Can You Hear Me Now? How to Listen Better.
June 8, 2011 by Steve OHollaren · 2 Comments
Most people are not born with good listening skills, but rather they are learned over many years. After reading this blog post, I don’t expect you to become a master with your listening skills. However, I will point out some important factors that will enhance your ability to become not only a better listener, but communicator as well.
Leave Your Ego At Home
Professional pride is one of the biggest obstacles to being a good listener. A humble attitude is not suggested, but rather required. Try to genuinely focus more on what is been said and not on what you would like to say.
Empathetic Listening
The essence of good listening is to listen with empathy, which requires you to view the interaction from the other person’s (customer) point of view. When you try to put yourself in another’s shoes, it is much easier to understand that individual’s message and the motivation behind it. Empathetic listening requires that you lay aside your personal agenda, your pride, and any defensive mechanism you may possess, and enter into a discussion with your customer as a vulnerable, teachable, imperfect person.
Avoid Commentary
Make every attempt to resist the urge to evaluate every statement your customer makes for its validity or usefulness. Learn to listen without judging either the customer or the content of the message. I know that this can be particularly difficult, but you’ll keep moving the ball down the field if you do.
Show Interest…I Mean Genuine Interest
Although it may seem insincere, assuming an “interested” posture (leaning in, eyes front, not preoccupied and for goodness sake, don’t look at your watch) will help you become interested, even if you find the subject or the customer less than dazzling.
Remember, It’s Not About You
Resist the urge to share your own stories, however relevant they may seem to you. Especially resist the urge to exceed each point with an anecdote about how thesame thing happened to you before, only much worse.
Offer Affirmation
Learn to use words and actions that affirm the customer without necessarily expressing agreement. Affirmation means letting a customer know his or her message is being received, not that you agree with every word.
It’s OK To Take Note, Unless Otherwise…
Taking notes is almost always permissible, unless your customer specifically tells you their comments are “off the record.” If you do take notes, you’ll be surprised at how much better you remember the conversation later, even without referring to them. Remember, leave the ego in the car…It’s ok to take notes.
Appropriate Response
When it is time for you to respond, reinforce the communication process by responding appropriately. Appropriate responses include restating the customers main points, acknowledging actions expected of you or your company, and asking clarifying questions. Inappropriate responses include reciprocal attacks, defensive posturing, and changing the subject to something of greater interest to you.
In Closing…
People (customers) like to talk about themselves and their respective companies. Do your homework before walking in their office and know as much as is prudent for the circumstance.
Lastly and perhaps most importantly…have fun while you’re doing it!
Recent Posts by Steve:
*Photo by Jerry Reynolds
7 Ways Glass Companies Can Leverage Facebook
March 14, 2011 by Kris Vockler · Leave a Comment
Like that Geico commercial says, if you haven’t heard about this, you must have been living under a rock. Facebook has turned into that behemoth we love and love to hate. Just today, I heard on the news that Facebook and Google are fighting over whose ads will or won’t show up on the other’s sites. Meaning, the pressure of advertising is getting to Google.
Currently, this is how Facebook stacks up:
- +500 million active users.
- The average user has 130 friends.
- Over 700 billion minutes per month are used up by Facebook users.
- The average user is connected to 80 community pages.
- There are more than 70 translations on the site.
- 70% of Facebook users are outside the US.
Staggering? Are you aware you can build a company presence on Facebook? Here are seven ways you can use Facebook to market your company. (Insert caveat, that it takes constant minding to build a community) To learn how to create your company page, check this out. When you are done, return here to see how you can use it.
1. Create a great first impression with a landing page.
Landing pages are a tab in Facebook that you can specify as the first thing people see when they visit for the first time. It’s a chance to tell them to “like” your page as well as a chance to show them all you can do. I’m not going to lie. It’s going to take someone who knows both graphic design as well as website coding. If you are crafty, you can figure it out. Here is a great tutorial on how to actually create one.
Example of how our landing page sends viewers to different areas and tells them what they will get out of our page:
2. Showcase photos of your products.
There are apps for Facebook that allow you to post a catalog of what you sell and there are apps to display photos in a specific way. How you design it is up to you, either way, Facebook is a great place to show the world what you do.
3. Showcase your projects.
Even better, show the world where your products go. From flat glass to decorative and everything in-between, show the world how awesome your work is with a picture. Have a favorite glazer you work with, help them toot their horn by getting on Facebook so you both can promote your hard work.
4. Build your brand.
From your website to your catalog, what you are doing is building a brand. A brand for your company and a brand for your products. Facebook is a unique and great way to not only further explain your brand, but get feedback on if the message is being heard.
5. Build a community.
Facebook is a community. You don’t just shout at people. You are part of your community. People are “like”ing your page and following your posts. It’s a social site, social meaning you converse. You get a chance to talk to your customers and spread the word far better than a static page on your website. With this community comes the fact that you have to be engaged, you must answer people who talk to you, and you have to create a need for people to want to talk to you.
6. Drive traffic to your website.
+500 million plus active users….How can you not create a business page and try to drive traffic back to your website? What drives them to you page? Creating ways for them to open the door. By posting pics they want to go see on your site, having discussions about your products, and linking documents they have got to get.
7. Create discussions.
Facebook is all about connecting. There are tabs for creating a forum like discussions and apps to create even more discussion. Some even use Facebook as a way to get to customer service issues, showing the walk behind the talk.
Don’t forget to “Like” us on facebook. :)
A few of the glass industry already on facebook:
LinkedIn Discussion: Market Development, How To Do It?
February 2, 2010 by Kris Vockler · Leave a Comment
In an economy downturn, one of the ways a company can grow is to find new markets for existing products or services. Using us for an example, taking our knowledge of silicone coatings to markets such as: plastics (polycarbonate), metals (aluminum), and concrete (additives and sealers). Yet I’m sure you are saying, “easier said than none Vockler”. I know, it’s hard, finding new markets is not easy. Yet there are individuals out there who do that type of work their whole career’s. I’m not one of them, I’ve spent my 12 years at ICD, marketing to the glass industry.
So, my new push is to develop new markets, find those problems that need to be solved. We as a company have a huge depth of knowledge when it comes to the chemistry of silicones and hybrid variations of silicones. Once in a while someone calls and asks if we have a coating for this or for that and it’s lead to the examples I listed in the previous paragraph. But I want to do better, I want to become a Super Market Developer!
But how? How do I find stones to overturn?
I started a discussion over on LinkedIn, if you are not a member you should be, it’s a great networking and peer-to-peer discussion site. Not to mention if you find yourself out of work it’s a great place to find out who is hiring in your area of expertise. LinkedIn Group: Market Development
While you are there, feel free to link me as a contact: http://www.linkedin.com/in/kvockler
But if you don’t want to sign up for LinkedIn, I ask you, what do you do to look for other markets than you are in right now? Have you had struggles or maybe it’s easy and you have some tips, I’m all ears.
Blog Contributors
CEO of ICD High Performance Coatings, from chemist to marketing and operations.
Sales Manager & Architect Specialist of ICD High Performance Coatings.