With B2B sales being a profession, which is all about helping people make better decisions for themselves, it’s critical to listen more in conversations. You want to learn, receive information, test hypotheses and presumptions, and eliminate assumptions completely.

Every day, we all ask questions. To sell something, to get to know something, to get to know someone better, to understand, so we can provide better, stronger, and more valuable insight and advice. When we listen more, we understand more. When we understand more, we can provide accurate advice.

When asking questions, though, many make a disastrous mistake: Volunteering answers!

Volunteering answers is the unfortunate mistake of asking a questions and suggesting potential responses before an answer has been provided. By volunteering the answer the conversation partner’s thoughts are sent in a particular direction, limiting the scope and quality of answers received. Instead, to focus on our conversation partner’s and truly perceive and understand their perspective, we should avoid volunteering anything.

Try this: When you ask a question: Immediately after you’ve asked the question, SHUT UP!

Because of keeping quiet, you might get an answer that’s totally unexpected. Because of that, you could well understand their world better – and not just as seen from your own perspective, but enlightened by the clarity of others. To listen more, thus, is to understand better.

As you can imagine this is precisely what one wants to do, and what we practice in outsourced sales here at YourSales.

Try it out, monitor yourself asking questions, until finally you master the skill of shut up and listen more.