By Michelle Richardson – The Brooks Groups – March 13, 2025
Microsoft Teams, Cisco Webex, Zoom, Google Meet, and GoTo Meeting—no matter what program you’re using, videoconferencing has changed sales and opened up new opportunities.
But if your sellers lack active listening skills, the platform they’re using won’t matter. They might as well be using tin cans and a string.
It’s a basic truth of sales performance that boosting customer understanding leads to greater success. By asking insightful and open-ended questions, sellers can uncover valuable information about the customer’s needs, wants, pain points, and goals. This allows you to recommend solutions that meet their needs, making it more likely you’ll close the sale.
Here’s an easy-to-follow plan that will help your sellers improve their listening and customer communication skills.
- Discover what prospects want most by asking consultative questions and listening actively.
- Find out what the prospect will buy, why they will buy it, and under what conditions they will buy it.
The Difference Between Asking Questions and Active Listening in Sales
Unfortunately, many sales professionals struggle to understand the difference between “asking” and “listening.” Often, requesting a signature on an order form is the first question that some sales professionals ask. But when your team uses a consultative selling approach, these terms take on different meanings.