The best sales people in any team understand the value of asking great questions:
“Great Sales People, ask Great Questions!”
The better the quality of the questions the less objections you will receive when asking for the order.
Identifying who the decision makers are, is often an area that we don’t often explore enough. We need to identify how many decision makers there are and what each person’s interest is in the proposal. A decision maker may have an interest in the commercial conditions, technical aspects, your company’s capability to fulfil the contract, and so one. Hence it is important to explore who all the decision makers are what their interest is in the process.
In addition, we don’t often ask “on what basis will you make a decision”.
In this question we are soliciting information such as what is important to the prospect, is it price, is it availability, is it colour, is it the technical specification.
Once the prospect declares what their buying preferences are, then the next question should be “if we can tick all of your boxes, then is their any reason why you would not buy me from me or my company?”. This is what we call the “Manolis tick the boxes routine”.
It helps you put into perspective the buying motivations and biases of the prospect.
Sometimes, you may find that asking this question also solicits information that you may never have known about, sometimes the response that may shock you is “we have had poor past dealings with your company, and we do not wish to engage with you in this instance”.
A great response to this objection is “that is exactly why I have been hired, when is a good time for me to meet with you to discuss this matter?”
Other great questions which are also very strategic are “what is it about your current supplier that you like? “This can quite often give you a great insight as to the preferences of the prospect.
The exact reverse to that question is “what do you think your current supplier could improve on?” Now this is also a very powerful question and can quite often uncover a lot of pain. Once we start to uncover the prospects pain, we are then in a great position to be able to solve their pain and put you in the box seat when asking for the business.
Learn more about crafting a powerful sales process at Sales Training Program, B2B proven program used by National & Global Corporations on June 12 & 13 2019 – perfect for any team wanting to increase sales.