Listening is more than hearing. Hearing is the awareness of sounds. Listening actively and thoroughly to customers is more than hearing the sounds emanating from their mouths. Listening is absorbing customers' words and actions, processing them, and responding appropriately. It's feeling what customers feel, seeing what they see, and understanding their situation from the inside out.

Listening demonstrates your genuine concern for their welfare. It's a bona fide relationship builder. Listening says to the other person, “I'm willing to set aside my agenda to understand what's most important to you.”

But listening isn't easy. In fact, it's one of the toughest things for salespeople to do. Most of us erroneously believe that our mouths are our most important instrument. We buy into the argument that we must talk our way to success. Listening is tough because it means our focus must go to the other person, not ourselves. And listening is tough because it involves some risk. If we really listen to what customers say, we risk accepting their point of view.

Here's an interesting fact: In our recent “Best Sales Practices” study of top sales achievers, we discovered that top salespeople spend 60 percent of the time on a sales call listening to customers. They're telling us that understanding customers is a prerequisite for success. How can anyone sell effectively without an in-depth understanding of their customers' needs?

Listening means you're having a conversation with your customers—a dialogue, not a monologue. If the customer's talking more than you're talking, your conversation probably is centered on the customer's world. That's a good thing, because it means you don't have to tell the customer everything you know about your product or company—only what's relevant to his needs.

Imagine the impact on customers when you dominate the conversation with a product-focused monologue. It signals that your agenda is more important than theirs. Think about this rationally. You're asking someone to spend money with you because you're special. Contrast that with the salesperson that listens to customers, understands their needs, and recommends they invest in a solution because it's the best remedy for their pain.

Listening starts before the sales call begins. It starts in your pre-call planning phase. What do you want to know about the customer? What information do you need to help the customer? Do you know everything going on in her world? Designing questions to help you understand the customer makes listening easier. You don't have to worry about filling the silence with your thoughts; you have planned questions to listen to their concerns.

It appears that the philosopher Epictetus was talking about salespeople when he said that God gave us two ears and one mouth and we should use them accordingly.