Sales/Marketing 101: Most Important Form of Communication? Listening!

You talk too much…particularly if your conversations find you speaking for more than 50% of the time.

This astute observation, reported in today’s weekend edition of the WSJ  by Rob Lazebnik (also a writer for “The Simpsons”) is courtesy of Dr. Lynn Koegel, Clinical Director of the Koegel Autism Center at the University of California.

However much the article (and Koegel’s view) may be referencing every day, social setting interactions, it provides great insight for road warrior sales execs and marketing “gurus”–the folks who live to dominate a conversation until the audience waves a white flag of submission.

The same article also inspired an ironic smirk on the part of this blogger, who, in the course of providing consulting services to enterprises of different shapes and sizes–makes it a point to include mentoring sessions with respective clients’ “up-and-comers” and interns. Each of the introductory always starts with this talking head posing my audience with this [rhetorical] question: “What is the most important form of communication?”

Invariably, the answers from my ‘students’ include the3-4 pat responses indoctrinated by those top”B-schools”; with the most likely suspect answers being:  ”good eye contact”  ”speak clearly”, “appropriate body language.” As spotlighted by today’s WSJ, I argue those pat answers are wrong; Listening is the Most Important Form of Communication. Period.

Sales/Marketing 101: Most Important Form of Communication? Listening!