To be understood…

I’ve spent half my life pursuing the craft of communication. Professional sales and marketing is really nothing more than that, telling your story. From face to face appointments to the written word, “It’s the story that drives Wall Street”, and whatever other tale you’re trying to create…

I was reminded by one of the first trainers in my career, that the 3 international medical device companies that hired me “spent hundreds of thousands of dollars teaching you how to communicate Chris”. He was right of course, from years working in the field with managers to the multiple national sales meetings with recorded “role playing”, I should know a little about making myself “understood”…

Yet, as many may have experienced, in today’s “sound bite society”, it seems increasingly harder by the nano-second to be heard. Try as you may, with all the noise surrounding us with “smart phones”, and devices that allow instant access to information around the globe, your voice often gets lost like snail mail…

The great Steven Covey wrote a classic business/self-help book about the “7 Habits of Successful People“, where he identified the need to “Seek first to understand“. There is no question that listening skills are prerequisite in any attempt to connect with a prospect, or person of any import in ones life. I’ve certainly spent more time listening to “experts” wax eloquently about all things business, life, or the after life, than I care to admit…

But if you polled divorced couples, failed business partners, or human beings in general, a common denominator will be “discovered”. You see it movies, read it in novels, and experience it in your own relationships; “He, she, or they just didn’t listen to me”…

Nothing rips at the soul like not being heard, thinking that your words are wasted, trying as hard as you could, failing to be understood…