Listening and questioning

1. Gopal Thapa, Nepal Commerce Campus,
Baneshwor
Communication in Selling
Dr. Gopal Thapa
Associate Professor
Tribhuvan University
Email: thapazee@gmail.com

2. Gopal Thapa, Nepal Commerce Campus,
Baneshwor
Role of Communication in Selling
◼ Effective sales presentation
◼ Removes misunderstanding
◼ Good relationship between buyer & seller
◼ Best medium to describe FAB of product
◼ To drop or continue particular product

3. Gopal Thapa, Nepal Commerce Campus,
Baneshwor
Effective of Communication in Selling
◼ Inaccuracy in encoding
◼ Inaccuracy in decoding
◼ Noise condition

4. Gopal Thapa, Nepal Commerce Campus,
Baneshwor
Two Way Communication in Selling
Receiver Sender
Message Feedback
Sender Receiver

5. Gopal Thapa, Nepal Commerce Campus,
Baneshwor
Listening
◼ Listening is the most critical aspect of
effective communication
◼ Many people believe effective communication
is achieved by talking a lot.
◼ Inexperience sales people go into a selling
situation thinking they have to outtalk the
prospects
◼ They are enthusiastic and want to tell the
prospects all they knew

6. Gopal Thapa, Nepal Commerce Campus,
Baneshwor
Time spent in communication by sales
people
◼ Writing 10%
◼ Reading 15%
◼ Speaking 35%
◼ Listening 40%
Herold P. Zelko, The art of communicating Your Ideas

7. Gopal Thapa, Nepal Commerce Campus,
Baneshwor
Listening
◼ People can speak at the rate of only 130 to
160 words per minute.
◼ But they can listen to over 800 words per
minutes.
◼ Thus, people often get lazy when listening
◼ They do not pay attention and often can
remember only 50% of what is said
immediately after it is said.

8. Gopal Thapa, Nepal Commerce Campus,
Baneshwor
Listening
◼ Effective listening is not a passive activity
◼ It is much more than just hearing what the
customer is saying
◼ Good listeners project themselves into the
minds of speakers and attempt to feel the
way the speaker feels
◼ Effective listeners are actively thinking while
they listen
◼ They are thinking about the conclusions to
which the speaker is building

9. Gopal Thapa, Nepal Commerce Campus,
Baneshwor
Questioning
Why sales person should ask
questions?
◼ Questioning gets customers to participate in the sales
interview.
◼ Customers are encouraged to actively engage in
conversation rather than listen to a presentation.
◼ This holds the customer’s attention and remembering
more about the product.
◼ Questioning shows the sales person’s interest in the
customer and his/her problem.
◼ Sales people are able to collect information about
customer and test their assumptions by asking
questions.
◼ Sales people can use questions to confirm their
precall analysis.

10. Gopal Thapa, Nepal Commerce Campus,
Baneshwor
Guidelines for question
◼ Encourage longer response
◼ Space out questions
◼ Ask short simple questions
◼ Avoiding leading questions

11. Gopal Thapa, Nepal Commerce Campus,
Baneshwor
Encourage longer responses
◼ Good questions should not be answerable
with simple yes, no or short response.
◼ Eg. Have you heard of our company?
◼ What have you heard of our company?

12. Gopal Thapa, Nepal Commerce Campus,
Baneshwor
Space out questions
◼ Questions should be spaced out so the
customer has time to answer each question
in a relaxed atmosphere.
◼ When sales people ask several questions,
one right after another, customers may feel
threatened.
◼ They may think they are being interrogated
rather than participating in conversation.

13. Gopal Thapa, Nepal Commerce Campus,
Baneshwor
Ask short simple questions
◼ Questions that have two or more parts should be
avoided.
◼ In the face of complex questions, customer may not
know which part to answer, and the sales person
may not know which part has been answered.
◼ Long questions are hard to remember and to answer.
◼ Eg. How much time do you spend making your
annual budget and your sales forecasts?
Ans. Oh, about three weeks.

14. Gopal Thapa, Nepal Commerce Campus,
Baneshwor
Avoiding leading questions
◼ Questions should not imply an appropriate
answer.
◼ Such questions are likely to put words into the
customers mouth and not determine what the
customer actually thinks
◼ Why do you think this is a good product?
encourages a positive response and
discourage a negative one. They may mask
the customer’s true feelings.

15. Gopal Thapa, Nepal Commerce Campus,
Baneshwor
Questions have three purpose
◼ They can be used to collective specific
information
◼ They can be used to maintain the flow of
information
◼ They can be used to clarifying or
understanding customers problem (important
aspects of active listening)