To grow your business you need customers, and what customers need more than anything else in the world is someone who will listen to them and understand their needs. Warning, listening is classified as an advanced sales strategy, therefore if you do not feel that you are yet ready to listen to your customers then you are beyond the help that this article aims to offer.

Sales strategies to grow your business have changed considerably over the years and what was thought to be cutting-edge in the 1980s today has more of a place in Darwin´s Origin of Species than the workplace. Unfortunately sales training in many offices up and down the country is passed on down from senior to junior salespeople like family heirlooms from father to son, which means that rather than learning about selling in the corporate landscape of today they are being mis-sold the methods of yesteryear. The fact of the matter is that in today´s business world the salespeople who prioritise listening over talking are the ones most likely to win the clients to grow your business and in turn their own careers.

Why listen when there´s so much to say?

Salespeople just love to talk, they love to tell you all about the unique qualities of their product or service, of the heritage of the organisation that they work for, and how the deal they are offering you is exactly what you need to grow your business. The problem is that most spend far so long talking and nowhere near enough time listening so the likelihood of them knowing what their customers really want is quite slim.

The reason for this problem can be traced all the way back to the way such a meeting is defined by the sales community. As a “pitch” the salesperson is expecting to present their wares to the potential customer, but this one-sided approach to customer relations involves guesswork on a massive scale.

For example, if I told you that to grow your business you´d need to sell more oranges than the next orange seller and that I could supply you with as many of the highest quality oranges as you´d need plucked from our orchards on the green sunlight hillsides of Spain´s most famous orange growing region you´d probably consider that to be a reasonable pitch to an orange seller. However, if going into the meeting I only knew that you sold citrus fruits and you actually specialise in lemons or grapefruits instead of oranges my whole pitch would be fundamentally flawed, and this is the crux of the matter.

What I´m getting at with this oversimplified example is that without dialog there is no way of knowing what the customer actually needs from you. A focused presentation is all well and good once you fully understand a customer´s expectations of you, but to get to this stage you need to ask the right questions and really listen to what they have to say.

Listening to your customer:

The fact that most people seem to ignore in sales is that you can talk someone into a sale, but to win them as a customer you need to prove that you truly understand what they want from you. Incorporating this strategy to grow your business can pay dividends for years to come.

To listen effectively you must:

Every sales situation is unique, and every customer will want to see or hear something different from the last, but one consistent element to the sales success that will help you to grow your business is that listening to your customer helps you to sell to them more effectively.

Ensuring that members of your sales team takes on board this simple strategy can considerably improve their productivity, help to bolster your corporate image and can contribute to better customer retention.

A co-ordinated sales strategy to grow your business

Whether you´ve a sales team numbering into the hundreds or your customer facing force counts just you it´s of paramount importance that there is a considered and consistent style to the sales meetings attended by your company. Because sales are the fuel in the engine that drives your company forward the best way to grow your business is to invest in some good sales training that incorporates the importance of listening to your customers for sales success.