Posted by on April 19, 2021.
We all have heard the phrase “Listen to Learn.” Your best persuaders have very good listening skills. The question is: What do we listen for? If we are selling a product, we listen for opportunities for our product benefits to be a solution for the client. If we work in an organizational function other than sales and are persuading a member of our department, we listen for openings where our solution can add value. Usually, that is the extent of our listen to learn perspective.
In a recent Harvard Business Review article surveying 230 buyers 81% of these buyers indicated they would prefer to buy from someone who shared their mannerisms. The number one reason the sale did not close was the buyer did not trust the salesperson. This information would suggest that if we can mimic the mannerisms of our client, we can enhance trust and improve our abilities to close our persuasion activity.
So, while we are listening for product benefits or openings where our solution can be of value to a colleague, we ALSO should be listening to responses to our questions to determine the style of our audience. The PXT Select Assessment provides specific insights about how to listen and determine key style insights once we know our own style using our PXT Select results.
For example, the Thinking Style section of PXT Select tells us how we learn and process information. Our tendency is to share information in similar fashion to how we learn it. Audiences learn information the way their cognitive abilities allow them to process information. So, we listen to learn how our audience best processes the information we are sharing. As an example, if we notice that our audience picks up information faster than we are presenting, we can speed up the pace with which we deliver the information so they do not get bored. What we are listening for is how quickly people speak relative to us. Generally speaking, the faster people speak the more quickly they process. The slower people speak the more slowly we should deliver the information.
The Behavior section of the PXT Select provides insights regarding the interaction behaviors of 9 people. Again, as we listen to learn, focusing on the Sociability, Outlook, Assertiveness and Pace, behaviors can provide valuable insights on how best to adapt our behaviors to mimic our audience’s perspective. Using Sociability as an example, Sociability measures how we prefer to build relationships. People on the right of the 1-10 continuum like to use a great deal of small talk and pleasantry exchange to get to know their audience. If we notice that our audience is left of our PXT Select score, we should diminish the intensity of this behavior relative to what is normal for you and if our audience is right of our perspective, increase the intensity of the behavior relative to what is normal for you.
As we begin to understand how to make these small adjustments in how we share information and the intensity of key behaviors, we immediately build trust with our audience. The more trust we develop, the more we can ask during our persuasion activities. If you would like to learn more about how the PXT Select Assessment can improve trust in your organization and optimize the “Listen to Learn” perspective, contact Profiles, Inc. Give us a call today.
