Learning to Listen: A Key to Success

Understanding how to listen well is crucial for building trust and making deals in advocacy sales. In this post, I’ll show you why listening is so important and how it can help you in your advocacy practice. We’ll talk about listening carefully, asking questions, and showing clients why your services matter.

The Power of Listening

Listening carefully is not just a skill; it’s a way to show you care about what clients need. I’ll share stories about how listening has helped me tailor my ideas to fit what clients want. When we listen well, we can address their concerns and make our ideas more convincing.

Practicing good listening means looking at someone when they talk, nodding to show you understand, and saying back what they said in your own words. This kind of listening shows respect and helps us really understand what clients need, even if they can’t say it clearly.

Advocacy Sales Strategy #1: Asking Questions to Learn More

Using open-ended questions is a great way to get more details from clients. These questions help them explain their worries and hopes, which can really help us plan how to help. Instead of asking, “Are you happy with your service?” try asking, “What part of your service do you think could be better?” This change can get us better answers and help us plan better ways to help.

Advocacy Sales Strategy #2: Building Trust by Being Real

Being honest is very important in advocacy. I’ll admit that sometimes I’ve tried too hard to make a sale and not been honest enough. Being real means really caring about our work and being positive when we talk to others.

Sharing stories of success can really show how good we are at our job. I’ll suggest keeping these stories in a place like The Ultimate Patient Advocate Planner so you can use them when you talk to clients. Sharing stories shows we know what we’re doing and can really help people.

Three Ways to Pitch Well

Here are three important parts of making a good pitch:

1. Explaining Why You’re Special: Talk about what makes your work different and how it helps clients.
2. Being Honest: Being open and clear with clients helps them trust you more.
3. Listening Well: I’ll share a story about a call where I helped right away without trying to sell anything. It shows how listening can help us do better.

Advocacy Sales Strategy #3: Setting Clear Goals

Being clear about what you can do from the start helps clients feel more relaxed. Clients like when we’re honest about what they can expect. Explaining what we can do clearly helps clients see what they’ll get and makes it easier to talk more.

Advocacy Sales Strategy #4: Sharing Stories of Success

Keeping stories of success is very helpful. Keeping them in a place where you can find them later is smart. Sharing these stories shows how good our work is and makes our ideas more powerful.

In Conclusion

These ideas should help you get better at advocacy sales. By listening well, asking good questions, being honest, and explaining why our work is important, we can build strong, good relationships with clients. Doing these things well not only helps us make good pitches but also helps us do well in our work. Remember, the key to making a good pitch is understanding what clients need and being kind, honest, and good at our jobs.

Final Thoughts

I hope this post helps you understand how to make your sales better. If you liked these tips, you might like these articles about sales too. Please share this with other people in advocacy. All my posts are meant to help you do well as a patient advocate. Learn and use these ideas to make your work even better. If you want to hear new ideas first and get support as an independent patient advocate, join me in The Circle. We meet live every week on Zoom!