Questioning

Videoconferencing has the potential to lead us into a serious, rapport-killing selling mistake that a whole lot of us are, unfortunately, already strongly predisposed to make.

Discover the art of sales motivation in this captivating How to Succeed podcast episode with Jason Stevens, a Sandler trainer with extensive experience in the sales industry.

My message for sales professionals is simple: You’re a consultant, so behave like one. That means asking the right questions… then asking more questions … and even more questions …. until you fully understand what the buyer needs to be able to close the gap between where they are and where they want to be.

Here are some of the key questions we coach salespeople to be prepared to ask in the initial phases of a conversation with a prospect.

As a sales leader, there’s a simple way to help the salesperson check their beliefs when they are potentially getting in the way (head trash).

Mike Montague interviews Wayne Dehn on How to Succeed at Overcoming Childhood Messages.

Mike Montague interviews Dan Stalp on how to succeed at redirecting prospects’ head trash. 

Sales superstars are not afraid to ask tough questions. This gives them an edge because they truly understand the situation. Sales superstars know the budget, how decisions are made, and how their product or service can be a fit for the prospect. These facts don’t fall from the sky.

One of the most essential steps required to qualify or disqualify an opportunity is to figure out if a prospect is willing and able to make any investments to move forward.

Jane was having problems uncovering accurate information during her discussions with prospects. Her conversations during sales calls tended to be unfocused, and she spent a lot of time pursuing options that her prospects ended up rejecting. Her manager suggested she try something called Negative Reversing.

June is Effective Communications Month. With that fact in mind, consider the following cautionary tale for salespeople.

Your prospects willingness to change can effect if you make the sale or not. Find out how to narrow the area of uncertainty and eliminate wasted time spent on prospects that are unwilling to change.

What’s your primary job when you call on a prospect? To sell? To win a contract? To impress a prospect with your knowledge? Actually, none of these. That’s right, none of these.

It’s easy to miss something if you’re not looking for it. This is where reversing comes into play. When a prospect is firing away questions and you are just giving responses, there is no way of qualifying or disqualifying this prospect. Instead, think about why they might be asking those questions and what those questions can reveal. Answer the prospect’s question with a question; this is the definition of reversing.

In Part 1 of this two-part series, we introduced the topic of reversing. We emphasized that reversing -- answering a prospect’s question with a question-- helps you move beyond talking about pain indicators to discussing pain. Let’s now consider other key factors related to reversing.

If you’ve been up close to the Sandler Training sales approach, you’ve probably heard, “Go for no” at least more than once, if not a hundred times. In fact, hearing the word, no, from a potential client can be your gateway to a sale. But it makes a big difference when the no occurs during your sales cycle with a prospect. You may hear a hard no or a soft no. The trick is to know the difference.

Is it possible to solve a problem we don’t understand? No, if we don’t know about a problem we can’t resolve it. Yet sales people frequently attempt this.

When people were surveyed why they didn’t buy from a particular salesperson, 86% responded, “I felt they didn’t understand my business”. Listening is a major part of sales. Many salespeople have found success by learning to be good listeners. Active listening is a common term used for people that listen and understand what they are told, but how do we become an active listener?

People buy for their reasons, not ours, and at times, in spite of ours. Having a quality product or service that provides high value to the purchaser is important. The key word in that statement is purchaser.

Defining a “yes” can instantly become a “no” in the first ten minutes of a sales call- especially if you are not being specific as to what a “yes” means. In order to get specific, you need to be asking yourself a few questions

Reversing, or asking a prospect’s questions with questions of your own, sounds like a lot to expect, doesn’t it? Especially if you’re not used to reversing. Just to clarify, to reverse is to respond to a prospect’s question with a question. The overall purpose is to get to the truth of a prospect’s situation.

Pain represented the prospect’s collective reasons to buy a product or service.

If you want prospects to react to you in a more favorable manner, you must first examine your own behavior. And then, you need to ask a new set of questions.

Clients’ willingness to provide salespeople with referrals is primarily a matter of trust. And, salespeople can earn that trust not only by providing products and services that ultimately deliver exceptional results, but also by “delivering” exceptional experiences.

Anne is a partner in a small consulting firm. During a recent meeting with a key prospect, a senior decision maker at a Fortune 1000 firm, she handled the presentation. Juan, her mentor and coach (and the founder of the practice) watched and took notes. After the presentation – which ended inconclusively– Juan and Anne did a “parking lot debrief” about what went well and what could have been improved upon during the meeting.

