Effective listening skills. I want to tell you a story. Several years ago when I was a student at university, we had these programs for cultural exchange called working travel USA. One of my dreams was to visit the United States of America. And I found this program to be the easiest way to do so. I've been to the USA three times.
The last two times I was in Alaska, Fairbanks working for a hotel. I was waiting tables, and people from all over the world came to visit Alaska and do sightseeing. I was very happy with my work because I had a chance to communicate with people from all over the world while serving them food. One day, an old man and his wife came to the restaurant. I approached them and I took their orders and we started talking. They asked me where I was from and the usual things and when I asked the old man about him He said he was in top level management for big companies all his life.
Around 50 years of managerial experience. Can you imagine that? I said to myself, I need to extract information from that person, so many years of experience, he must know a few things about management. I said, Sir, I'm impressed so many years of experience. Would you mind if I ask you something? He said, true.
Vladimir asked. I said, I want to start my own business one day and chances are I will be working with employees, customers, business partners, etc. If you could give me one piece of advice, what would it be? I know you can talk for hours on the topic of management, but I need the most important piece of advice that you can give me. Here's what he said. Whatever.
The best piece of advice I can give you is this. develop the ability to listen effectively developed your ability to listen effectively. Then he said, humanistically, God gave us two years in one mouth. That means we should listen more than we talk. I think him and then I contemplated on what he said, it wasn't something new to me. It's not something new to you to.
Effective listening, goes beyond serving your customers. It's also about communicating with your employees, your partners, on a personal level, communicating with the people you love the members of your family, it's about communicating with your friends. When you sit down, conversing with a friend of yours and he's sharing passionately important for him information and you're not listening, you're half there. Your mind is somewhere else. You might offend that person. If you're not listening, it means you don't respect that person at least this is how they might interpret it.
For that reason, learn how to become a good listener. become interested in people because you will harvest so many benefits you cannot imagine. If you haven't read the book, How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, I recommend you go ahead and read it. The purpose of this lecture is to point your attention to a vitally important skill for any business owner, effective listening. This is a skill that you can master. It's not an innate ability.
Use that skill with communicating with your customers. Go beyond just hearing words. start listening. Here are three key points for you. Number one, pay full attention. Listen for more than just words.
Listen, their tonality their feelings if you're in person their body language. Number two, don't interrupt. Remember the old manager he said we need to listen more than we talk. Number three, test your understanding when your customer has finished talking, ask for verification to ensure that you have correctly understood what they said. For example, I will repeat Read what you said because they want to make sure I got it right. So you want and you continue.
This is a very good foundation of your customer communication skills. Of course you can always delve into the topic and educate yourself further. But if you do these three things, you just increase your communication skills instantly. Thank you for watching and stay purposeful