"You never listen to me"

I was sitting across the table with a homeowner last winter. There was a period of silence as they waited for me to start my listing presentation. I smiled and asked, "tell me why you think your home did not sell last spring." The silence lengthened. I had caught them off guard. The wife, after glancing at her husband responded, "I don't think she ever listened to what we wanted."

I do not like to talk at people. I would prefer to talk with people. Being a real estate agent I have had to become a listener. Selling or buying a home is a huge decision for anyone. I often have people sitting in my office for hours crying, laughing, talking, or just venting. More often than not a difficult home seller just simply wants to be heard. Many agents miss the mark when it comes to listening to their clients. They only hear complaints instead of looking for the concerns behind them. Rogers and Farsons in their article Active Listening address the ability of the listener to put themselves in the place of the speaker and actively seek to understand where the speaker is relating from as a means of effectively listening to the communicated message. (Rogers, 3).

The points made in Jianying Lu's article, The Listening Style Inventory (LSI) as an Instrument
for Improving Listening Skill are very relevant to many of the agents I work with. Listening is a two point process and it is dependent on how well the speaker can encode the message and how effective a listener is at decoding the message and responding to the communication (Lu, 2).

After my "presentation" was over I was given the listing. After the house sold they told me they choose me over other agents because I did not give them a presentation. I asked them what they wanted from an agent, why they wanted to sell, what their goals were, and together we came up with a plan to market the home. Not giving a formal presentation is unheard of and has not always been a positive decision in my career. But I believe that listening to a person is more important then telling them what needs to be done.

I am not the perfect listener and I can often drift away from the conversation mentally. Reading these articles served to remind me that I have to be actively engaged in what people are telling me. I need to seek to understand the communication instead of simply "hearing" it.

Lu, Jianying. (2005). The Listening Style Inventory (LSI) as an Instrument for Improving Listening Skill Sino-US English Teaching, 2 (5), 45-50.

Rogers, Carl; Farson, Richard (1987). Active Listening. R.G. Newman, M.A. Danzinger, M. Cohen (eds) Communicating in Business Today. D.C. Heath & Company.