Ask any salesperson about the value of listening and they will tell you that it is one of the most critical aspects of selling. The hottest authors agree, in fact, of the thirty fastest selling books on sales, every one of them notes the importance of listening -- usually concluding that listening and talking in a sales conversation should be done in the same ratio as ears to mouth.

But while seemingly everyone knows this, the actual practice of a pro dealer and seller may be quite different. Survey after survey with industry clients, clearly shows that most of the talking is done by the salesperson. Young or old, commercial or residential, experienced or new, lumber or drywall, most salespeople simply do not use the skill of effective listening.

If all the books say listening is important, and every salesperson agrees it could bring in thousands, why isn’t it being done? The heart of the answer lies in understanding the difference between knowing and doing. Just because we know something doesn’t mean we can do it. We know how to play basketball, but we cannot rebound effectively. We know (from reading a golf magazine) how to hit the golf ball, but we slice it, resulting in a high handicap. Salespeople know what should be done during the sale, but the proof is in the doing.

It’s an article of faith in the world of sports that, if we want our team to get better at basketball or golf, we simply must have the team submit to a practice regimen of a pro trainer or coach. This lesson from sports could not be truer in the world of business sales.

Yet in a recent assignment, my company was asked to assess why our client was constantly being beaten by the competition. The quality and performance of their respective products and systems were very close, but after comparing the number of training and coaching days over the past five years, the competitor had, on average, eighty days of skill training, whereas our client had only five days. And what skills did the competition think were important? One of their main training topics was, you guessed it –listening.

Our client asked us to evaluate a variety of salespeople for listening skills. To no one’s surprise, the salespeople who had not achieved their sales targets were poor listeners, but to everyone’s surprise, one listening error was common even among those salespeople who had achieved their targets.

The most common listening error in the top sales group was the two part skill of (1) asking a question and (2) the skill of Sh-sh-sh-sh - listening. While the quality and frequency of questioning by the top group was better, neither group listened to the answers from the customer. Why not? Because they were thinking about what they were going to say next! This is the error, not of a rookies, but of experienced salespeople who know that questions must be asked, and that of a professional team who wants to be ready with another question or statement. Even after post call coaching, the error would often be repeated on the next call, thus demonstrating the habitual nature of the problem.

Breaking the non-listening habit, like breaking any habit, requires the will to do it and the intervention of multi-step process. Uly Meixner, in his book The OH Norman Diary, succinctly points out that effective listening is hearing, understanding, and remembering.

Of course these salespeople could hear, but they rarely advanced to the second step: understanding. The answer to breaking this habit and developing the skill of understanding, while simple, is not easy, and comes only after drill, drill, and more drill. Using a few simple drills,* we taught them to focus on the last sentence the customer uttered and, as Brian Brio points out in his book, Beyond Success, “ to be fully present,” by asking the customer questions that will expose the full nature and meaning of the customer’s last remark.

What was the value of that sweet skill, Sh-sh-sh-sh? To the salespeople it meant thousands of dollars in commissions; to the company it meant becoming a happy paymaster for commissions funded by a three point increase in margin.

The focus today in sales is on margin percentage and margin dollars – and rightly so. The simple formula is less costs and/or higher revenues equals higher margins. But after processes have reduced costs to the minimum, the only path to more revenue is skill usage, and no set of skills can be utilized without effective listening.

So, stop talking, stop thinking about what you are going to say next, and simply practice sh-sh-sh-sh.- listening. What’s the point? Based on our research, we find it’s at least a point in margin.