Listening
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EDITORIAL
Listening McIntyre R. Louthan
Published online: 18 April 2009 ASM International 2009
My brother, Barnes, and I were in a canoe, drifting down scenic New River in Virginia, fishing for small mouth bass and catching very few. The lack of activity caused our conversation to move from fishing to a variety of other topics. Barnes, a very successful biologist/salesman before his retirement, is nine years younger than I and retired five years before I did, and had customers throughout the world. As we rounded a bend in the river, a small ‘‘for sale’’ sign prompted me to ask, ‘‘What is the secret to success as a salesman?’’. Barnes’ immediate reply surprised me. Without any hesitation, he said ‘‘listening’’, and then explained to me why true listening is very hard to accomplish. People, especially educated people, don’t listen very well because they don’t listen very long. In any conversation among people from Western Nations, the person ‘‘listening’’ only listens until something that is said creates an opportunity for a response. Once that opportunity is created, the ‘‘listener’’ is now thinking about what they are going to say, rather than focusing on what the other person is saying. To illustrate his point, Barnes related this personal experience. Sales were declining so Barnes called a meeting of his international sales group to obtain the sales prospective on how to reverse the trend. Lots of ideas were presented, tabulated and discussed. Charts appeared on the wall and I assume that the discussions conformed to the today’s understanding that, for fear of hurting someone’s feelings, nothing bad was said about any of the ideas. The modern approach to creativity is to conclude that no idea can be considered bad, regardless of how bad the idea is in reality. However, a very lengthy discussion concluded that M. R. Louthan (&) Box 623, Radford, VA 24142, USA e-mail: [email protected]
competition is tough and market shares are hard to hold. Barnes stopped the discussion and said. ‘‘I think that the problem is - We don’t listen to the customer. We need to practice listening.’’ The indignant and defensive reaction of the salesmen was that they did listen to the customer. With this reaction Barnes suggested that the meeting move to other considerations, and said. ‘‘Let’s consider our presentations, especially our spontaneous presentations. To practice this I want each of you to consider the best vacation that you have ever had and in a few minutes I’ll select several of you to make a presentation on the vacation. But before we do that, I want to read you a poem. Two small fish, standing in a line, Three big bears, feeling just fine, Four fat turkeys, wallowing in mud, Five small seals, covered with blood. Six sneaky rats, climbing the wall, Seven alligators, starting to fall, Eight lazy llamas, lying on dirt, Nine small hands, wiping on shirt, Ten stunned salesmen, trying to recall Words of a poem, heard by all.’’ Before any discussion could develop, Barnes gave a test to each of the salesmen. The questi
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