Defined as overly vigorous responses in a conversation…
While Active Listening skills are extremely important for vendors in Discovery, demos, and related conversations, we occasionally encounter vendor reps whose responses to prospect comments can be perceived as fake and artificial. Note that we’ve seen this behavior from presales and customer success folks as well as salespeople!
Examples include:
- Overly deep head-nodding
- Overly rapid head-nodding
- Long “Hmmmmmmm” utterances
- Faked empathy
- Forced laughter
- False exclamations
These practices, often done unknowingly, impact rep authenticity and can inhibit prospects’ willingness to share…
A second type of Overactive Listening is when vendor reps jump too rapidly to articulate a solution. An example? Have you ever encountered an Internet provider customer service person who, after you state, “I appear to have connectivity issues…” (or similar starting point), they immediately respond with “I can definitely help you with that….!”
This type of Overactive Listening is also known as “Premature Solutioning” – and further verbal expansion by a rep of their “solution” is known as (you guessed it) “Premature Elaboration”!