10 Tips for Effective Listening - Sandra "Sam" Black

1. Concentrate and focus
on the speaker, whether you are on the phone or in person.  Don’t let physical noises distract you.  Even more important, don’t let mental noise distract you.  That’s the little voice in your head as your mind wanders – what will we have for dinner tonight? Will the dry cleaner be open until 7pm? I NEED this sale or my manager will yell at me!  If you let that voice distract you, you will quickly lose focus and miss what the speaker is saying.


2. Listening is ACTIVE not passive hearing. Listening requires doing all or some of the following ACTION steps to ensure that you hear everything.  If you don’t, the words go in one ear…through that gray matter…and out the other ear without ever making an impression.
   
   
3. Take NOTES. No one can remember everything in a conversation, especially if it’s a sales conversation or a customer service problem conversation.  Whether on the phone or in person, always have a pen/pencil and paper with you.
   
   
4. ASK Questions and then Shut Up! If you ask a question and keep talking, you can’t be listening.  Plus, you don’t give the other person a chance to respond, or you ask too many questions in a row and they don’t know which one to answer.
   
   
5. Limit your talking.  If you ask a question and then STOP talking, you are in a position to Listen.  This is one of the hardest skills for a sales or customer service person to master – especially if you are outgoing, talkative and eager to help.  But Listening requires hearing what the other person is saying…and you can’t do that if you are talking!
   
   
6. Show concern and empathy for what the other person is saying.  Acknowledge it and make appropriate responses.  They will know you are not listening if you respond with “Great” when they have just told you a sad story or talked about a problem.
   
   
7. In many cases it is helpful to repeat, clarify, paraphrase, or summarize what the person has just said so that you confirm you listened and understood.  These techniques help avoid any confusion in what you think you heard but what the other person actually said…or meant.
   
   
8. Be patient!  Not everyone converses at the speed of light.  As a good listener you want to give them time to frame their thoughts, and to respond to your questions.
   
   
9. Don’t interrupt! Allow the speaker to finish his/her thoughts.  In line with point #8 – they may pause before finishing.  Don’t jump in and fill that pause until you are sure they are finished with their sentence/thought.
   
   
10. Judge the ideas, not the person. We don’t always like everyone we are communicating with, and that dislike can seriously undermine our ability to LISTEN to them.  Even if you don’t like them, it’s important to give them the attention they need to express their ideas and needs.

REMEMBER
Listening is ACTIVE Hearing, not passive hearing, and requires consciously using the above skills.

(This list of handy tips was printed with permission from Sam Black, who has 30+ years in call center and telemarketing management, telemarketing training, customer service training, and field sales training.  Visit her website at http://samblack.com.)