Listening Skills “I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.” - ERNEST HEMINGWAY
Some years ago, a survey was conducted among buyers in the USA to determine what these professionals perceived to be the major shortcomings in today’s salespeople. In terms of selling skills, the number one shortcoming was listening. Listening skills are very often ignored, or just forgotten in sales training. While businesses may be willing to spend the money to send executives to sales courses, they rarely direct their employees to courses designed to improve listening habits, even though effective salespeople spend the majority of their sales time listening. The reason for this may be due to the misconception, held by many, that listening is the same as hearing and that everybody does it. This is not the case. A person listens with about a 50% efficiency and information loss is compounded as the message is passed from person to person. It is a bit like the old Army joke when the General issues the command, ‘send reinforcements, we’re going to advance’; by the time it had reached HQ the message was convoluted to ‘send three and four pence, we’re going to a dance’. I remember, many years ago, working in an electronics manufacturing plant in Cork, and we were starting to run out of components for a particular product line. We were due to have a conference call with the American operations centre in the afternoon to get things sorted out. The Operations Manager, a man of strong character, indicated during the day that he was going to join us on this call. When the appointed time came, the American guys picked up the phone, and before they even had a chance to exchange the usual pleasantries, our Operations Manager launched into them with a tirade of abuse. After a minute or so of this, one of the American guys calmly said ‘time out’ into the conference phone, and then in a very
50 | THE IRISH SCENE
authoritative voice said, ‘Frank, you can’t listen if your mouth is moving.’ Effective listening can be very hard work. It not only involves considerable concentration, it even causes noticeable physical changes. During ‘active listening’ , heart action increases, body temperature rises slightly, and the circulation of blood is faster. You can actually learn to sense these changes in yourself just by being aware that they occur when you are actively listening to someone. When you listen intently to someone, that person tends to work harder at listening to what you have to say too. When people talk, listen completely. Listen with curiosity. Most people do not listen with the intent to understand, they are already formulating the next question as you are speaking. Interestingly, the word ‘listen’ contains the same letters as the word ‘silent’.
“When you are speaking with someone who is actually a good listener, they don’t jump in on your sentences, saving you from actually finishing them, or talk over you, allowing what you do manage to get out to be lost or altered in transit. Instead, they wait, so you have to keep going.” - SARAH DESSEN BILL DALY Originally from Tallow in West Waterford, Bill spent 30 years in Cork as a Senior Manager in the Electronics Manufacturing industry with such companies as Apple, EMC and Logitech. He has been working on his own as a Consultant/Contractor in Manufacturing Operations and Materials for the past 18 years. He also attended UCC and has a BA Degree in Archaeology and Geography. Bill resides in Connemara, Co. Galway since 2009.
