Selling Skills Training | How to Develop Sales Questioning Strategy?
To explore the client’s main objectives is to first ask questions that are strategic because we don’t want to focus on our agenda, but we want to focus on the client’s. We want the client to share with us what is the most important thing to them.
Even when customers share their needs because they are open or because you’ve asked questions, don’t let the dialogue fall short of fully understanding needs. By having a logical questioning strategy, you can create a dialogue that will let you efficiently and effectively explore the needs of your customers.
Your questioning strategy gives you a structure to develop a dialogue rich in needs and your questioning skills give you the flexibility you need within the structure to improvise while still directing the dialogue. Since you are likely to be asking more questions, planning the overall structure and flow of your questions is essential.
Your questioning strategy will enable you to create effective and efficient need dialogues with your customers. As you plan your questioning strategy, begin broadly. Start by asking about the customer’s objectives. An understanding of what the customer wants to accomplish provides the best foundation for probing more deeply. It is astounding how many salespeople skip this question.
Once you have a clear understanding of the customer’s objectives, then ask about the current situation. Probe this to learn about priori- ties and concerns. Next, ask about level of satisfaction and drill down to understand what is working and what needs to be changed. As appropriate, also ask about future needs, so you can take them into consideration to help you differentiate your solution. As appropriate, tactfully ask about personal needs so you can build personal motivators into your solution and be more persuasive. Throughout your questioning strategy, look for opportunities to drill down to learn more.
Once you have a full understanding of needs (customer’s objective, current situation, level of satisfaction, future needs), ask implementation questions that have not been addressed in the course of the dialogue. Critical to your being able to realistically assess the opportunity and close are questions about implementation, including budget, timeframe, compelling event driving the decision, decision-making process (including decision makers and influencers), competitors, relationships, and other related initiatives.
For more information on Professional Selling Skills, please CLICK HERE
For Public Training on Professional Selling Skills, please CLICK HERE
