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How Playing Chinese Telephone Is Costing You Sales

Written by: Leanne Hoagland-Smith

Article Overview: Is your sales team engaged in playing Chinese Telephone? Read how this childhood game may be costing you sales.

How Playing Chinese Telephone Is Costing You Sales

Remember the childhood game of Chinese telephone? A group of children sit in a circle. Then someone whispers a sentence to the child to her left. Then in turn that child repeats the message to the next person. This continues until the message is returned to the sender.

In many cases probably close to 100% what is returned to the original sender is not the original message. Words have been added, deleted and changed during the sharing of this message through the communication process.

What diluted and changed the message beyond the abilities to hear and speak correctly is our own experiences. We hear one word and another word comes to mind that begins to open up our emotional experiences. Sales Coaching Tip: People hear words, but think in pictures.

These experiences have also created internal judgement filters that are very sensitive to certain words. This sensitivity may actually keep us from hearing a specific word. Also these filters may have us substitute a certain word because the word has a negative connotation or is a word that we are told not to repeat under any circumstances.

In sales, how many times are we playing Chinese Telephone? We are supposed to listen to the potential qualified customer (a.k.a. prospect) and yet our mind hears what we want it to hear because our goal is to make the sale. Possibly, if we substituted the word earn for make we might be more willing to actively listen.

Active listening is a learned self-leadership skill and sales skill. By taking the time to listen instead of just hearing, we can not only improve the relationship, but realize the goal to increase sales. Then we can leave the game of Chinese Telephone to the children and the inexperienced sales professionals.

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Article Tags: active listening, childhood game, chinese telephone, circumstances, communication process, emotional experiences, judgement, leadership skill, nbsp, negative connotation, original message, relationship, sales professionals, sales skill, self leadership, taking the time, whispers



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