I few weeks ago we took a Sunday dry down Highway 25. Highway 25 is an obscure country road in the hills of northern California. It was absolutely gorgeous: the hills were covered with blankets of green, cows and horses were grazing, the birds were in perfect pitch and the wind was rustling through the branches of the trees. Oh of course.. the sun was shining as it so commonly does in California. A couple of times we stopped “To listen to the quiet”. 
An interesting thing happened, when we were driving down the road we mostly heard the roar of the car engine and the tires rolling over the road. As we stopped, turned to car off and just stood by the side of the road something wonderful happened! At first it seems completely silent, but the longer we stood there as we stood we heard hear the wonderful orchestra going on. First we heard the birds.. then the wind and then the cows mooing on the distant hillside. We heard none of this as we were driving . It took us completely stopping, getting quiet and really listening to hear all the beautiful sounds around us.
At times… we are not listening in our day to day conversations . We don’t hear what is really being said and we certainly don’t understand. It is our nature to want to be heard.. to speak our mind. It is true, as entrepreneurs, we need to be known by our clients, but to reach our clients and to help solve their problems we need to hear and understand them.
Are you taking time to listen and understand your clients? Do you have a process, method or trick to make this happen? Please share below.