Margie Dana

The art of listening to a prospective customer is underappreciated.

I get cold calls every week from people trying to sell me something. No sooner is the word “Hello” out of my mouth, then the caller launches into his script (it’s usually but not always a man) and doesn’t come up for air. Color that OHT for One HUGE Turn-off.

Listening is a sales skills that never goes out of style. One of the best pieces of advice I heard from a print executive was this 80/20 rule: Listen 80% of the time; speak the other 20%. This is true for the first cold call to the first in-person meeting with a prospect, and continues throughout the customer relationship.

Sales reps who don’t understand the value of listening to customers don’t deserve the business. In the words of a very experienced production manager (and who once worked as a designer for a print company), printers “need to quit making sales pitches and start making service pitches. These days, just about any shop out there can get an Indigo and start spitting out high-quality variable data on it. But showing how they support that product is where they can stand out among the competition.”

Another senior print buyer in financial services wrote how much he dislikes the “flippers and flappers.” These are sales reps who launch a PowerPoint presentation, flip through slide after slide, and spend time flapping their lips.

What he appreciates and responds to? A rep who comes prepared. This means a salesman who’s done his homework on a prospect. He asks questions about the buyer’s current challenges and wants to know what he’s looking for in a printer.

This buyer told me that only once in 15 years has a rep in the graphic arts ever started a meeting with, “Tell me about yourself.” And that rep worked for a paper company – not a printing firm.

Are you listening?