Good communication is very important for the successful business and it’s not all about talking. Good listening skills come into it, too. Listening is a valuable entrepreneurial skill. It can be learned and improved with practice. This is a process consists of five elements like hearing, attending, understanding, responding, and remembering. Listening is not just hearing words but it requires skill and practice for greater effectiveness.
Importance:
Listening promotes greater customer satisfaction. If the organization clearly understand the customers point then they can easily handle the issues. Some issues require a palpable reply, such as the replacement of a defective product, while other issues may require an apology.
Listening will develop a effective leadership structure where subordinates can trust and rely on their leader’s word. You can better understand this, when the management get the feedback’s from the employees and responds them with swift action. Employees feel respected which results in increased productivity and loyalty to the company.
Listening in business communications made a strong business to business relationships. When businesses work together, their primary motive is to produce a win-win situation where both business benefit from the communication. Listening skills will clearly exhibits the business partners to have a clear understanding of what each company expects or wants from the relationship.
Tips for improving your listening skills:
Don’t think about your response until the other person is finished talking. If you are trying to form your response while the person is still talking means you probably won’t hear everything you need to hear.
Don’t talk prematurely or interrupt. Let the other person to complete their thoughts. Interruption in the conversation can often results in the conversation off on a tangent and make it difficult to get back to what the other person wanted to say.
Concentrate carefully on what the other person is saying. Look at the other person when they are speaking. Don’t thumb through papers or appear distracted. Carefully listen to every word.
Listen without bias. Before decide an opinion, let the other person to explain their position. If you tell your view about the other person for expressing your effective listening means, what they are saying and what you interpret them to be saying could be entirely different.
Never assume anything when the other person meant if the wording is unclear. If someone says that they need something “as soon as possible” does that mean now, tomorrow, next week or some other time? If you assume that it means one thing and the person meant another, you have a problem. Ask what they specifically mean when they make any doubtful comments.
Listen effectively by nodding your head to acknowledge, making good eye contact, saying things such as, “I understand” or “that’s interesting”. This tells the other person you are listening attentively.
Clarify by retelling the conversation in your own words when necessary what you understood the other person to say.
Ineffective listening is one of the biggest obstacles in business. So better practice your listening skills every day. You will be wondered at how much more effective your communication will turn out to be, and hence your sales success, when you assume the responsibility of becoming an excellent listener.
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