Do you listen enough!!

The pressure on the Front office sales people for getting prospective customers to register for Computer programs was tremendous during June-September every year. The process was as follows, the customer walks in, he is greeted by the Counsellor (essentially a sales person), given a cup of water, his or her details are collected and written down in the enquiry form, he is then asked to take a 30 minutes aptitude test. On completion of the test, the prospective customer is given a brain washing (hard selling) for a good 30 minutes, at the end of which his head is spinning and he enrols. Not the best of methods, but at the height of parallel computer education when competition was at its peak, this worked.

One day at around 11.30 am, a young boy of 19 (our ideal target customer) walked in and addressed my Academic Counsellor

" Madam..........................".

He was never allowed to complete the sentence.

The Counsellor pounced on him and started her practiced routine,

"Good morning, welcome. please have a cup of water, how are you, blah, blah, blah.......................................".

The poor guy was trying to get a word in, but to no avail. Within 5 minutes, he was swept of his feet, she had collected all his details and was thrusting the 30 minutes Aptitude Test on him.

He said, " But Madam........................................"

" No , no...............you don't worry about the test. It is simple and routine. Everyone is reluctant first time", so saying, she led him by the hand and put him on a students chair next room and made him take the test.

Resigned to his fate, the poor guy took the test. On completion, she collected the test booklet, answer sheet, valued it in a flash and sat with it to give her high pressure sales pitch.

The boy by now had become totally quiet and listened to her rambling regarding the benefits of a NIIT computer training program for 30 minutes. When she was about to finish, the students who were in the class till then filed out on completion of the session. One of the current students walked up to the boy who was sitting in front of my Counsellor and asked " What the hell are YOU doing here and you better have a good explanation for taking my motorcycle without permission today morning.And why the hell did you not go to the college today?"

My counsellor asked him, "Do you know him?" thinking that now the deed is closed as she has a good reference.

The student said, "this idiot is my brother" and turning to him scolded him "why are you wasting madams time?"

The poor boy finally finally was able to get a word in "Listen. I came here to leave the bike here and hand over the key to you. I came nearly 90 minutes ago, thought I will leave the key with madam to tell her to handover to you and then go to college. But she did not allow me to say one word and worse I was made to write a test and sit through her counselling"

"But why didn't you tell that you were Saravanan's brother? You could have told me in the first place", accused a flabbergasted Counsellor

"Madam, where did you give me a chance to say one word. You really bulldozed me into doing all these things. I had always envied my brother that he was studying at NIIT while I am struggling in a Government College. Not anymore. God help him!"

With a great effort he got up and walked away, never to come back again anywhere near NIIT, leaving a thoroughly chastened Counsellor behind.

This is not an isolated case, most of the sales people do not allow their customers to talk and are very poor listeners. They are proud of their Verbal Diarrhoea.

Listen to your customers. Remember, you need to do TWICE as much Listening as Talking. Even God wanted you to do that. That is why he has given TWO EARS and only ONE MOUTH