Questions are to sales as breath is to life, if you fail to ask them you will die. If you ask them incorrectly, your death will not be immediate, but it is inevitable. If you ask them correctly, the answer will be a sale…Jeffery Gitomer
The most important aspect of selling is asking questions. Proper questioning will make a prospect tell you everything which will help you in selling.
Proper questioning and good listening skills will give you the power of understanding all the requirements of your prospect, and therefore you will be able to formulate your response according to the prospect’s requirements.
Selling seems amazingly simple but still not everyone buys from you. Ever wondered why?
This is because-
· You are not doing an effective job of asking questions, as a result you are not able to uncover prospects deepest reasons of buying or not buying
· You have not honed your listening skills and therefore you are not able to pick up what exactly he is trying to say.
· You have preconceived notions about the prospect, prejudging which type of person he is, anticipating answers and interrupting the dialogue.
· You think you already know all the answers so why bother asking on listening with full attention.
· You do not uncover the true needs of the prospect, so you cannot give the right offer to him.
The most effective sales calls are ones which include 25{4bef4454739284c4ce381e5f3b718c0d691a36d433f413f54b1c6429a0846e24} of questioning/pitching and 75{4bef4454739284c4ce381e5f3b718c0d691a36d433f413f54b1c6429a0846e24} is listening to prospect. But asking question is not all that simple. I am mentioning below some characteristics of good questions-
· The questions must be clear and concise.
· The question must make you appear more knowledgeable to your prospect in comparison to your competition.
· The question must be related to the prospect’s objective of buying your product.
· Question must be to get the information, how the prospect is going to use your product.
· You can ask a question in reply of the prospect’s question, for example if your prospect asks you, can I get the delivery in 2 weeks, you can ask, ‘do you need it in two weeks?’
· Do not forget to ask the closing question. Answers to closing questions are most likely going to confirm the sale.
Sales solutions are easy once you identify to the prospects problems, concerns and needs with the help of smart questions.
Now I am going to share with you the concept given by Ray Leone as he has describes in his book Success Secrets of Sales Funnel. A sale is most easily made once you identify the prospect’s real needs and harmonize your selling process with his concerns.
With this concept in mind I am going to share with you Five Important Questions which must be asked from a prospect that will finally lead to a sale closure.
Let me explain with an example, say you are in the business of selling printers and you are meeting a prospect. Let us understand, in this situation what can be your potential questions that will finally lead to the sale closure-
1. Mr. Prospect, how do you select a printer or how do you choose a printer? Most probably the prospect’s answer is going to be, ‘On the basis of quality and cost of printing.
2. How do you define the quality of printing or what does the quality mean to you? What does the printing cost mean to you? While answering these questions, the customer will think about it. There is every possibility that no other salesperson asked him this kind of a question in past. The customer might say, ‘what I mean by quality is that the print should be crisp and clear’. So, then you ask a follow up question that you mean the printing must reflect the image of the quality of your company? So here by asking this question you are leading him to something much bigger which he did not even think about and does not articulate but that is his real need. A prospect cannot possibly answer this as ‘No’ to this question.
3. Next, ask your prospect, ‘What makes that important to you? Is that most important to you? Or why is that important to you?’ This question actually draws the real need of the prospect. Finding out what is important to him and why the quality of painting is important to him will help you in closing the sale subsequently. There may be secondary or follow up questions to get a clear definition of what is important and why?
4. If I could offer you a product with the quality of printing you demand, so that the image in your printing reflects the image of your business to your customers and if I could do it at a reasonable cost, shall I show you a product and explain its features and benefits? The natural answer to this question would be, ‘YES you can’. This in real sense is a feedback question for the previous three questions. When the prospect answers this you will be reassured that you have understood his requirements correctly. With this question you have moved very close to getting the order. Also, if there is some true objection from the prospect’s side it will get surfaced now.
5. Great! so how do you like this printer? (show him the printer and ask this question) the objective of asking this question is to find out whether your prospect really likes your product or not and if he likes then you can ask a following question by saying why don’t you try it? Or why don’t you take it? This type of question is called the invitational close, because you are inviting the prospect for buying your product without putting pressure on him.
As you can see questioning must be used at an early stage and appropriately. If you are doing too much of talking without asking proper questions from the customer then you run a risk of not digging the real needs of your customer and also run a risk of putting your prospect off by your boring conversation. Remember that the customer does not buy because of your reasons rather he buys because of his own reasons, he buys to fulfill his needs. You show that you can do it, sale is assured!
Go ahead, try the above tips, let me know how it works for you. If you want more help on the intricacies of these principles do write to me. I am happy to help.
Until next time, Happy Selling Guys!
