In a selling environment where most good salespeople appreciate the importance of discovering a prospect’s requirements, it is easy to take questioning skills for granted.

Yet, questions that are crafted with strategic intent can uncover a myriad of secrets stored in the prospect’s mind.

A typical trap that even the most experienced salesperson can fall into is that they make assumptions, either based on hard facts, possible facts, or generalisations they’ve formed about their industry, prospects, and themselves.

Good questions seek to challenge and test assumptions so that the sales person’s mind and the mind of their prospect/customer are free to think clearly and consequently to provide the relevant information. 

Before you can start to ask questions designed to uncover specifics, it’s important to give the prospect the opportunity to talk. The more they talk, the more signposts you’ll receive that will help lead the way to your desired outcome. Therefore, it helps to understand the definition and the positioning of different question types.

Open Questions
For example: “How can we help?”
- Good for opening up the customer and getting broad, general, information that is uninfluenced by you
- gives the customer the freedom to tell you whatever they want
- tend to start with what, when, where, why, who, which or how

Leading Questions
For example: “What else can you tell me about your delivery requirements?”
- Good for leading the customer in the direction you want them to go and finding out more specific information about their requirements
- tend to start with what, when, where, why, who, which or how

Closed Questions
For example: “Do you want to order this?”
- usually get a “yes” or “no” (or very short) answer
- Useful when you want to pinpoint/clarify specific information

The type of questions you ask customers can generate an uninfluenced or an influenced response. Open questions tend to give you longer, uninfluenced answers that allow you to begin to appreciate what’s important to a customer. Leading questions are still open questions yet they influence customers’ responses around specific areas.

The Open, Leading and Closed Combination
Open questions »»» uninfluenced customer response »»» leading questions »»» influences customer response »»» closed question »»» validation of customer response

The example below illustrates the ideal combination of using open, leading and closed questions to pinpoint a customer’s specific requirements.

Salesperson: “What’s important to you?” (Open question)

Customer: “Price, quality and efficiency.” (Uninfluenced response)

Salesperson: “Why is price important to you?” (Leading question based on price)

Customer: “So I can be more competitive in winning new business.” (Influenced response based on price related question)

Salesperson: “If I can demonstrate how we can help you win more business, will you review our proposition?” (Closed question to gain agreement)

Customer: “Yes” (influenced, definite response)

So you see, questions really are the answer!

Today’s News: They say that “birds of a feather flock together” – well not in my community they don’t. Amazingly, an Amazon parrot has teamed up with a crow, and so I now have two of the noisiest birds on the planet screeching at each other across the Plateau.

It’s an interesting coupling: The one self-asssured, but really quite dull and boring; the other terribly garish and incredibly flirtatious – it’s rather like watching Gordon Brown and Paris Hilton out clubbing together. Of course, there is a chance that the crow is colour blind!

OK, back to business: On Tuesday, you have an opportunity to join Danita Bye for the next Top Sales Experts Masterclass

Hot Tips to Create a Sales Team that Soars – Even in a Recession

In this presentation you will learn how to hire top guns that will keep on soaring and to minimize your hiring risk, including:

*Strategies to determine “the fit” between your company and the candidate
*Hiring tools to recruit a sales team that can handle any economic or competitive conditions
*Techniques to profile your sales candidates and to ensure performance after they are hired
*Key interview questions that reveal a potential new hire’s fit with your sales culture
*Measurement and analysis guides to help you gauge sales candidate behavior during the interview

Full details here

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