The Silent Skill That Closes Deals

Today we’re talking about one of the most underrated skills in business, listening. Most people think listening is passive, but it’s actually one of the most powerful tools you can use to build trust, close deals, and make people want to work with you. Let’s jump in.

[0:21]
I’m Igor Kheifets, and this is The ListBuilding Lifestyle. The podcast is for anyone who wants to build a wildly profitable email list working from home. If you’d like to make six figures, travel the world, and help people improve their lives in the process, this podcast is for you. I also invite you to claim a free copy of my best-selling book, The List Building Lifestyle Confessions of an Email Millionaire, at www.igorsbook.com. Get the free book plus $3,000 bonus package that includes my best capture page templates, email swipe files, and traffic blueprints. Visit www.igorsbook.com for details. And now it’s time to claim your List Building Lifestyle.

[01:07]
Sometimes just listening is enough to make a deal happen, believe it or not. So listening is an active skill.

Most people don’t realize it’s an active skill, by the way. They think it’s a passive skill. they think if they’re listening, they are losing somehow, or if the other person is talking, the other person’s in control.

But what I find is that I tend to be in control of the conversation if I listen more. At the very least, I’m letting the other person know that they’re safe and that they’re being heard.

That alone makes people cooperative. They want to do deals with you. They wanna do business with you. They wanna buy your stuff. They want to interact with you in some way, right? They don’t feel threatened by you. They don’t feel judged by you, if you just listen.

[02:01]
Because we don’t, I mean, as adults, and as kids, I guess, we don’t feel heard very often, do we? We have a lot of information being thrown at us, we have lots of screens shouting at us, right? But in real life, in day-to-day interaction, at work, in business, we don’t feel heard.

And so, the more you can create that for the people you interact with in business, outside of business, the more you will enjoy the benefits of really fruitful relationships and friction-free relationships.

You’ll find that people become more likely to listen to you as well, because they know you listen to them, so they wanna reciprocate the same way. People become a lot easier to deal with, too. And they even go and do extra stuff as well.

And this goes not just for business. This goes for family stuff. This goes for social stuff.

People will all of a sudden think you’re an incredible person to talk to, if you listen more than you say, it’s quite incredible.

[3:11]
I think it’s one of the most underrated skills. And if you are in a position of having to persuade people to do anything, whether to open up their wallet or to do a deal with you, or to share a contact with you of some sort, or if you ever need to make asks of people, you better be a great listener, rather than being a great asker.

Because it doesn’t take much to be a great asker. It doesn’t take much to just say what you want. But it takes a lot to listen, to keep yourself in check, to remember what they say.

One practice I’ve had when I was doing a lot of phone calls with people, both when I was coaching them as well as when I was selling something, I would always at first have pen and paper, and I would write down keywords that they would mention, if they were sharing things with me, I would write down the keywords.

But in addition to that, eventually I switched to doing a Word document. And as they were talking, I would type.

But then I abandoned that practice because typing when they spoke kind of made me feel like, made me concerned, because I felt like, “oh, they probably think I’m not listening!”

Because sometimes we’ll be, I don’t know if this happens to you at all, but sometimes we’ll be talking to somebody on the phone and I would hear mouse clicking. Like click, click, click, click, click.

So I know they’re talking to me on the phone and they’re at the same time browsing something or doing something, checking their email, checking their Facebook, checking their Instagram, browsing funny TikTok videos.

And so, when I hear that, I actually test them with a question to see if they’re actually listening and try to have them talk instead of me talking. But that does happen. That does happen.

By the way, if that happens during a phone conversation, imagine what happens during a webinar like this one, where people probably put this webinar on their phone or on their computer somewhere in the kitchen and just go about their stuff, not even listen.

So just something to consider, if you want to get better in anything related to business, anything related to sales, anything related to leadership, building a team, listening is going to be a very important skill.

[05:54]
Thank you for listening to The List Building Lifestyle. Get access to the previous episodes, transcript of today’s show, as well as other exclusive content at listbuildinglifestyleshow.com. Also, remember to claim your free copy of my best-selling book at www.igorsbook.com. It explains how I made millions with list buildings starting from scratch, plus I’ll give you $3,000 worth of free bonuses, including my best landing page templates, email swipe files, and traffic blueprints. Go to www.igorsbook.com now to claim your free package!