Originally published by Randy Kessler on LinkedIn: Listening carefully is a forgotten art — and the key to good business
It’s always interesting to me how people providing me a service or trying to sell me a product presume to know what I want or feel. How can they know if I want a modern house, a convertible car vs. a sedan, or a shirt with or without a collar? These are simple examples where the salesperson can simply ask what we want. But what about more complex sales or negotiations. In the divorce world, it would be easy to assume our clients want as much money as possible, but that certainly is not always the case.
Years ago, before I gave my first lecture on handling family law cases, I asked the oldest and best family lawyers what they suggested. The responses were wonderful and enlightening, but the most common one was to “figure out what the client really wants." Whether it was the new house with the pool, or the small in-town condo near all the action. Or maybe it was the dog, above all else. And often divorcing clients are reluctant to admit what they truly want. For instance, how can anyone admit, or state that they don’t want custody of their kids? Yet many do not want that responsibility. Or that they actually want to pay alimony to protect their former spouse financially. It happens! So we must listen. And listening carefully is a forgotten art form.
The internet, however, is doing a very good job of figuring out what people want. It is listening to you and observing. Tracking purchases (companies like Amazon and Google do this) is a way to learn what you like. And they can probably correctly assume that what you’ve purchased in the past is indicative of what you will buy in the future.
But what about those working in sales who don’t have access to such technology? They and we need to learn to listen well. As the ancient Chinese proverb says, “You learn more when you listen than when you talk." And even better, try to imagine ourselves in our client’s (or customer’s) shoes. For years I would come to work on the weekend and walk down the halls in my office, pretending I was a new client. I’d sit on the client side of my desk. I even gave myself a fee contract to see what it felt like (that made me shorten it from eight pages to one simple page). I noticed the office, the art, the visible garbage cans and many other small things a new client might notice, and I changed them. And I kept that walk down the halls in mind when I then met with new clients. I remembered this was all new for them, even if not for me. I hope it helped me become a better lawyer and a better listener.
So let’s try to hear what our clients and customers want (not what we think they want). That has to help them and us. Hopefully it does help. Those who have succeeded in sales know this well. They even have a sense of pride in a job well done when a client or customer says “you understand me." And if you do indeed understand them, don’t you feel better able to serve and advise them? And doesn’t that feel better?