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hi i'm alan gordon and welcome to another video to tell you that listening is never taught in school none of us were ever taught how to listen but it is the single most important factor in selling in business and in your personal life if you can learn how to listen i guarantee your sales will increase and if you can learn how to listen and you can take that skill home as a husband or a wife as a parent as a co-worker as a boss whatever you are outside of business whatever relationships you have if you can learn how to listen to people they will immediately put you up a notch in terms of they'll like you and they'll think very highly of you because in fact you actually listen to them so if anybody listens to me i like that person he actually took the time and expressed an interest in what i had to say the reason this is is because listening it triggers our unconscious minds so when you listen to me you're triggering my unconscious mind by showing me attention and respect i may not be able to put into words but i have an unconscious feeling that i like you you care about me you're a good person you're very very smart you've taken the time to ask me good questions and understand my needs i believe that you really do have my best interests in mind and of course you do because you actually took the time to listen to me you took the time to give me attention and respect and i will reciprocate with very kind feeling towards you so listening is actually one of the most powerful influencing tools that you have if you truly and genuinely listen to the other person then you are giving them attention and respect and you now command influence over that person and i don't say that in an evil way or a coercive way the very reality is that when we listen to people that we show them respect they show us respect right back and they do that unconsciously every time because it's an unconscious reaction the second thing i want to share with you is that listening is a difficult skill to develop and there are two reasons number one as i speak and i speak ever so slightly on the slow side as i speak your mind can listen eight times faster than i can speak so between all the words and the pauses and the sounds that i'm making your mind is filling in the gaps with its own thoughts so translate that while our my customer is speaking to me i already know what he's saying and my mind is going a mile a minute much faster than he can speak and i'm thinking of what i'm going to say next or i'm thinking of something else or again think about your customer as you're speaking your customers thinking about other things because his mind is operating much faster than you can speak so that is the most significant challenge to good listening because the reality is it's hard to listen because our minds operate much faster than people speak the second reason why it's difficult to listen is a cultural reason in our culture we value assertiveness and aggression so for example if a cut if i'm in a meeting with several people and we're talking about ideas whose idea do you i think do who do you guess i want my idea to be presented i want my idea to be the best idea i want my idea to be the one that the company goes with and i want to get credit so that everyone in that room knows hey it was alan's idea and and that's the way psychologically culturally we're wired to be assertive and aggressive and get our ideas in so how does all this translate as sales people were taught to ask questions so we ask a question tell me a little bit about your business and they say oh you know we're in the you know the printing business oh the printing business well let me tell you i have a lot of customers in the printing business and uh they all use my product and it's just a great product for the printing business so we asked the question the customer talked and if you've never done this you're not human we all just jump all over the customer and then tell them what we want to tell them when we're at a party where are you from oh i'm from cleveland oh i just flew into cleveland three months ago we had mechanical problems on the plane i had to stay here i had to do this i had to do that i went to the dry cleaners in cleveland you ever go to this restaurant in cleveland so the cup you're a party right you want to find out about somebody they tell you something and then you jump into the conversation okay so this is what we do is sales people so the first thing we have to do number one is we ask open-ended questions and then we listen to the answers and we listen by asking more questions oh that's interesting what other services does your business offer oh wow hey did you start this company on your own wow that must have been difficult hmm you know when did you start to grow how do you deal with hiring so many people the more i ask you about your business the more you're going to tell me about your business if i'm talking to a couple and i'm trying to sell them insurance or real estate or whatever it might be or or or appliances tell me a little bit about you really how many kids do you have well that's interesting you know what else tell me more about your situation well that brings up another question you said that do you also mean this you know tell me more tell me more tell me more it's like literally picture yourself pulling a rope ask more questions get more information pull and pull and pull until now i have this giant pile of information about my customer what would i use that for i use that now to present my product or service to build value feature by feature benefit by benefit i'm going to show you how my product or service is now going to match everything you just told me about your needs the more i listen the more information i get the easier it is for me to build value so open-ended questions and pulling information from your customer pull more and more information gather more the second thing you can do to get more information instead of asking questions you just what's called paraphrasing and reflecting so somebody says oh you know we're going to be expanding into three divisions paraphrasing would be oh so you're gonna be uh growing into new new areas that's paraphrasing i'm repeating back what they said using slightly different words that now is a green light yes we're gonna be growing and expanding into different areas what are they tell me more about that uh one of them is you know it's going to be international oh so you're growing internationally oh that's paraphrasing so you're going to be expanding the different countries they tell that's called a green light for them to ask you more for them to give you more information reflecting is almost exactly the same so they say yes we're going to be opening three new divisions reflecting is simply repeating back exactly what they say three new divisions yes they'll tell you more and more and more international yes or you're at a party where are you from i'm from cleveland cleveland and they tell you more instead of you jumping in and telling them everything you don't know about cleveland and dominating the conversation you just say oh you're from cleveland they tell you more they tell you more and tell you more oh wow you know oh wow you've moved to three different cities in the last 10 years wow tell me more tell me more so there's that's how you gather information it's like pulling a rope just imagine when you're with you with a customer or on the phone or in a store and you're trying to figure out more about this person what do they need and is my product or service gonna be a good fit the reason i'm gonna know it's a good fit is because i'm going to ask more and more and more questions going to pull and pull and pull i am not going to jump in i'm not going to interrupt i'm not going to tell them how great i am plenty of time for that after they're done presenting their information to me so that's listening if you can become a great listener and please don't leave listening at the office be a great listener at home too it's a great skill to have it'll literally separate you from the average sales person who just asks couple of questions and jumps in you as the x as the superior sales person you're going to ask more questions more questions more questions and then you're going to be able to present your solution anyway listening great skill very very important skill of business side and on the personal side of your life so i highly encourage you to practice this one skill take this skill and take all these other sales skills that i present in the book and these videos and day by day week by week month by month year by year become the master salesperson that you want to be thanks