Covey's 1st Principle Behind Listen First

Covey (The Speed of Trust, 2006, p. 208ff) gives three principles behind Listen First: understanding, respect, and mutual benefit. I added hearing, being fully present in the conversation, and being open.

Understanding means you comprehend what is being said. You see how it relates to your behavior or your ideas. You grasp its relationships with other things and the consequences of whatever you're being told, and the places it came out of. In short, you understand.

When you understand something you have a kind of "aha" moment. You're walking down the hallway coffee in hand and it hits you. You finally get it.

This is what Covey means by understanding underlying listening.

My goal here is to help entrepreneurs climb all the way to the top. How am I doing?

Entrepreneurship is the life's blood of all my professional activities. It makes them go. It informs my connection strategy.

It makes Sherpa Real Estate , my real estate referral business, go. See www.yourstopforrealestate.blogspot.com.

It powers my Sherpa Literary. Go to www.timswritingblog.blogspot.com for my ideas on writing and publishing and read my mystery for free at wwww.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com or buy it from Amazon.com more cheaply than you can print it out.

It fuels my publishing enterprise, By and for Writersgo. See www.byandforwriters.blogspot.com where you can get a poem or a short story published.Dey

Todd Duncan's Sales Mistake #2: Posing, part 2.

Duncan rightly ascribes sales success to learning the language of your prospects. He says, "to do away with posing and close sales in an effective manner, you must communicate in the language that is most easily understood by your prospects and clients, and that language is trust." [p. 34]

On pages 34-6, Duncan identifies five traits that communicate trust:

1. Timeliness: Talk to people only when they expect you to do so.

2. Relevance: Talk to them only about what they care about.

3. Understanding: Understand their needs before you try to sell them something.

4. Sincerity: Treat your customers with respect.

5. Thoroughness: Cover all the bases. Don't make them wait for you to get back to them.

I would update Duncan by adding authenticity and permission. Authenticity in that your communication comes from your heart and is not put on. Permission, such that you have their permission to talk to them.

If you don't have their permission, ask for it. It's the basis of all successful interactions.

See Todd Duncan, Killing the Sale; the 10 Fatal Mistakes Salespeople make and how to avoid them. (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2004).

What do you think about this? Have you ever been guilty of posing? I'm trying to create more skilled entrepreneurs. Do you think this helps?

This is some of the stuff that will go into my entrepreneurship course. The ideas in it supply the life's blood of my professional activities: teaching, writing, and real estate. For entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for entrepreneurial writing to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot/com.

Understanding

Wikipedia, the free, on-line encyclopedia, describes understanding as

A psychological process related to an abstract or physical object, such as, person, situation, or message whereby one is able to think about it and use concepts to deal adequately with that object. An understanding is the limit of a conceptualization. To understand something is to have conceptualised it to a given measure.

Understanding is key for entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs have to understand themselves. They have to understand people. And they have to understand the world around them.

Now the self, the world, and other people are not static. They're always changing, more so as we go forward. So entrepreneurs have to develop the tools to re-understand all of the above almost every day. If they don't, they'll be swimming upstream in a rapids.

What do you think about this? I'd like to know. And post a comment.

Entrepreneurship 2.0 is my entrepreneurship course. The ideas in it supply the life's blood of my professional activities: teaching, writing, and real estate. For entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for entrepreneurial writing to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot/com.