Secrets of Question-Based Selling: How the Most Powerful Tool in Business Can Double Your Sales Results by Thomas Freese

Author:Thomas Freese [Freese, Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2013-11-04T14:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

ESCALATE THE VALUE OF YOUR SALES QUESTIONS

To provide solutions, sellers must first uncover a need. That’s one of the reasons questions are so important. But needs development is a double-edged sword. We want to successfully identify needs that will fuel the sales process, but we don’t want prospects to feel “pumped” for information. In this chapter, we show you how to accomplish both of these goals by escalating the strategic focus of your questions.

“Focus” is the second of three attributes that characterize strategic questions in QBS. In addition to managing “scope,” escalating the “focus” of your questions will broaden the customer’s needs and increase the value of your sales conversations.

By first establishing your credibility using diagnostic questions, you earn the right to broaden the scope of your questions. This allows you to expand relationships and uncover needs. We talked about this in chapter 8. Open-ended questions can be very effective tools for bolstering your sales conversations, but that doesn’t mean we want prospects to ramble on and on without direction. This is a hard lesson, and it’s one that I learned many years ago as a neophyte salesperson.

I had always been taught it was crucial to get the prospect talking. In theory, that meant asking open-ended questions to build rapport, which would hopefully pave the way for a business relationship. With that in mind, I called on the senior vice president in one of my largest prospect accounts.

The secretary showed me into his office, which was lavishly furnished with mahogany paneling and designer furniture. On the walls were numerous awards, intermixed with original oil paintings. Although I was a little nervous, he seemed quite relaxed and willing to spend time with me. Since this was my big chance, I decided to break the ice by asking a few open-ended questions about his background.

Most people love to talk about themselves, and this executive was no exception. He told me about his college years at Harvard. Then he told me about his two tours of duty in Vietnam. I listened intently—as I had been taught. Forty-five minutes went by and I knew details about his family, his medical condition, where he lived, and his career. I thought it was going well; that is, until the secretary popped in to say, “Your next appointment is here.”

Secret #72

Small talk might be good for building rapport, but it isn’t nearly as valuable as BIG TALK—focusing on key business issues.

We had spent the better part of an hour talking about his life story, but not about his company’s needs or my solutions. I had succeeded in getting this senior executive to open up, but I had failed to point the conversation in the right direction. As a result, I missed an opportunity to have a productive discussion about mutual business objectives. I learned that while it is important to ask probing questions, it’s even more important to ask the right questions at the right time. This is critical if you want to increase your probability of success and decrease your risk of failure.

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