Listen Up: This Is How to Build Rapport With Your B2B Customers

Nearly five years ago, our company ran some experiments designed to improve the sales experience. We looked at employees who had expertise within certain categories, and matched those employees with prospects who worked in the same field.

We thought we had a gold mine—the right representatives reaching the right customer segments. But what we found instead was surprising: The salespersons with industry experience didn’t achieve what we expected. When we listened to the calls, we found out why. They were excited about what they knew and they wanted to share, they wanted to “talk shop” with the customers. They were neglecting the most important part of the salesperson’s job: listening to the customer.

The bottom line? Too much expertise can actually hurt you as a B2B salesperson. While those “industry experts” were talking the customer’s ear off with technical specs, trying to sound smart on the phone, they were missing an opportunity to build rapport with the customer.

A study published earlier this year found that, in terms of building relationships, the form of a conversation can be as, if not more, important than its content. When people are allowed to take turns in a conversation, they feel more valued by their conversational partners.

By contrast, disruptions in conversational flow—like one person talking too much—elicits the sense that the relationship with that partner is flawed. Studies have also shown that, specifically in sales relationships, the customer’s perception of how much they’re being listened to is directly tied to the development of trust.

This is why extroverts, who tend to dominate conversations, aren’t actually strong salespeople as most people would expect. A 2013 study of 340 outbound-call-center representatives found that reps with both introverted and extraverted characteristics—the so-called ambiverts—actually had more sales success than pure extroverts. According to the researchers, this was because ambiverts “naturally engage in a flexible pattern of talking and listening” and “are more inclined to listen to customers’ interests.”

When a salesperson talks excitedly about what they’re interested in instead of listening to the customer, they fail to develop strong relationships, and their sales numbers suffer. We have found that our most successful salespeople are the ones who actually care about people—they like people and are curious about them.

It’s not just extroverts who do this, of course. Some of our more experienced sales reps fall into this same trap as the “experts.”

Many times our veteran salespeople wonder why the new hires are doing so well. The answer is that the totally green sales reps know next to nothing about whom they’re selling to, so they automatically ask lots of questions and listen closely to the answers: two keys to developing great rapport with the customer. In B2B sales, as in many things in life, ignorance can be bliss.

One of our sales leaders uses an expression “Keep it simple—and don’t try to sound smart.” This is great advice to our more knowledgeable B2B salespeople. Listening and asking questions are both behaviors that can be learned, if the organization gives salespeople the proper training.

The hundreds of sales professionals at my organization participate in scheduled role-plays to hone their sales techniques. Those role-plays focus entirely on developing rapport with the customer through listening and asking questions. Since then, we’ve gotten much better results—even from those five-, 10-, and 15-year veterans of the company who just plain know too much.

Listening and asking questions are more than just sales techniques. They work because they’re rooted in deep human needs—needs that often go unmet in our hyper-connected modern era.

In the age of social networking, our webs of interpersonal connections have become broader, but shallower. People might have thousands of Facebook friends and Twitter followers, but only a few true friends. In fact, between 1985 and 2004, the average number of close confidants per American dropped by about a third, from 2.94 to 2.08.

On top of that, owning your own business is a particularly lonely profession. Most entrepreneurs are working long hours at a risky endeavor that their family and friends may not understand, and most feel at least some sense of isolation from others.

To these entrepreneurs, anyone who truly listens—even a complete stranger—stands out. Sales reps who lecture them with technical specs are a dime a dozen. But a sales rep with whom they feel a real connection? That’s worth picking up the phone for.

Post by: William Borzage

William Borzage serves as Chief Sales Officer, overseeing sales, sales operations and customer support across the U.S. and Canada. Borzage was previously Senior Vice President of Sales at Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp., which was merged into Dun & Bradstreet in 2015. Prior to Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp., Borzage was Senior Vice President, Marketing and Lead Generation for Web.com (NASDAQ: WWWW). Borzage has held key roles in notable online companies including: Traffic Marketplace (acquired by Epic Media Group, Inc.), where he was a co-founder and CFO; and Greenfield Online, Inc. (NASDAQ: SRVY), where he was Vice President, Online Marketing. Borzage also spent time at NetZero (now a subsidiary of United Online, NASDAQ: UNTD) where he managed advertising and sales operations. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Finance from California State University and an M.B.A. from Loyola Marymount University.

Company: Dun & Bradstreet
Website: www.dandb.com
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