Listen, Really Listen

In a previous self storage blog, I talked about the importance of active listening in self storage sales. In this blog, I want to discuss several ways that you can apply your active listening skills. As I mentioned before, listening to the customer can help determine what their self storage needs are. You can also tell by listening which direction the call is going to go. You can tell whether the caller is going to rent from you, is just shopping, or is calling just to speak with the manager.

There are several ways to go about applying active listening. The first way is that you can have some scratch paper and a pencil handy to write information down. This is a good way to remember what you’ve talked about and a helpful sales technique. There is a drawback to writing things down. The drawback is that you may concentrate too much on writing things down that you forget some things that they said. A good way to actively listen is to repeat back to the caller what they said. For example, you can restate to them the reason that they are calling. Repeating information back to the customer lets them know that you heard what they said. Applying these listening skills will help you communicate with the customer better.