“You learn when you listen. You earn when you listen- not just money, but respect.“
– Harvey Mackay, Businessman and Author
Harvey Mackey’s these words are apt for today’s business environment where development is directly proportional and intrinsically related to being a good listener in the relevant field. If you do not listen carefully, how can you address the issues your customers are facing? Or if you are heading an organization, you must listen to the problems your employees are facing to ensure a healthy, professional work environment in the organization. The Virtual Assistant (VA) industry, which is based on personal communication between the client and the virtual assistant, requires you to become a good listener for business development.
The underlying fact is, no matter how well you articulate a message, if it is not conveyed properly and effectively understood by your client or your team members, you cannot possibly expect to excel in the VA industry. Thus, it is very important that you:
- Become a good listener: Only a good listener can become a successful virtual assistant. Listening promotes greater client satisfaction. By listening carefully, you can understand a client’s concern. And when you know the problem, you can offer a quick solution. It also makes the client feel important because you patiently listen to the problems and offer a quick, tangible solution.
- Do not jump to conclusions without listening: Some people have a tendency to jump to conclusions without listening to the issue carefully. The result is utter confusion on the work front. Listening enables people to have a clear understanding of the issue. In the VA industry, careful listening helps in understanding client’s requirements. Only when you know what your client wants, you can put in your efforts to ensure a successful outcome.
- Careful listening ensures successful outcome/ Listen carefully for ensuring a successful outcome: When you listen carefully, you pay attention to every minute detail. Thus, when you embark to perform the task you implement the feedback, the essential details and the ideas shared by your client during direct communication. In this way, you can set high standards of performance for yourself by assuming responsibility for successfully completing the work on time.
- Listen carefully and do not interrupt the speaker: Do you know that interrupting reduces listening capability, hampers the flow of ideas from the speaker and shuts down communication? This has a negative impact on the entire work process of the company. So, next time when the client, a team member or the team leader speaks up, never interrupt. Instead, listen to the ideas and try to implement the ideas when performing your work.
Our services are available 24 X 7, each shift manager is given the responsibility to deal with some specific clients. It is the primary duty of the shift manager to do some research on the client’s business and then discuss the requirements with the client (s) over the phone, e-Mail or Chat. The capability and expertise of the shift manager (s) lie in letting the client do most of the talking. Only when the client speaks up, the shift manager can understand the goals, preferences and requirement(s) of the client. At the same time, the manager can assign the work to a virtual assistant (VA) who will be most suitable to handle the task.
The success of a VA depends on listening carefully to the manager and understanding the task requirement. Thus, careful listening breaks away the barriers, bridges distances with our offshore clients. We communicate, but most important of all we listen to our clients’ needs and thus meet their requirements. Listening Skills add value to our development.
