Don't Talk, Listen!

A couple of days ago I wrote a list of the Do's and Dont's of telephone collection. Listening was on the list - and I capitalised the word 'LISTEN' to emphasise its importance. I now want to emphasise it again, because I sometimes think that people don't really understand how to listen or what listening really is.

Listening isn't a passive activity. It isn't waiting for your turn to speak, and isn't just about hearing what other people say either.

When people talk, they always reveal more than they intend to - how they're feeling, what they're afraid of, and what they want from you. In other words, genuinely listening doesn't just involve hearing someone else's words and responding to them; it means registering what people are not saying directly, or what they might be reluctant to say, or what they don't want you to do or say in response to what they are saying, and either filing that information away for future reference, or responding to that 'sub-text' immediately and directly.

People who have a complaint need no encouragement to talk about it - the problem there is the time it's going to take them to run out of steam and give you a chance to respond appropriately - but people who have no complaint to make but have good reasons to be evasive (and you may meet plenty of those!) often do need encouragement to come up with sentences that include more than three words and all too frequently consist of just one.

It isn't difficult to encourage people who are reluctant to talk to begin to talk, simply because many - in fact most - people find silence uncomfortable, and can't wait to fill it. Consequently, if you resist the urge to talk yourself, remain responsively silent, and listen not just to the spoken words but to the underlying sub-text of the ensuing conversation, you will learn a great deal more from the person you are speaking to than he or she will ever be consciously aware of.

Quite a while ago now I remarked that the telephone can make it difficult to judge someone's real attitude or reaction to your collection call - and that's true. But by using the power of silence to encourage people to talk to you and listening - really listening - to what they say, either outright or indirectly, you can make quite accurate judgement calls as to the real state of play where your defaulting debtors are concerned.

And don't forget: if you talk too much, and listen too little you, too, may reveal more than you intend to...