Introduction: avoid miscommunication, active listening is important. active

INTRODUCTION: Active Listening is one ofthe characteristic of a successful salesperson (Ingram, 2015). It helps inunderstanding and creating customer value as well as increasing it.

Globalisation has resulted in the increase of products and marketers in themarket. This is where the necessity of Active Listening comes into effect. Sales resistance is anotherprominent factor affecting the sales process nowadays. Sales people shouldadopt adequate measures to overcome this for the smooth and successfuloperation of organisations. However, rigorous practice and keeping healthyrelationship with customers helps to overpower this kind of sales resistance. A detailed study on theimportance of the above-mentioned factors is done in this report.

DISCUSSION: a.   ACTIVE LISTENINGThe process of activelysensing, interpreting, evaluating and responding to the verbal and nonverbalmessages of customers is termed Active Listening (Ingram, 2015). It is an advancedform of listening in which the listener not only grasp the words but alsounderstands the speakers body language. To avoid miscommunication, activelistening is important. Activelistening significantly reduces the nervousness felt during an interviewbecause it drives the listeners focus from what is going on inside the head towhat the needs of the perspective employer are.

Placing focus on theinterviewer through active listening proves the person is interested inchallenges and successes of the organization and willing to help them to solveproblems (Doyle, 2017). Doyle (2017) list someexamples of active listening techniques. Active listening techniques includebuilding trust, establishing rapport, demonstrating concern, nonverbal cue suchas nodding and eye contact, asking open ended questions, asking specificquestions etc. Employing these techniques impress the customer or any personwith whom you are dealing with. A four-model hierarchy ofactive listening is depicted in the SIER model. Effective Active listeningrequires all these hierarchical activities to be carried out successfully andin the proper sequence (Ingram, 2015).

The four steps areSensing, Interpreting, Evaluating and Responding. SENSING:  Active listeningbegins with hearing, seeing and receiving both verbal and nonverbal aspects. Concentrationis mandatory in this phase and it should be taken care to see that the buyer isnot interrupted so the message can be delivered in detail.  For the sender to deliver the messageproperly the receiver’s body language should be positive (Steil, 1983). INTERPRETING: Once themessage is received, the salesperson must interpret and place it in meaningfulcontext.

The buyer’s experiences, knowledge and attitudes should be linked tothe verbal and non-verbal elements of the information conveyed. Interpretinghelps to ensure that the receiver’s understanding corresponds to the sender’smeaning (Steil, 1983). EVALUATING: Activelistening occurs in the evaluating stage just after the interpreting stage. Receiver should be able to sort fact from opinion. The receiver needs to judgethe message based on its strengths and weaknesses and how well it is liked ordisliked. Emotional as well as logical components are involved in theevaluating stage (Steil, 1983).

RESPONDING: Responding isan expectation and a must for active listening to be effective. Receiver shouldrespond to the sender for two-way communication to happen. The responseprovides feedback to the sender on how well the message was understood andencourages further interaction between the two parties.

Responses can be bothverbal and non-verbal. Raising questions provide additional detail andclarification (Ingram, 2015).. b.   KEY PRACTICES: Listening is one of the mostunderrated and unappreciated leadership skills (Conley, 2015). He claims thatbeing a good listener does not happen by accident. To be a good listener and tolisten effectively it takes time and effort. Conley (2015) suggests fivefundamental steps to be practiced being an effective listener.

·        Attending to nonverbal behaviour.·        Asking Questions.·        Reflecting feelings·        Paraphrasing·        SummarizingLike aprofessional athlete continuously practices the fundamentals of their sport, leaders and salespersons should continually practice these fundamentals oflistening to be an effective listener (Conley, 2015). Ingram (2015) had adifferent view on the keys to be followed to become an active listener.

According to him there are ten keys which a strong listener should practice. A strong listener shouldfind the relevant areas of interest and must actively look for opportunities inthat, concentrate on the content rather than sticking on to delivery errors, should not judge until the message delivery is completed, apart from listeningto facts he should focus on listening to ideas, gives less priority to takenotes, works hard at attending the message and takes care to exhibit an activebody state, knows how to concentrate and will not get distracted easily, usecomplex material as exercise for the mind, will not react to emotional wordsand does not get hung up on them, challenges and listen between the lines evenwith slow speakers (Ingram, 2015). c.   SALES RESISTANCE (TYPES): Any kind of opposition, either objective or subjective to the buying process is termed as salesresistance. Efficient salespeople try to understand the prospect’s stated andhidden concerns through listening and questioning to overcome this salesresistance (Sales Resistance, 2017).

Here I have selected SAMSUNGSmartphone as the product. Basically, there are two major types of salesresistance faced while marketing and selling a product. One is reasoned orobjective resistance which is created because of logical thinking and the otheris emotional or subjective resistance that comes from emotions or psychologicalreasons. Reasoned or ObjectiveResistance: This kind of resistancecomes from Customer’s reasoning. Many competitors have emerged for Samsung inthe global market. Most of them avail their products to the customers with thesame specifications and feature at a lower price compared to Samsung. To someat least, while comparing specifications and performance they claim that thephones are being really overpriced as compared to the other phone.

This makesthe customer to negotiate our product, because customer is more concerned aboutthe money and he is already having a product with similar features and thesales offer just won’t work at this time. Here the customer is using logicalthinking and is not in need of our product and this decision is based on facts. People nowadays go for a wide range of smart phones like iPhone, Vivo, Oppo, Lenovo, Redmi and so on. This has made customers to change their mind and tostick on to the new products. Emotional or SubjectiveResistance: There is a chance ofpsychological motive behind this resistance. It may be because of distrust inthe product or due to previous bad experiences. Complaints have raised fromdifferent customers about the slowing down and reduced performance of themobile phones. This creates a bad feeling about the product in customers whichprevents them from purchasing or even promoting the product.

Either way, thecustomer won’t accept the sales offer anymore. d.   RECOMMENDED APPROACHES TO OVERCOME SALESRESISTANCE: Even thoughwe cannot change the mind of some people, we can change the minds of others. Itdepends on the interaction with potential customers and the way in which the salesresistance is addressed. Sales resistance can be reduced by adopting certainmeasures and approaches. Beingrespectful and professional with the buyers will help in reducing salesresistance. Rather than being inactive, the customer should be convinced andprovide him an assurance that the problem will be solved.

The customer shouldfeel that the salesperson is concerned about his product and problem and thathe is ready to render his service whenever required. Making thecustomer more knowledgeable and aware of the product will help to reduce hisfear of buying or owning the product. Apart from the negative side of theproduct, the benefits and advantages should be exposed more. Try to convincethe customer that the current arrangements are improving. Give more priority towhat the customer is saying and try to make no arguments. There maybe phones with similar features and specifications available at low price.

Butthe brand name and the guarantee assured cannot be provided by these marketers. Once the customer comes to know about the value and quality of the product, even minor defects will be negotiated and a positive word of mouth regardingthe product from everyone will benefit the product and the organization in somemeans. CONCLUSION: Active Listening andovercoming Sales Resistance are two crucial steps included in closing sales. Listening is the fundamental unit of interpersonal communication skills.

It isimportant to know the relevance of Active listening to be a successful marketeras well as sales personnel. It takes time and effort to be an Active listener. It can be achieved by following and practicing some key practices. Sales personshould be trained properly to deal with and overcome sales resistance. It ismandatory to overcome sales resistance for the growth of the product and theconcerned organization. By adopting certain remedial measures sales resistancecan be overwhelmed.