How To Listen (And Instantly Improve Your Sales Prospecting) | Salesman Podcast

Michael Reddington is a certified forensic interviewer and the president of InQuasive Inc., where he uses his background in forensics and understanding of human behavior to teach businesses how to use the truth to their advantage. On this episode of the Salesman Podcast, Michael explains the 6-levels of listening and how they’ll improve your prospecting, discovery and sales calls. Resources: Michael’s LinkedIn InQuasive.com Michael’s Email – [email protected]. Transcript Will Barron: Welcome to the Salesman podcast. My name is will, and on today's episode, we're looking at the six levels of listening and how they're going to help you improve the performance of your prospecting discovery and sales calls with buyers. Today's guest is Michael Reddington, his certified forensic interview. He's got a book coming out in the not too distant future, The Disciplined Listening Method. You can find out more about Michael at InQuasive.com. And with that, Michael, welcome back again to the show.   Michael Reddington: It is great to be here again, Will, thank you so much for having me.   Will Barron: You're welcome. I'm glad to have you back on me. Is this the third time you've been on the show?   Michael Reddington: It is, yes. I'm afraid to admit it, because you're going to cap me off, I don't want to stop myself from maybe getting invited back after, but yes, it's the third time.   Are Salespeople Born with the Ability to Really Listen to Prospects and Buyers? · [00:59]   Will Barron: Good man. Well, maybe there's like five or six people have come on three or four times a year. You're in a select group there and it's because of my fan of you and your work, mate. We're going to dive into the six levels of listening. We'll see if we can get through all six. If we don't, that's fine, we'll have you back on in the future to dive into them, but let's start with this, mate. Are we born with the ability, sales people specifically, are born with the ability to really, really listen to our prospects so that we can help them or is this a skill that we need to learn?   Michael Reddington: I'm going to walk the fence a little bit. My official answer is it's a skill we need to learn. My unofficial answer is it is something we're born with, it's something that we typically stray away from. So if I was bold enough, which I guess I have to be, to take us all the way back to being infants, we literally have to be astute observers to everything going on around us, especially with Mommy and Daddy, to understand what they're thinking, what they're feeling. I have a four year old son. So he's right on track to developing his theory of mind, which is essentially understanding what people around us are thinking or feeling at any time, and just over the last couple of months, he started asking, “Daddy, are you mad at me?” which is a funny question to answer to my four year old because I might be, but I don't want to make this situation any worse.   Michael Reddington: So I would contend that, especially as young children, yeah, we have this real curiosity, this real interdependence, we're very much in tune, but then as we grow up and we get distracted and develop our own thought processes and assumptions and such, then it becomes less of a skill that we really focus on.   “Listening is something that we have to intentionally work to develop because so many of our sales conversations involve some level of stress. And as stress mounts, we tend to go to what we know, and generally in the sales profession, what we know best is ourselves, our product, our service. So if I feel like I'm under the gun,