One way salespeople get themselves in trouble is by rushing to answer a prospect’s question … before they uncover the intent that’s driving that question.

By making better decisions about which questions you answer directly and which you Reverse, you can increase the quality of the information you uncover during discussions with prospects, get behind the smokescreen and close more sales.

It may be tempting to use a familiar sequence of questions in an attempt to “script out” your exchanges with prospects ahead of time. But it doesn’t work – unless your goal is to get the person’s eyes to glaze over. Check your assumptions at the door, and focus on the motive instead.

All prospects (and, for that matter, all salespeople) are unique. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to bonding with people and establishing rapport with them.

Don’t waste time, effort, and good will trying to “turn around” an objection that may not be an objection at all. Instead, use more effective questioning to get clarity on what’s really being said.

David Sandler said, "If you live a straight life in an unstraight world you're going to get killed." Yet salespeople get (metaphorically) killed daily by selling in a straight line. Salespeople sell in a straight line when they are attached to the outcome of their interaction with their prospect, typically closing a sale, instead of being attached to the process of (dis)qualifying

There's something to be said about children who continue to ask "why" about everything. When they ask and you respond, and they ask "Why?" again, it means they don't have the complete answer to their question. They will continue to ask until they understand the entire concept or until the adult gets frustrated. In business, asking "Why?" five times can produce the same quality understanding to prepare for better results. Common complaints we hear often in business:

Have you ever talked yourself out of a sale? Selling is not about telling. It's about helping the prospect relate to your product or service to the satisfaction of their wants and needs. It's also about helping them discover needs of which they were previously unaware. How do you accomplish this? By asking thought-provoking questions and then listening, really listening!

All too frequently, salespeople schedule appointments...and then forget about them until the day before the scheduled dates. Do you? Is preparation a last-minute activity often consisting of nothing more than a quick review of the notes from the original phone conversations when the appointments were scheduled...and perhaps a review of the prospects' web sites, advertising, or marketing materials? Can you answer the following questions about your next prospect appointment

Salespeople could significantly increase their earnings if they stopped saying and believing "I know why."

Prospects like to play games with salespeople. The purpose of games prospects play is to make a salesperson feel not-OK. When a salesperson feels not-OK in front of a prospect, they are more likely to give up their time and information in the hope that their prospect will make them feel OK again. Some of the games prospects play with salespeople are: Why Don't You, Yes But - your prospect rejects every one of your suggestions with some version of "yes, but" (e.g. "we'd love to implement option A, but our budget was cut last week.")

The two words that are guaranteed to trip up most sales people are "better" and "value." The latter we'll talk about in another post. Typically the "better" trap is set by a prospect at the beginning of a meeting. After introductions and polite conversation your prospect says, "so tell me how you are better than my current supplier." If your instinct is to jump to a features-and-benefits presentation, STOP! There is no way for you to answer that question and have any chance of closing the sale. There are three reasons why your prospects set the "better" trap

A common death trap salespeople fall into is having "happy ears," meaning, they tend to hear what they want to hear. In actuality, what they (salespeople) heard does not reflect the real intent of what the prospect said. Sales Tip

Why do we think that by asking a question we'll hurt the prospect's feelings? What you need to remember is that that you are not responsible for how a prospect reacts to a question that you ask. Clients share with me daily the questions they've avoided asking for fear of upsetting the prospect. Sometimes they get frustrated with themselves because they feel they lost a sale or an opportunity of a sale because they lacked the guts to ask questions. They would rather bite their tongue than ask a question that they think might make the prospect uncomfortable

After any amount of time in dealing with salespeople, you're bound to come across some overzealous characters — those people who treat a prospect more like a rabid predator than a professional. Nobody wants to deal with a salesperson who is obviously waiting to pounce, so you do the only thing you can do to shake them off the scent of a sale — you lie.

Acronyms, industry buzz-words, technical jargon — we've all used them at one point or another in our jobs. But if you've been using them when you're first getting to know your prospect, you may have made a big mistake.

We don't ordinarily think of sales as one of the "helping professions," but maybe we should. People tell their problems to psychologists and clergymen. They pour out their hearts to their neighborhood bartender. But they tell their troubles to sales professionals, too, so we should develop our "helping profession" skills. I have often noticed, when a sales pitch is going well, how the conversation resembles what I understand a therapeutic session to be like. That is the way it should be, if the salesperson knows what he or she is doing