Marketing article: Whats Love Got To Do With It?

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We typically seek first to be understood; mostly, we do not listen with the intent to understand, we listen with the intent to reply. We are either speaking, or preparing to speak, filtering everything through our own eyeglasses and reading our life stories into other people’s lives.

“I know exactly how you feel - let me tell you about my experience“ - constantly projecting our own movies onto other people’s behaviour. If we have a problem with someone - then that person just doesn’t understand. Sound familiar? But to understand another person, you have to listen to them, understand them. We are so filled with our own rightness, our own stories. I’m guilty of it too.

Sometimes, when we are “listening” to another person, we feign listening - we are really ignoring that person. “Mmmhmmmm” We can listen to parts of what is being said, selecting on that which we desire to hear, and sometimes we do listen attentively and even reflectively- listening to the exact words being said, but not really understanding what is being said between the lines. We simply mimic what the other person said, sometimes summing up what they have said, giving the impression that we have understood, or at least that we have tried to understand. But our motives are still the same; to project our own stories onto the other person.

One woman illustrated this with her child. The woman was walking very fast and kept hurrying her six year old son, telling him to walk faster. As her irritation grew, the child asked her: “What do you think I am?” and she thought, “now he’s playing one of his silly games again“, so she replied: “You’re a banana!”, trying to guess, but not listening. And the child replied dryly: “I am a child, and I cannot walk as fast as an adult!” Seldom will our customers tell us this.

Listening with the intent to understand gets inside another person’s frame of reference. You look out through it to the world - with their eyeglasses on - or in their shoes. Empathy is not sympathy, which is a form of judgement. Emphatic listening involves much more than registering, reflecting, or even understanding the words that are said..

Communications experts estimate that only 10 percent of our communication is represented by the words we say. Another 30 percent is represented by our sounds, and 60 percent by our body language. In emphatic listening you listen with your ears, but also and most importantly you also listen with your heart.

When communicating with your customers, you must also love your customers; truly care for their success. If you want to make money by selling a service or product to your customers, you will do this if you are making money for others and helping others to make money. Helping others to make money and helping others to fulfill their desires is a sure way to ensure you’ll easily fulfill your own dreams.

It is far easier to listen to what someone wants, if we love them. It is far easier to want to fulfill their desires if we care for them. Listen with your heart, and make money in the process. You won’t have to tell your own story. Very soon, everyone will be asking to hear your story. They will want to know how you succeeded, and you can tell them: “I did it by listening, and loving and understanding”. What’s love got to do with it? I’d say “everything.”

Angela Wickenberg

Author, Angela Wickenberg, is a multi-tasking queen with an MBA in Strategy and International Business. She will passionately help you find the tools you need to succeed. She can be found at http://www.e-bizsecretsexposed.com/blog