

JMP2020.1

Chapter 1

Introduction to Active Listening

Active listening is one of the most important skills needed to succeed in the twenty-first century. Unfortunately, it is still not a commonly understood term. As a result, many people are still unable to adopt it in their daily lives. The truth is that you can get more out of life by learning how to listen actively. Lets take a moment to explore active listening.

Active listening is a technique that is used in different areas of life such as counselling, conflict resolution, and training. Active listening involves the listener paying full attention to what the speaker is saying. The listener should also be able to respond, remember what was said, and understand it fully.

This listening technique is different from reflective listening and emphatic listening . Neither technique places an emphasis on understanding the words of the speaker. Your active-listening skill will influence the quality of your communication with others. Active listening can benefit you with its numerous applications, such as in journalism, tutoring, counselling suicidal people, interactions between medical practitioners and patients, HIV counselling, and so on. The importance of this listening technique has also been identified to be an effective tool in sales, which is what well be taking a look at in this book.

Active Listening 2.0 goes beyond to just listening. 2.0 requires a salesperson to become skillful enough to extract the meaning and intent behind every question and statement shared by the prospect. By asking the right questions at the right time, the prospect will willingly share whats on their mind and the keys to providing the solutions they want.

How can you adopt active listening to become a better salesperson? Did you know that the proper use of active listening can get people to open up and let you know what they really want? Just imagine the benefits that you would enjoy from this. With your improved communication skills, you would know the right questions to ask and when to ask them.

What Is the Importance of a Selling Framework?

Almost everything about human life relates to sales. Many people view sales as just the exchange of goods/services for money, but its much more than that. A lot of processes describe any sale. Amateurish sales personnel would try to approach each individual sale head-on. However, a selling framework describes the complex phases that salespeople have to be pass through before successful selling can occur. Yes, the selling framework is a repeatable process which is formed based on customer buying behavior. With a framework in place, you and your salespeople know what to do at every stage of the selling process.

In recent times, most businesses are advised to adopt a framework. The framework is usually adopted based on the prospects of such a sale. There are numerous business structures out there with some as old as humankind. You may have heard that the oldest business in the world is prostitution, but I would argue that prostitution only became a business once somebody was able to sell the services.

Selling has been around for as long as we can remember. Because sales has been around so long, we intuitively know when were being sold to, and as a result, weve created a counter-sales strategy without even knowing it.

That is why we naturally always keep our cards close to the chest when we talk to a salesperson. Why else would we say the clichd Im just looking any time we walk into a store? We walked into the store to buy something. Shouldnt we ask the professional for help?

This reminds me of my experience watching TV shows. I found it quite difficult to watch TV shows because I felt they were stereotypes. In fact, ever since I got cable, I can recollect only watching a few shows. In my opinion, they felt misleading and seemed like they would do anything just to buy more time and keep you glued to the screen. I realized this was the wrong way to get people to watch your show. Eventually, I managed to find a few ones that kept my attention: South Park and House .

I found Dr. House especially useful because of how they handled the show. They chose to be different from others. It was a medical show, but not the usual ones you see around. The doctor on the show understood that everybody lies, especially when you are in a buyer-seller relationship with them. To deal with the lies and be able to accurately diagnose the patient, the doctor chose to look beyond the lies of the patient.

Dr. House had other doctors that worked for him. These doctors had a simple job: get into the house of the patient and record whatever information you can find. This information would describe the lives of the patient before they got sick and was vital to the diagnosis, helping them treat people better. This show highlights a unique way of handling a selling framework. They chose to eliminate the lies and focus on what really matters for the best service delivery. You have to emulate this type of problem-solving for your own business.

Get familiar with some things you are likely to hear from customers and develop responses to them. This is what the selling framework is concerned with. As the owner of a brand, you should know how best to settle the common requests and lies that the buyer may throw your way. This framework will give you a solid structure and prevent you from having to start from scratch every time that you come across a new customer.

There may be times when the customers are only trying to make inquiries about a product but not yet interested in making a purchase. This type of customer may try to disguise their inquiry like an actual desire to purchase. You should be able to identify these types of scenarios and change the situation of things to suit your motives: making a sale. The selling framework is going to contain information about this.