Active listening in B2B sales

Asking the right questions is super important, and active listening is what leads to great questions.

Leading by asking questions

As your startup grows, suddenly you don't make all the decisions anymore. You have a team that has their own focus, and you are the conductor.

To really enable your team to develop and run things on their own, one key skill is to take a gut feeling (often a bad one 🤣 ) and ask your team the right questions, so that the right actions can be taken.

Selling by asking questions

To me, this is the reason behind why "active listening" is such a core skill in sales.

In sales, you are also the conductor. You can't decide what the problem is, who is affected, and who will do something about it at the customer's side. You are also a conductor.

Because you only have limited time with the customer, to truly understand their pain points you have to listen very closely to develop that 'gut feel', and then have enough practice to turn it into a powerful question.

If you are focused on the next question, you have no chance to uncover more information – you are just an interviewer.

But this tip is not about listening only, its about listening so you can steer the conversation to a great outcome. Asking the right questions is super important, and active listening is what leads to great questions.

How to actively listen in B2B sales

To make this more actionable, here are a few tips to be more active:

1. Try to solve the problem for the customer as you are chatting. What context do you need better to solve the problem if you were working for them? ("you already have tool X, why are you still struggling to send good outbound emails?")

2. Answering a question with a question ("are you trying to understand pricing, or really ROI?") often leads to much better answers in the end – the key is to not evade the question but qualify and deliver a more relevant answer

3. Comparing the prospect's situation with a case study is a great way to uncover areas of questioning. "Our customer X solved it in this way. Would this work for you?"