Don't speak so loud if you want others to listen

I was very fortunate to meet one of the most impressive characters I have ever met, Neil Rackham. Neil, as you may know, was the creator of SPIN selling and is recognised as one of the leading thinkers in what makes a sales person effective.

Rather than go in to detail of our discussion, I'll save this up for another time, I want to highlight one of Neil's most impressive traits, the volume of his voice. Neil is a very softly spoken individual and he forces you to listen to him, rather than hear him! I am sure that this is deliberate, as I found myself concentrating on what he was saying as opposed to thinking ahead and missing key parts of the conversation. Neil is implementing what I would call "active speaking".

Everyone talks about active listening as a key aspect of a successful sales call, but how many of us combine active listening with broadcast speaking (i.e. we go into pitching speak) where we talk at the client. I know that I am often accused of "telling people" or "using the force of my personality to get a point over". My meeting with Neil revealed an alternative approach - speak quietly and bring the listener gently into the discussion.

The active speaking behaviour is:

• Speak at the volume you would normally use to calm somebody down.
• You will find that you naturally slow down the speed of speaking (providing you with thinking time, and making it easy to listen to).
• Encourage the listener to join you in the conversation.
• If you want to draw something don't use a flip chart, use a piece of paper and get the person to join in. 

The 21 day active speaking challenge
I have been set a challenge by my colleagues, and we are setting the same challenge to all the sales people we coach, the challenge is as follows:

For the next 21 days I should use active speaking in every meaningful conversation I have. This will cover 1-2-1's with colleagues, sales calls and coaching sessions.

Why 21 days? - This is the time it takes to turn a new behaviour into a habit. Research shows that if you repeat the behaviour throughout the 21 days (with the intention of accepting the behaviour), at the end of the period you will do it without thinking.

So I am setting the same challenge for you (and your teams). Introduce active speaking in your 1-2-1 sessions and customer discussions and post comments here to tell us how it is going.