A large national sales organization has concluded that active listening is a critical factor in successful sales and customer satisfaction.The company now wants you to design a training program that teaches sales staff the main components of active listening.Describe the three components of active listening and discuss a specific training activity that would potentially improve the salespeople's performance in each of these three components.

To answer this question, students must briefly describe the three components of active listening, identify one of the activities related to each active listening component and apply that activity to a specific training activity.Grading this question will require some judgment about the relevance and quality of the student's recommended training.Below is a brief description of the three active listening components and their associated activities.Also presented is one example of a training activity for each component:
Sensing.Sensing is the process of receiving signals from the sender and paying attention to them.These signals include the words spoken, the nature of the sounds (speed of speech, tone of voice, etc.) and nonverbal cues.Active listeners improve sensing by postponing evaluation, avoiding interruptions and maintaining interest.One training activity would be to videotape trainees as they listen to a speaker, then offer feedback on how well the trainees demonstrated their interest in what the speaker was saying.
Evaluating.This component of listening includes understanding the message meaning, evaluating the message and remembering the message.To improve their evaluation of the conversation, active listeners empathize with the speaker and organize information received during the conversation.One training program for this component of active listening might be to have trainees listen to a speaker, then ask them to document how they organized the speaker's ideas while listening.The training might stop the speaker suddenly and immediately ask listeners to organize the ideas present up to that point in time.
Responding.This refers to the listener's development and display of behaviors that support the communication process.Responsiveness is feedback to the sender, which motivates and directs the speaker's communication.Active listeners do this by showing interest and clarifying the message.A training program relating to this component of active listening might involve having trainees watch a video recording of two people in a conversation.Trainees are asked to identify specific behaviors in the listener that indicate supportive responding.Trainees later discuss these responding behaviors and identify which are most effective in the conversation.