The Selling Fundamental That Holds the Other Six Together: Empathy and Listening

In our work with sales teams across the beverage alcohol industry, we teach seven selling fundamentals. Together they have one goal: maximizing your influence with your customer.

1.      Preparation

2.      Rapport

3.      Empathy and listening

4.      The sales pitch

5.      Overcoming objections

6.      Closing the sale

7.      Follow-up and servicing the business

Each one matters. But if you asked me which is the most important, I wouldn’t hesitate: it’s number three. Empathy and listening is the fundamental that ties all the others together. Without it, the other six are built on guesswork.

Empathy is a skill, not a personality trait

Salespeople sometimes tell me, “I’m just not a naturally empathetic person.” Here’s what the research says about that.

A 2021 meta-analysis in Frontiers in Psychology estimated that roughly 1-4% of adults show clinically significant psychopathic traits, depending on how it’s measured. That’s the small group of people who truly lack the capacity for empathy. The vast majority of us have the capacity for empathy.

Yet a widely cited University of Michigan study found that college students in 2009 scored about 40% lower on measures of empathy than students in 1979. Nearly all of us are capable of empathy, but many of us aren’t using it.

That’s good news for salespeople. It means empathy is less a fixed trait and more a muscle that can be trained. In sales, the way you exercise that muscle is by listening.

The goal: uncover what your customer is trying to accomplish

In sales, the purpose of empathy and listening is specific: to uncover your customer’s goals and pain points.

The key to doing that is probing. You ask open-ended questions that get the customer talking about what they want to accomplish. What are they trying to grow? What’s keeping them up at night? What does a win look like for them this quarter? 

Most customers don’t expect this. Most salespeople don’t probe. They walk in with a pitch already loaded and skip straight past this fundamental. So when you take the time to ask and really listen, you immediately stand out. You’re having a different conversation than most of your competitors’ salespeople.  I’ve had many retailers tell me that they know every salesperson is there to sell, but what they don’t know is whether you’re there to help. Asking questions and probing shows you’re there to help!

In our world, customer goals almost always fall into one of six categories. We call it SPRITE. Customers are looking to increase:

•        Sales

•        Profits

•        Rings (higher transaction rings, meaning a bigger basket at the register)

•        Image (an enhanced store image)

•        Traffic

•        Excitement (generating consumer excitement)

Your job in fundamental three is to find out which SPRITE need matters most to this customer, right now.

How empathy and listening powers every other fundamental

This is why I call it the most important fundamental. Once you know your customer’s SPRITE need, every other step gets sharper.

Preparation (#1). When you know what the customer is trying to achieve, you can prepare solutions that deliver impact aligned with their goals. Without that knowledge, you’re preparing generic material and hoping something sticks.

Rapport (#2). There are two kinds of rapport: personal and business. Personal rapport covers the weekend, the ballgame, the kids. It’s valuable, but it only gets you so much influence. Business rapport comes from understanding what your customer wants and how they go to market, and that only happens through empathy and listening. The salesperson with business rapport becomes a partner. The one with only personal rapport stays a friendly vendor with limited influence.

The sales pitch (#4). Fundamentals three and four are completely tied together, because SPRITE works in both directions. It describes the customer’s needs, and it also describes the benefits you can offer. If you uncover that a retailer is focused on growing transaction rings, your pitch should lead with how your program builds basket size. Uncover the SPRITE need, then align your pitch with the matching SPRITE benefit. That’s where influence comes from.

Overcoming objections (#5). When you hit an objection, don’t argue with it. Acknowledge it, bring the conversation back to the customer’s need you uncovered in fundamental three, and then solve the objection in that context. “I understand shelf space is tight – your store looks great always does, so I get it.  Yet I also understand increasing sales is really important too. Here’s how we can make that work within the space you have.”

Closing the sale (#6). Closing is far easier when you keep connecting your solution back to the customer’s need. You’re no longer asking them to buy your product. You’re asking them to take the next step toward their own goal.

Follow-up and service (#7). After the sale, go back to the need you uncovered and evaluate the results. Did you deliver the sales lift, the traffic, or the excitement you promised? This closes the loop. It also sets up your next conversation, because now you have a track record on the things your customer cares about most.

The bottom line

Many salespeople treat listening as the quiet part of the call, the part where they wait for their turn to talk. The best salespeople treat it as the most important part. When you probe with genuine curiosity and listen for what your customer is trying to achieve, you earn the information you need to prepare, build real business rapport, deliver a relevant pitch, handle objections, close with confidence, and prove your value afterward.

Empathy isn’t a soft skill in sales. It’s the foundation of influence. And because so few salespeople practice it, it’s also one of the biggest competitive advantages available to you.

So, on your next call, before you pitch anything, ask one more question than you normally would. Then listen. Then pitch…then succeed!