September MSP Growth Habit: Practice Active Listening

I wasn’t a born salesperson. Frankly, the notion of sales frightens me. When I first started at N‑able in 2004, I was hired as a Partner Development Specialist (PDS). This was a post-sales Account Management-style role where I was tasked to help our partners with the design and implementation of their managed services programs. There was zero sales experience required—it was all customer-support centric, which I loved and excelled at. 

Fast forward to the summer of 2011. I was just about to head out on vacation, when I was told by my manager at the time that my PDS role was being transitioned into a Channel Sales Specialist role and when I returned to work, I was going to have sales targets and quotas that I would need to meet. My heart stopped when I was given this news. I remember saying to my manager, “But I’m not a salesperson.” And he basically replied back, “Well you are now.”

So as I was journeying into this new frontier of sales, I started reading and educating myself on how to be a good salesperson, because even though I’ve never held a sales quota before, there was no way I was going to fail at this new position I was being moved into. Fortunately, I had a very kind sales manager who mentored me, and he gave me a piece of advice that has stuck with me to this day, and that was:

“Spend time actively listening to your partners, not to respond right away but to hear what they are actually saying. If you talk less and listen more, the sales will come.” 

What is Active Listening and What’s its Goal?

So what do we mean by the term ‘actively listening’ and what can you do to sharpen your active listening skills to help drive more closed deals for your MSP business?

According to LinkedIn, active listening is:

“…a key skill for building trust, rapport, and understanding with your clients, prospects, and colleagues. It involves paying attention, showing interest, and responding appropriately to what the other person is saying.”   

The goal of active listening is to obtain the information you need so that you can understand your prospects and their situations before responding to them. And the LinkedIn article goes on to outline the key benefits that can be achieved by refining your active listening sales skills:

1. It can help you establish credibility and authority, and help you to build rapport, by demonstrating that you are knowledgeable and informed about your prospect’s current situation
2. It can help to reveal the true needs, challenges, and requirements of your prospects. This will allow you to make better decisions and propose more effective services to address their concerns
3. It can help you avoid making assumptions or jumping to conclusions, and can help you avoid any misunderstandings and conflicts, by clarifying and confirming what the prospect is saying
4. It can help increase productivity and improve the velocity at which the prospect moves through your sales funnel. This is because when you are actively listening, you retain more information, which allows you to complete follow-up tasks accurately and completely  

So what techniques can you employ that can help you to improve your active listening skills, if you feel this is an area that can use some work?

5 Ways to Improve Your Active Listening Skills to Help Close More Deals Faster

1. Do your research and be prepared

Before the meeting, ensure you take the time to research the prospect to learn what you can about their industry, their business, and the role they play within the company. Outline the questions you have that you require answers to and document what your goals and objectives are for the meeting. 

2. Use open-ended questions

This encourages your prospects to elaborate and share information and their impressions about their present situation. So, avoid questions that would solicit a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response from your prospects, instead ask questions that start with, things like:  

• How would you…?
• What would you do…?
• Can you expand on this further?

3. Paraphrase or repeat back information

This helps to ensure that you understand what the prospect is communicating to you. And if you need further clarification on something that has been said by your prospect be sure to ask.   

4. Practice your active listening skills regularly

This doesn’t mean just in your pure sales calls. You can practice your active listening skills anywhere! In networking events with new acquaintances; in planning meetings with colleagues; even in conversations with family members. However, there are some things you want to be mindful of:

• When asking questions, be sure that they are in line with the topic of conversation. While questions are good and signify that you are paying attention and are interested in what they are saying, be careful not to ask too many irrelevant questions so as not to appear like you are grilling your prospects for information
• And while providing affirmations is important (like head nods, or smiling or using other appropriate gestures to reflect your interest), be careful not to go overboard so that the prospect feels awkward
• Be sure to maintain good eye contact, and be careful not to interrupt your prospect while they are speaking. If you would like to contribute to the conversation, first allow the speaker to finish their train of thought and interject once there is a natural pause in the flow of conversation
• And be sure to withhold judgements, negative comments and opinions or anything else that would cause you to appear defensive, as that is a sure-fire way to lose a prospect’s respect and tank your sales meeting
• Avoid multi-tasking and eliminate any other distractions that communicates to the prospect that they do not have your undivided attention. There is nothing more annoying or disrespectful than when you are speaking with someone and they appear to be preoccupied and not paying attention, and then they ask you to repeat yourself because they missed what you were saying earlier
• Finally, be sure to ask for feedback on how well your listening and communicating skills are doing and where you can improve 

5.     Remember to mind your p’s and q’s

At the conclusion of the discovery conversation, it is always a nice touch to send a follow-up email or short note afterwards to thank the prospect for their time, being sure to summarize the key take-aways and action items that are needed to proceed onto the next stage of the sales process.

So if you happen to be new to sales don’t panic like I did! There are many different sales training programs you can take, coupled with the countless number of books and blogs that have been written on the subject. However, in my experience, to truly be successful in sales it really comes down to two things:

1. Asking the right set of questions to your prospects to understand their challenges and struggles
2. Spending time really listening to what the prospect is saying by letting them do the majority of the talking—because they will give you all of the information you need if you just hold off and let them speak freely

So as we move into the final quarter of the year, be cognizant of how much talking verses listening you are doing when speaking with prospects. You may be surprised that by talking less, and listening more, you’ll be able to close more deals, more quickly to reach your sales goals.

For other MSP growth habits, check out: New Habits to Target for MSP Growth in 2023

Stefanie Hammond is Head Sales and Marketing Nerd at N‑able. You can follow her on LinkedIn and on Twitter at @sales_mktg_nerd.