Sales Coaching To Help You To Become A Skilled Questioner

You may be struggling with questions because you aren't asking the right questions in the right order for the right reason? The best sales people are skilled at asking the right questions. Yet you may be focused on asking the easy questions that don't really help you to achieve sales success. Be sure to avoid asking questions that you could easily learn the answer to from publicly available information. Business owners and executives are immediately annoyed if they feel they have to waste their time educating you because you're too lazy to find out back ground information on your own.

Questions that aren't pertinent to the selling conversation are inappropriate. I know you probably ask these questions because you're hoping to increase your rapport, but you are more likely to annoy the prospect than endear yourself with them with these kinds of questions. Your time is valuable and so it theirs and they didn't grant you an appointment so you can waste their time on frivolities.

Spend very little time on background questions and more of your time on questions that help both you and the prospect to gain clarity about their problem. You should know your solution well enough to know the kinds of problems it will resolve and ask questions that show case your solution. Don't be afraid that the prospect won't want to share the answer to these questions with you because they will.

A sale happens because the buyer has a perceived problem, and they believe your product or service is the solution to that problem. This is true for all purchases from high end seemingly unnecessary services to commodities. The main difference is that a buyer will purchase a commodity with little if any thought, but they will not purchase an expensive product or service as easily.

That means both you and the prospect must have clarity about the prospects perceived problem. The prospect may have agreed to meet with you because they are just in the beginning stages of gathering information to determine if they really want to make this purchase. Your job is to help them to find out exactly why they want to make that purchase, and why they want to make that purchase now.

Use additional questions to help the prospect to see beyond the problem and expand on how your solution would benefit them in ways they may not have thought about. There are two benefits to these questions. First, they stimulate the prospects motivation to complete the sale because this sales technique helps them to become emotionally invested in the purchase. And second, it helps them to uncover the logical reason for making the purchase now. But you aren't done yet there is one more step to take in your questioning process.

Now you have to help them to determine how your solution is more valuable than the money you're asking them for in exchange. You began uncovering this as you expanded on how your solution benefits the prospect in ways they hadn't thought about. Help them to quantitatively determine the value of your solution in terms of dollars or emotions. When they can articulate how the value of your solution is less than the money you're asking for, you have a sale.