Active listening in sales is the most powerful tool you can use to not just close more deals, but to make people feel great about buying your product or service.
If you talk less and listen more, you’ll understand that the best salespeople don’t try to convince people to take action, but instead are curious about what motivates someone to take action or not.
I give the clients I coach one simple rule to help them close more deals: Spend 80% of the time listening and 20% of the time talking instead of the other way around.
Why active listening in sales is so important
People don’t like being sold to, but they DO like buying.
So instead of pressuring them, create an environment where people can buy: Ask better questions, truly listen, and they’ll be more likely to buy.
People often go through life feeling unheard, unseen, and misunderstood. When someone takes the time to listen to them—without judgment, without a motive, and without their attention on anyone or anything else—they feel cared for, like they actually matter.
Helping people feel cared for instead of coming across as solely transactional has the ironic byproduct of a sale occurring.
This is why active listening in sales matters.
You’re listening, not to make the sale, but to understand what they think, believe, and feel, so that you can help them decide whether or not it’s in their best interest to buy your product or service.
The bonus of learning how to do this well is that this skill goes beyond sales. Listening is crucial for effective communication with other human beings, period.
A lot of the time, we’re not actually listening to each other. We’re listening while thinking about the next thing we want to say. Or worse, we’re listening for an opening to get what we want (which is an even harder habit to break when money is involved).
If you’re not careful, you get “commission breath.”
You want the sale.
They know you want the sale.
So it’s easy for the conversation to start feeling like two people sitting on opposite sides of a table.
When in doubt, do this…
If you simply ask questions, listen for the right moments to go deeper, encourage them to elaborate, and then mirror back what they’ve said, they’ll give you everything you need to help them buy. This works just as well the first time you show your product to a family friend or at a club event as it does on a sales call.
Say you’re at a booth selling knives and someone walks up to it.
Instead of immediately going into your pitch about how your knives are the best on the planet, you could introduce yourself and say something like…
“Nice to meet you. What made you wanna stop by our booth today?”
Simple. Open-ended.
They might say, “I don’t know, just curious.” or “I’ve been thinking about getting a new set. Mine are kind of old.”
You could move into another question about their needs, like:
- What kind of knives are you using right now?
- How long have you had them?
- What do you usually use the knives for?
- How many people are in your household?
- How often do you think you end up replacing them?
This is called discovery.
You’re asking questions to understand their current situation. Either way, the posture is “I’m trying to understand so I can figure out what’s best for you,” and not trying to jam your product into their life unnecessarily.”
Follow the trail
Answers contain clues. And you can use those answers to (you guessed it) ask another question.
Say you ask what kind of knives they’re using right now and they say:
“This cheap Target set we bought a year ago.”
Now you have more useful information. The knives are cheap and dull.
You keep going.
“How long have you had them?”
“A couple of years.”
“Is the dullness the main thing you don’t like about them?”
“Yeah, actually, my husband cooks quite a bit, and he complains about them a lot.”
New clue. Her husband cooks a lot.
“Ah, so your husband is the chef of the house?”
“Yep, he cooks all the time.”
That active listening provides the intel you need to best help your customer (and ultimately move them toward the sale).
Maybe the husband has gotten more into cooking. He tries all kinds of recipes, and their meals together become a bonding experience.
Sure, a knife is just a physical product. But the products inside our homes get attached to experiences, rituals, relationships, hobbies, annoyances, and memories. Active listening in sales helps you learn what the product means to them in relation to the rest of their life, no matter what it is.
A good sales conversation is just following a trail.
When you’re asking questions, don’t jump ahead and mentally prepare what you’re going to say next. Focus on what the person is saying. Listen for the cue that prepares you to ask the next question.
People really like to talk, and they’ll give you more than enough information. If someone gives you one-word answers, ask about something they can describe instead of something they can answer yes or no, like “What’s the story behind those knives?” Then give them a moment to fill the silence.
Simple phrases you can use to help yourself listen more than you talk:
- “Tell me more about that”
- “What do you mean by that?”
- “How often does that happen?”
- “What do you like/dislike about them?”
- “Anything else?”
If you find this, they’ll buy
I learned this phrase from Vanessa Horn, a sales expert who has coached thousands of salespeople and currently works inside an 8-figure business mastermind that I am a member of.
She says that instead of trying to make the sale, she tries to find people’s buying criteria.
This means:
What does this person need to see, think, feel, hear, or believe for buying this product to make sense to them?
People buy things for lots of different reasons:
- Get rid of a problem
- Alleviate a fear
- Satisfy a desire
- Save time or money
- Feel a certain way
- Impress others or belong
- Give a gift to someone they care about
One person might buy a $2,000 knife set because they’re the type of person who always buys quality products built to last.
