Alexander on Sales.

Asking quality questions is a Master Skill in Sales.

Once you have created psychological safety in a relation with a customer or prospect you can start the exploration journey. What I mean with exploration is really to understand your customer through and through. What are his needs, musts, wants, values, beliefs, his situation etc.

To perform the exploration, you need to ask excellent questions.

The top performers I have followed when visiting their customers always had a range of excellent questions ready in their mind or on their iPad. Some were reading them aloud before walking in.

What surprised me during these visits was that most of these high performers used several questions of their list. These quality questions were fully embedded in their brains. When they used them, it felt very natural & spontaneous. The speed, the intonation, the words, the voice they used sounded so Zen wise.

As you can understand most of these questions are open-ended ones. Not too open-ended neither because sometimes I saw the customer struggling with it when it was too open. You need to need to narrow them down so that your customer feels comfortable to think them over easily, before replying.

Closed-ended questions will help you to finetune the responses of your customer and sometimes to clarify vague answers on behalf of your customer. Please do not overuse them your customer will feel himself being interrogated. Doing this will lead to a loss of trust in you and that is the last thing you want. Ask questions for which you do not have the answer, this will lead to an increased understanding.

Another suggestion I would like to share with you all is before asking questions explain why you are asking these questions. Your customer will be much more open to answer your questions when he understands your reasons and your intentions.

Put first a frame down, within you are going to ask questions. I have observed the magical impact when top performers made the reasons for asking questions truly clear upfront to their customers. They reacted in a much more natural way compared when this did not happen. They felt safer.

Statements like “I would like to understand your actual situation very clearly, for that reason I would like to ask you some specific questions about it, is that okay for you?” will increase the openness on the other side. Now your customer understands fully where you are heading for. Trust will stay at an elevated level leading to more open dialogue.

Another Master skill is off course active listening to the answers of your customer. Top performers seldom interrupt their customers, they let them finish. When you do interrupt your customer regularly, he will stop talking to you or he will give only short answers leading to nowhere.

I understand that sometimes salespeople are so enthusiastic that they interrupt out of curiosity. My advice here is twofold: if you interrupt at a crucial part, explain why you want to interrupt, your customer can live with that. If on the other hand this is not the case hold your horses. Calm down and take mental notes in your neurons.

Another advice, build logic in your questioning sequence otherwise you will confuse your customer. Build a sequence in your questioning, your customer will appreciate it and it will be much easier to follow the sales journey. Please stay in this step of the sales process in the dialogue modus.

If you want to know more about what we can offer klick on this link or send me a mail to alexander@tc3.be.

Also have a look to our latest Top Sales Program klick here.

Wishing you all great sales success!

Alexander