Canuckflack
… it’s about design, marketing, retail quirks, government communications and oddities … and written in Canada!
Search
Send the nonverbal message that you are listening
4 Feb2005
I work in-house, so I’ve had many opportunities to hear pitches, proposals and presentations from erstwhile suppliers. The common theme? “Man, do we have the program/product/publication for you!” Sorry guys, you lost me at “Hello.”
What’s missing from their spiel? Personalization: how does your proposal relate to my needs? How are you going to solve my problem?. How can you help ME? Dana points to a WSJ article discussing “why ‘listen and learn’ is a consultant’s mantra“.
I’d ask the same of our in-house comms staff: are you listening to your clients? How have you moved THEIR yardsticks?
Maybe we all need 7 Tips for Effective Listening, from the Journal of the Institute of Internal Auditors.
- In: Management
2 Responses to Send the nonverbal message that you are listening
Dana VanDen Heuvel
February 6th, 2005 at 11:56 pm
Colin,
Right on! In this day and age of the Internet, Hoovers, Lexis-Nexis, and dozens of other data resources out there, there’s simply no excuse for not knowing more about your prospective customers, or for altering your phone call/pitch with information that you’ve learned from listening. I can honestly say that I’ve turned down some otherwise keen vendors because they sucked as basic things like listenting to what I actually wanted.
Bruce DeBoer
February 11th, 2005 at 10:38 am
Colin,
There are reems of books, journals, magazine articles, not to mention the high dollar seminars that all say what you said in four short paragraphs. What do you think the future of the word SELL is?
I don’t know one person who likes to be sold a bill of goods. Marketing (the word) doesn’t fair much better but at least, by definition, if you do it well you ARE listening.
- bruce