Active listening helps you understand what matters most, and you can help them see whether buying makes sense for them—without being pushy.
Let’s go back to the original example of the dull knives that the husband complains about.
“How often are you guys cooking?”
“Almost daily. We rarely eat out.”
“Have you gone through other sets before?”
“Yeah, this is our third set.”
Now you can drop a buying criteria question:
“When you replace the set you have right now, what’s going to be the most important to you?”
This is a version of something I learned from Vanessa. In my world, I sell coaching programs, so I ask, “What would make the program a perfect fit for you?”
This is where you find out what really matters.
Maybe they say something like:
“Honestly, I don’t want to have to buy another set three years from now.”
They care about longevity.
Stay curious, continue to ask, and continue to listen.
“What makes that important to you?”
“I’m so tired of replacing stuff. We have 3 kids and a lot of expenses. We’re trying to be smarter about what we spend money on.”
“When you say you’re trying to be smarter about what you spend money on, what does that look like for you?”
Maybe they say:
“We’re tired of buying the cheap version of everything and replacing it. We’re looking for quality and something that will last.”
Now you’ve gotten them to think thoroughly out loud and found the real buying criteria.
Use this five-word phrase often
“So what I’m hearing is…”
One of the best ways to use active listening in sales? Summarize and reflect their words back to them. It also keeps you from rapid-firing question after question. You do this for two reasons:
- To make sure you actually understood them. You might have misinterpreted something, or there might be another piece of the story they haven’t told you yet.
- To show them you’re listening, not just waiting for your turn to talk, and to make them feel understood. When people feel like you genuinely understand where they’re coming from, they’re much more likely to keep opening up.
Back to our customer and her husband and their collective desire to be smarter with their money.
You could say:
So what I’m hearing is, you guys cook pretty much every day, your husband is really into it, and you’re tired of replacing knives that don’t last. You don’t necessarily need the cheapest option, but if you’re going to spend more, you want to know you’re getting something that will last. Am I getting that right?”
Then stop.
Give them a chance to respond.
Maybe they say:
“Yep. Exactly.”
Great. You understand them.
Or maybe they say:
“The money isn’t even the biggest thing. My husband’s birthday is coming up, and I mostly want to get him something really nice.”
Even better.
Either way, you have a clear understanding.
Reflecting makes sure you and the customer are seated on the same side of the table instead of in opposition.
There’s a similar concept in “Never Split the Difference” by former FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss called labeling.
A label is a statement like:
- “It sounds like…”
- “It seems like…”
- “It looks like…”
Instead of immediately giving your opinion or trying to solve someone’s problem, you put your understanding of what they’re experiencing into words and give them the opportunity to confirm or correct it.
Voss shares a great example involving one of his students, who worked as a fundraiser for the Girl Scouts.
A potential donor came in who was interested in making a significant donation, but she kept rejecting the different projects the fundraiser showed her.
Most people would continue suggesting different project ideas.
Instead, the fundraiser slowed down and tried to understand what was underneath the resistance.
First, she discovered that the woman was worried about where the money would go.
But even after addressing that concern, the woman still wasn’t interested in any of the projects.
So the fundraiser went deeper and kept asking questions until she found the criteria, created the label, and said it back:
It seems like you care about making a gift that represented the opportunities and experiences the Girl Scouts had given you when you were younger.”
She let out an exhale. “Yes, exactly.”
The woman finally felt understood. She donated without even choosing a specific project, because she trusted the organization to put the money toward the right one.
This is the power of listening.
You’re genuinely trying to understand someone’s reality and motivations—what they care about, what they’re worried about, what they’re trying to accomplish, and how they’re thinking about the decision in front of them.
Then you occasionally check:
- “So what I’m hearing is…”
- “It seems like …”
- “Am I understanding that correctly?”
One example from one of my own recent sales calls: I talked for 5% of the time, purely to reflect what I heard, and she decided to buy with zero objections.
Care more, talk less
Alex Hormozi says, “Whoever cares most about the customer wins the sale.”
Ask one open-ended question, follow the answer to the next one, and before you offer anything, say back what you heard and let them correct you. Do that, and the 80/20 split takes care of itself, because you’re too busy being curious to fill the silence.
Sometimes the conversation ends in a sale. Sometimes the person realizes it’s not the right fit, and they trust you more because you helped them see it.
Both are wins.
Try it out this week with a customer, a friend, or a teammate. Ask, listen, reflect back, and stop talking. Notice what they tell you.
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