Professional Selling Skills Training | How to Position Your Sales Questioning
It’s very important to understand what business your prospect does and what kind of services or products they do offer to their customers. The more you understand your customer, what they do and their business challenges and goals – you are in a better position to help them in providing your solutions.
Many salespeople think that after their opening they are ready to start “selling.” While their goal may be to understand customer needs, too many go straight to talking product—true to a traditional feature-and-benefit formula. Even when salespeople move to asking questions, they can do so in a way that does not inspire customer buy- in. By asking questions without any setup, they can limit the level of cooperation they get.
Instead, as you wrap up your opening, bridge to customer needs by setting the expectation that you will be asking questions and check to get the customer’s agreement. The reason to do this is that when people are made a part of the decision, it is more likely they will participate actively and enthusiastically. If you preface the reason you’d like to ask questions with a customer benefit, you will increase the cooperation you get. For example, “I’ve looked at ... in preparation for our meeting .... To help me focus on your interests, may I ask ...?” It is also important to preface your preparation to show the effort you have made to make the meeting meaningful.
Even with customers who say, “Tell me about X product” or “What do you have for me today?” don’t succumb to the temptation of product before needs. Say, “Yes. I’ve put together some material on....... So I can focus the discussion on what is important to you, may I ask a few questions? What....? Can you tell me ...?” If it is later in the sales cycle and you have already identified needs, recap those needs and ask a question to identify additional needs or concerns and to learn if anything has changed so that you can incorporate that into the dialogue.
Knowing when you are exiting your opening and creating a bridge to need will help you move into a robust need dialogue. It will also help you avoid getting to product too soon.
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