Listening attentively is an underrated and vital component of effective selling. Imagine a prospect calling your office and describing her needs to a salesperson and the salesperson doesn't even hear what was said. This is not helpful in building a business. It's essential for potential customers to know that they’ve been heard and understood. You achieve this with a strong acknowledgement. It's bad manners, however, to cut a person off with a pre-acknowledgement. Interrupting people is a common practice and, unfortunately, always results in some degree of upset. Therefore, always wait until the person is through speaking.

It also causes an upset when you fail to acknowledge what someone says because the individual thinks you didn't listen. Many sales are lost because of poor listening skills. This is because failure to listen causes disagreement, and as a result, causes trust to deteriorate.

The key to good listening skills is to place full attention on the person talking. If you find your mind wandering, something was said that was not understood. Never be embarrassed to ask for clarification.