You train them to become more curious – increased curiosity and empathy are learnable! You get them to plan and write down specific open questions that they genuinely want or need to know the answers to in order to determine if they can help this customer. You ask them to send you those questions before the meeting. You then tell them that after their customer conversation you will ask them those very questions and expect to hear all of the answers clearly. This will significantly improve how your team listen!
Key facts
- Technical experts often think value convinces by telling, so they go straight into technical conversations, do all the talking, and try to tell their way or pitch their way to a sale – it needs to be flipped on its head.
- You listen your way to a sale, you listen your way to getting a yes, rather than telling and pitching your way to one – the buyer is constantly revealing ‘cards’ in their hand about what they value, what they fear, who else matters in the decision, where the budget comes from, what’s blocked. Your goal is to learn ‘their hand’.
- Real listening means asking the question, then waiting, letting the buyer fill silence rather than filling it for them, summarising back what you heard in their words before responding, then asking a follow-up that shows you understood.
- When engineers stop having to perform and start listening properly, discovery gets sharper, proposals get tighter because they’re answering the actual question, and conversion goes up.
- A free 3-minute starting point is the Revenue Generator Score diagnostic (link below) which reveals where your sales approach is breaking down and the single area to fix first.
Why is real listening so hard for technical people?
Because their problem-solving instinct is fast. The buyer says something, the engineer’s brain has already produced an answer, and they’re now listening for the moment to deliver it. Their technical training has wired them to solve problems quickly and demonstrate expertise. When a buyer mentions a challenge, every fibre of their being wants to jump in with the solution. But the buyer is still talking, still revealing context, still sharing what matters most to them. The engineer misses all of that because they’re mentally rehearsing their response. The fix is to slow the loop down deliberately, make them aware, and change the goals.
What does proper listening look like in practice?
Asking the question, then waiting, listening for meaning, and ‘playing back’ what you heard. Asking a follow-up that shows you understood, not one that pivots to your point. Doing that three or four times in a row before you offer anything. It means biting your tongue when your brain has the perfect technical answer ready to go and digging harder first. It also means setting up the conditions for the customer to trust you and be honest with in order to listen to useful information. It means saying ‘Tell me more about that’ instead of ‘Here’s how we solve that.’ It means making the buyer feel heard before you make yourself heard. Most engineers find this uncomfortable at first because it feels like they’re not adding value. But listening is adding value, it’s professional, and it leads to sales and more business.
What’s the principle?
You listen your way to a sale. You listen your way to a yes. Listen well enough, and you’ll learn exactly what to say in order to get your ‘yes’. Discovery is about you discovering what the buyer will say ‘yes’ to, and the buyer discovering compelling reasons to buy from you. And professional level ‘listening’ is a learnable and lucrative skill.
How do I train this?
The fastest way to benefit from improved results is to bring in a specialist trainer/coach/facilitator who helps engineers or technical teams to learn to sell. Not just a sales trainer, but someone who understands engineers and technical types, and who has a track record in helping them make these shifts in their behaviours.
What changes when a team starts listening properly?
Everything improves in terms of creating and keeping more of the right customers. Customers feel ‘heard’ and listened to. Your fit and value increases. You get more ‘yeses’. And everyone enjoys the process more because you’re no longer banging your head against the wall.
Don’t technical experts need to demonstrate expertise to build credibility?
They need to demonstrate VALUABLE and relevant expertise. And they can’t do that until they’ve listened professionally first. Only then can they pinpoint specifically what the buyer values, and demonstrate their expertise that’s relevant to that. Any other form of attempting to demonstrate expertise falls under “they’re not listening to me” and moves you away from the sale. Simple.
Signs your team is waiting to talk, not listening
First, your proposals and suggestions all sound similar, regardless of the buyer. If your team is truly listening, each proposal should reflect the specific language and priorities the buyer used. Second, your meetings feel like interrogations or pitches, not conversations. If the buyer is giving short answers or seems disengaged, they probably feel like they’re being processed rather than understood. Third, your engineers come out of meetings saying ‘They seemed interested’ but can’t tell you specifically what the buyer said they cared about most. If they can’t reconstruct the buyer’s actual words and concerns, they were mentally preparing their next point, not absorbing what was being said.