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Compassionate Listening of Thich Nhat Hanh #410
I would like to set aside the Tao Te Ching of Sales this week and speak about the passing of someone who has deeply influenced me. On January 22nd, Thich Nhat Hanh the Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk and peace activists passed away in Hue Vietnam. He was 95 years old.
Thich Nhat Hanh or Thay, as his students call him, Thay which means teacher, has been one of the most influential spiritual leaders of our time. He is the author of over a 100 books regarding mindfulness, spirituality, interbeing and awareness. He is the main inspiration for engaged Buddhism, which seeks to apply the Buddhist ethics on contemporary situations of social, political, environmental and economic suffering, and injustice.
I first started reading Thich Nhat Hanh’s books late in the 90s and found inspiration for my work and yes when selling.
His Teaching of Compassionate Listening
In 2013 Oprah Winfrey interviewed Thich Nhat Hanh and one insight he shared applies directly to business and sales. I’ve shared this before that I see selling has a helping profession. As sellers it is our responsibility to relieve the suffering of our customers. Each prospect you meet has some unfulfilled need or desire that greatly pains the and their organizations. The way master sellers can assuage this suffering is to listen. Only after listening can we know if we can help. In the interview. Thay said this …
“Deep listening is the kind of listening that can help relieve the suffering of another person. You can call it compassionate listening. You listen with only one purpose: to help him or her to empty his heart. Even if he says things that are full of wrong perceptions, full of bitterness, you are still capable of continuing to listen with compassion. Because you know that listening like that, you give that person a chance to suffer less. If you want to help him to correct his perception, you wait for another time. For now, you don’t interrupt. You don’t argue. If you do, he loses his chance. You just listen with compassion and help him to suffer less. One hour like that can bring transformation and healing.”
Business and Sales Compassionate Listening
I’m certain this isn’t the first time that you heard that listening is important. Management will give lip service to good listening but more often that not they invest more energy into accelerating the script and driving to close. Sadly, too often listening is seen as a soft skill.
“Soft” implies it’s lesser than, something minor, less important than computer literacy, scientific understanding, academic proficiency, mathematical prowess, or analytical skills. All of these are important; they are vital and worthy skills to possess.
Compassionate Listening is deeply underrated as a skill. Yet, we would say that listening is the most important skill we need to have. The hard sciences previously mentioned could not have been learned from talking, but listening.
Listening needs to be at the top of the list of skills to master and model if we want to have more authentic relationships and more impactful connections.
Listening is at the core of successful relationships and cannot be short-changed if we want our relationships – professional and personal – to be meaningful and satisfying.
Listening well with intention, being actively present with one another, suspending judgments, dispensing with platitudes, pitching products and respecting the inherent human worth of those to whom we listen is hard work.
Listening is not easy, if so everyone would be doing it. The lack of listening and discovering commonalities, or as Thay would say interbeing, is the fundamental root of the break down of our society when it comes to political discussion. Listen only goes so far to see if the other person is on our team or not. But we can be better. We need to be better.
Overcoming the Fear and Rejection of Sales
Beyond listening there is the struggle of call reluctance and opportunity for rejection. Thich Naht Hanh once said.
“Fear keeps us focused on the past or worried about the future. If we can acknowledge our fear, we can realize that right now we are okay. Right now, today, we are still alive, and our bodies are working marvelously. Our eyes can still see the beautiful sky. Our ears can still hear the voices of our loved ones.”
He taught me to relax, let go and accept the world as it is.
A Message for Technologists
In 2013, he spoke at Google’s headquarters in Silicon Valley, bringing his message of quiet contemplation to the forefront of the high-energy digital age.
“We have the feeling that we are overwhelmed by information,. We don’t need that much information.
Do not try to find the solution with your thinking mind. Nonthinking is the secret of success. And that is why the time when we are not working, that time can be very productive, if we know how to focus on the moment.”
Links to Thich Nhat Hanh
How To Find The Tao Te Ching of Sales
Many years ago I authored a thrice a week blog titled the “Tao Te Ching of Sales“. It based on a book of poems titled the “Tao Te Ching” by the Chinese philosopher Lao Tze. It dives into non-pushy sales based on the teaching of Wu Wei “non-doing”. You can learn more here:
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Sales Consulting To Grow Your Business
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Pushy sales doesn’t work! The key is to build trust over time. What tools do we use? LinkedIn, Email and the power of the Voice Mail.
We believe and teach the value of a helping mindset. Your prospective customers have challenges, hopes and aspirations. They need your help. All you need to do is build their trust, and faith, in your organization. Learn how we help here. Once it’s clear you can help, you will have loyal clients for life. When you bring value you make sales. Or if you’re a startup, learn sales for engineers and skills to promote your new venture.
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Sometimes it’s dangerous to have a hunter mentality where you think of prospects as game and you the hunter. This kind of competitiveness may get in the way of empathy. Once upon a time, a sales guy may have gotten away with bullying a prospect into buying. But those days are gone, the internet destroyed that. Customers have choices. There is more competition and what buyers truly desire, is to have someone take away their problems. When prospects get a sense that you care, they will trust that you may have the solution. Maybe not all of life’s troubles. But maybe a few of them. Empathy is the Key to sales. That’s our topic for today
