Using active listening and the BEBEDC method for better sales

The Importance of Active Listening in the Sales Process

What is Active Listening?

Active listening is a communication technique developed by American psychologist Carl Rogers. It involves tuning into your interlocutor by adopting a non-directive attitude, meaning focusing on them without influencing or pressuring them, and being empathetic by understanding them from within and integrating their subjectivity. It has a dual objective:  

• Ensure the best possible understanding of your interlocutor's message.  

• Show our interest and understanding.  

Active listening is based on 5 principles:

1- Welcoming

This is about openness towards your interlocutor, the consideration that helps establish a climate of trust. It is often said that gestures betray our thoughts. Albert Mehrabian, an American researcher, showed that the impact of communication could be broken down into 3:  

1. Non-verbal language (body language) which represents 55% of the message.  

2. Para-verbal language (intonation, voice): 38% of the message.  

3. Verbal language (words): 7% of the message.  

2- Going Beyond the Discourse

You must take into account the context and your interlocutor's feelings. Read between the lines by asking the right questions (we'll come back to this).  

3 - Demonstrating True Empathy

Be interested in the other person and not just the problem they are experiencing.

4 - Showing Respect Without Imposing Your Vision

Let the interlocutor speak until they have finished their thought. Enthusiasm (or distracting noises like your phone ringing) can hinder the transmission of information.

5- Highlighting the Feeling Towards the Problem Rather Than Interpreting the Problem  

Active listening is a mode of communication essentially based on questioning the other person and rephrasing what they say. Don't presume anything.  

Why Switch to Active Listening?

With simple, or passive, listening, you are not fully focused and available for your interlocutor. You can thus miss a lot of information.  

Between:

• what we say,  

• what we think we said,  

• what the other person hears,  

• what the other person understands.  

You can lose up to 80% of the message's meaning.  

Active listening is a much more engaging and benevolent mode of communication. You explicitly show your respect, you act to establish a climate of trust by valuing them, by showing that they are better heard and understood with you than with other people (randomly, your competitors). It helps break down the barriers your interlocutor might have and encourages them to express themselves freely. For your sales process, it's a valuable relational skill (or soft skill). It will help you obtain the most relevant information possible, gain the finest possible understanding of your prospect's needs, and thus target your arguments, be more convincing, demonstrate your added value compared to their expectations, and... close. Taking the time from the beginning of the relationship to adopt this active listening approach allows for developing a strong relationship later on and facilitates client retention. It also saves time and avoids conflicts.  

Convinced? Let's now see how to adopt an active listening posture.  

The Difficulties of Active Listening in Sales

It can be challenging to practice active listening while maintaining a good pace and identifying the right questions to ask. For the BEBEDC method, with practice, you will be able to move from one building block to another fluidly, without forcing the active listening aspect. As for the questions you can ask to enrich your questioning, you can consult our article on Spin Selling for inspiration.  

Some Tips for Successful Needs Discovery

• Focus on the other person's words, gestures, and silences.  

• Identify your biases that reduce the objectivity of what you perceive.  

• Rephrase your interlocutor's words: this shows that you understand, not necessarily that you agree. You have several ways to rephrase: by repeating their words, by paraphrasing in your own words, by summarizing, by asking for clarification.  

• Verify what your interlocutor has understood to ensure you are talking about the same thing.  

• Ask questions, be curious to show that you are invested, that you are trying to understand.  

• Encourage your prospect to continue by nodding, by repeating the last word for more precision, with comments like "Oh really?" , "Seriously?" , "And then?"  

• Stay natural; don't turn it into an interrogation.  

Using Active Listening with the BEBEDC Method

BEBEDC Method: A Prospect Qualification Framework

This is a method focused on discovering your prospect's needs, allowing you to go beyond the simple definition of need by understanding the context and finding ways to influence the purchasing process in your favor. The method is based on active and well-conducted listening, and it will allow you to:  

• Save time, because if one of the factors is zero, it means there is no real need, so no point in focusing your efforts.  

• Increase your conversion rate because you start with the maximum amount of information to make the best possible commercial proposal and you gain your prospect's trust.  

How to Use the BEBEDC Method?

Concretely, the BEBEDC method provides a framework for obtaining maximum information.  

Need  

This first step involves questions that show how our product/service, through its technical characteristics, can address and adapt to the prospect's problem. To do this:

• List the necessary questions to qualify the need in relation to your product or service.  

• Identify technical needs and constraints that will allow you to differentiate yourself from the competition to understand, anticipate, or even influence the purchasing process.  

Questioning and rephrasing from active listening are useful because clients rarely express their needs in technical terms, just as they rarely express how they evaluate your product or those of competitors.  

Stakes

Questions around the stakes aim to show the consequence(s) of the purchase on the company's operations. What does it affect?

This step allows you to prove your advantages and the achievement of your objectives.  

• Isolate the 3 main characteristics of your products compared to the competition.  

• For each characteristic, identify 2 advantages that provide value.  

Furthermore, it will be very difficult for you to understand how to convince your prospect if you haven't understood why they need a solution like yours.  

Budget  

During this step, the questions will allow you to reveal the client's financial constraints and discover how your price is perceived. Don't be too direct, at the risk of the client shutting down. Rather than asking for their budget, you can ask if they have encountered similar problems before and how they remedied them. This will give you indications about competitors, their prices, and thus the client's budget (be careful, check that the context hasn't changed in the meantime). This will also tell you how the client calculates their ROI.  

Timeline

The goal here is to get information about the sales cycle, decision-making, and the client's schedule in order to have a clear vision of the purchasing process. If the prospect asks you for time to decide, make sure to ask what will happen during that period, what the deadlines are to avoid postponing the deadline again once the period has passed. If the client doesn't have one, there's a strong chance the deal won't happen. You save valuable time.  

To qualify a timeline, you can break down the buying cycle into 3 stages:  

1. Consultation  

2. Instruction  

3. Decision  

Decision-Makers

Mapping the decision-making and influence process within your prospect's company can save you a lot of time. To do this, you can list all stakeholders and assign them a role to get the complete ecosystem of the organization. 5 roles are possible:  

• The Technician: provides a technical, rational, and objective opinion on our product/service.  

• The Influencer: has a subjective/partisan interest in the company choosing one product over another.  

• The Buyer: evaluates the added value and ROI and leads negotiations.  

• The Coach: can be a source of information on the decision-making process.  

• The Decision-Maker: not necessarily the one who signs the purchase, but rather the one who will have the legitimacy to choose the solution, who can veto it.  

Competitors

This involves qualifying the competition, the different companies consulted, and understanding what they thought of their presentations (positive points, doubts).  

If your interlocutor is not very open to the question, ask indirect questions:  

• Supplier selection criteria.  

• Previous relationships with competitors.  

And show that these key points are important to you.  

You are now ready for your next client meetings. Truly listen to your prospects; they will give you the keys to convincing them.