active listening – Growing Forward

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The task of communicating with customers is one that your business can’t afford to shy away from. How will you get your message across and deal with problems effectively if you can’t communicate well with your customers? It’s something that lots of business can and should do better because doing so has a real impact on your chances of success.

Good business communication can boost productivity, efficiency and customer satisfaction, among many other important things. If you’re wondering exactly what you can do to improve your approach to business communication, read on and find out.

Use Common Sense When Communicating with Clients

When communicating with clients, you first need to use a bit of common sense. There are certain things that you probably don’t want to discuss with them, even in an information situation. For example, if you want to keep your clients on side, you probably shouldn’t bring up topics like religion or politics, unless your brief is directly related to those subjects. It’s all about avoiding controversy and not creating avoidable problems through poor communication strategies. You’d be surprised by how often companies get this stuff wrong.

Focus on Collaboration Over Dictation

When working alongside colleagues and employees in your workplace, you should become less of a dictator and more of a collaborator. People tend to respond far better to people who are trying to work with them rather than just ruling over them and telling them what to do all the time. It’s so much more productive for you to listen to people, understand their talents and then work with them from there in order to create the best possible outcomes for your business. That’s the way it should be.

Offer and Ask for Feedback

As a manager or business owner, you’ll have people working for you and you’ll be in charge of them in the workplace. As a result of that, you’ll be responsible for providing feedback to them and this is something that should not be overlooked. By providing constructive and helpful feedback, you’ll help people to grow and improve in their career. This not only helps the business, but also helps them too. You should also ask for feedback on how you’re doing and what colleagues and employees think you could improve on.

Embrace New Communication Options

The way in which we communicate in the world of business is always changing as new trends and technological advances arrive. Things like text to voice messaging bring benefits that you won’t want to miss out on, and that’s just one recent example of a new communication method that you can take advantage of. Whenever there’s a new trend, consider its benefits and think about whether or not it’s something that will help your business advance its approach to communication.

Become an Active Listener

Communication is not just about what you say and what you communicate to other people; it’s also about being a good and active listener. Put some real effort into what people are trying to get across to you. If you can do that, people will respond to you differently and more positively and that can only be a good thing for you and everyone in your workplace going forward.

Value Face-to-Face Communication

Face-to-face communication is something that’s really suffered and declined in recent times. We can all send emails and messages to one another instantly without any problems at all. So, why meet in person when it’s easier not to? Well, there’s something different about face-to-face communication, especially when it comes to meeting clients and things like that. When you speak to people in person and directly, much more is communicated than with a short sharp email.

Ask Questions

Clients also want to know that you actually care about their needs, and one way to show them that you care is by asking questions and taking an active interest in those needs. It makes a real difference and it’s something that you should certainly be looking to work on going forward. You’ll also learn a lot more about what your clients want and how you can satisfy them better if you ask those questions.

Communication is the cornerstone of pretty much everything your business does. It’s important that you’re always doing more to communicate with customers, clients and colleagues better. It can be tough to get it right 100% of the time, but as long as you’re striving to improve and taking the kinds of steps mentioned above, you’ll be on the right track.

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Are you sure that you’re using the best and most up to date selling methods in order to sell as much as possible to the right people? If you’re not, it’s time to take a step back and look at what you could be doing differently in order to improve selling outcomes for your business going forward. It might sound like a lot of hard work, but it’s more than worth the time and effort that should go into it. Here are some of the most important modern ways to sell more to the right people.

Help Them Make the Decision on Their Own

One of the things that can really get in the way of your efforts to sell to more people is the fact that many people are wary of sales techniques. No one wants to feel like they’re being pressured into buying something, and that’s why the hard sell so rarely works these days. People know the tactics and they push back against them. That’s why you need to focus on gently suggesting things so that customers arrive at decisions by themselves.

Try Active Listening During the Sales Process and Then Improve From There

The selling process doesn’t have to just be about selling. It’s also a chance for you to listen to what your target customers want. So adopt an active listening approach, and make the most of these chances to find out about the wants and needs of the average customers. You can then make changes that will help you appeal to people better.

Carry Out Modern Research

There are so many modern market research methods that can provide you with greater insights into the people you view as your target customers. This allows you find out exactly who the right people are you’re looking to sell to, and what you should do to appeal to them more in the future. You should check out these market research companies if you want to get started with this.

Take Advantage of Demonstration Opportunities

These days, people like to see the thing that they’re thinking of buying working in front of them before they purchase. That’s why more people attend events and shows to see products up close. You should make the most of this fact by demonstrating your products at such events.

Become a Thought Leader

When you grow a reputation for yourself as a thought leader in your field, people will be more likely to want to buy from you. People always want to buy from people who look and sound like they really do know what they’re talking about, so you should make the most of this. It can begin with you starting a blog and providing useful content to people that way.

Selling is never as easy as it looks because there is so much going on below the surface that most people never understand. So make the most of these modern selling ideas and concepts if you want to make sure that you sell more of your products to the right kinds of people when you’re running your company.