Great point! Listening is a skill that some sales people can have difficulty mastering. I know that it has taken me many years to really truly get this.

Recently I attended a boot camp given by some of the top CIO’s in the Healthcare vertical. It was an opportunity for a few lucky service firms to get the CIO’s perspective of their partners and vendors.

After two days the message was clear – sales people shut up and listen!!

John Glaser, the CIO of Partners Healthcare, told me that some of his most successful partnerships were with those people that came to their first meeting with him, asked truly relevant questions and literally left at the end of the hour without a word about their own company.

He, without a doubt, would make the time to meet with these people again because they had shown the courtesy and good judgment to understand his challenges and goals FIRST before touting their own product or company services.

That was really an eye opener for me. I hope that I will take that advice with me on every call I make at Lucrum. It can make, as you say, the difference between winning and losing the opportunity to do business with an account.

Oliver Wendall Holmes said it best, “It is the province of knowledge to speak, it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.”