by Cheryl A. Clausen

The secret to influence probably isn’t what you’re expecting. Powerful influence is a result of the way you listen. You can be a master of influence if you know how to listen to unlock this powerful influencing force. Your current listening behaviors make it unnecessarily hard for yourself. The listening behaviors that reduce your effectiveness include: allowing other thoughts to clutter your mind, thinking about what you’re going to say next while the other person is still talking, trying to rush the prospect, and you losing focus. These bad listening behaviors eliminate your persuasion potential.
When you listen for understanding you increase your persuasiveness. Effective listening requires a clear purpose for what you’re listening for. If you’re going to understand the prospect and their needs there are definite questions you need answers to.
If you really want to improve your listening skills you need to track and measure your progress. As you obtain the answers to the key questions you need to know you have one measure of your progress. People buy for emotional reasons, so the more important key measurement is if you help the prospect to open up and reveal the emotional reason for making a buying decision. Listening is such a powerful influencing skill because it builds rapport and trust quicker than anything else you can do. As the prospect opens up and tells you about themselves you’re building trust. They need to trust you to do business with you.
Effective listening provides a no pressure powerful influencing technique. You’re helping your prospect to uncover and discover their reason for buying as you listen and question to understand. You’re guided questions help them to reach their own conclusions as they focus and expand beyond their current understanding of their situation.
The best way to have effective listening skills is to prepare to listen before you hold the appointment. Before you hold your meeting clear your mind and relax. Both you and your prospect should have a clear understanding about why you’re meeting and what you need to learn about your prospect. Rather than worrying about being rejected focus on listening for exclusion. You want to exclude prospects that aren’t a good fit quickly. Focusing on obtaining qualified prospects for your business will help you to increase your insurance sales success.
Recognize that there is important information in seemingly irrelevant details. Sometimes the prospect may veer off on a tangent that doesn’t seem pertinent, yet they’re sharing that information for a reason and that reason may lead to the emotional hot button that motivates them to buy now. Don’t be afraid to take notes about what the prospect is telling you. For other ideas to increase your insurance sales success use the tools below.

About the Author:

About the author: Cheryl Clausen can help you get where you want to be. Improve your Sales Techniques get her free analysis. Increase your sales today through Sales Coaching, check this out. You can get a unique content version of this article.