Are you smarter than a fifth grader?

It is amazing to think that many of the issues that arise in marketing can be solved with basic principles learned in elementary school. Recently, I commented on fellow blogger, Lindy Dreyer post, 'Rediscovering the Art of Listening' In this post, Lindy Dreyer talked about how we often get so swept up in what we’re trying to communicate that we forget to listen.

Listening is an 'art form' that takes time and effort to master.

It is an ability that seems to have been lost as generations evolve into a mindset that quantity outranks quality, and this is not the case.

Older generations had the ability to 'connect' with members/customers because they listened to them and had conversations that went further than just business and into personal lives. They built relationships on trust because they listened and members/customers never thought twice about where they would turn if they needed something.

With the broad reach we are give through new technological advances in social networking, it is much more easier to trust the technology than the person using the technology. Time is not spent on listening to the problems, concerns, what's working, what's not, etc from the members/customers. It is seen as a waste of time - time that could have been spent talking to three other people. We need to use the Listen-talk-listen-assess-contribute relationship that the previous generations knew so well of and, in turn, saw greater results.

I have noticed this within my association which provides products to our members in addition to traditional associational services such as networking opportunities, industry news/updates, etc. There was a point in time where our members would call and say they needed a certain quantity of product A to be delivered by a certain date. They did not ask for endless information, request documentation stating authentication, etc - they knew that this association they were a part of was working for them to get the best pricing and products available. These were people they dealt with on a regular basis, people who had taken time from their busy schedule to step out and visit their company site 2000 miles away, people who listened to them and knew when their neighbors dog was sick.

Today, unfortunately, that simply is not the case. This is not because we have forgotten why our association exist, the members. It is because there is so many other things that we think we need to accomplish in the day that listening just becomes a thing we do in our spare time. And this not only exist on the association level, but on the member level as well.

With all the various ways that our members have to get information, the messages we convey often get lost in the everyday shuffle. We find that our emails find their way into the morning delete pile, that our magazines are place in a stack labeled 'things to read when I have time' and our mail gets filtered over while our members are looking for that payment that is three weeks late. If anything, this trend should teach us as marketers that we should listen to our constituents more effectively and focus our marketing efforts to something that benefits them, something that won't get overlooked. In today's society, we are given such a small window of time to get our point across, and often times it is not well utilized.

Most of us were told as a child in elementary school, 'hearing and listening are two different things.' I think that this is something that many people have forgotten and could use a refresher course in. As Lindy mentioned, people need to rediscover the art of listening if they want to see results. And, it the association world where members are not only another customer, but owners/partners/stakeholders, what have you, listening suddenly becomes all the more important of a task to master.