Asking Great Questions

Asking Great Questions

Asking great questions in the sales process is vital to finding, qualifying and closing deals, as well as offering the best possible solutions for your potential customers. To be successful at selling, you must systematically approach your customers with a repertoire of impactful questions that ensures you clearly understand their business challenges, struggles and goals.  Smart and savvy proff know this approach makes sense because to present solutions, you first must learn what your customer need.

The ability to ask questions is a make-or-break factor in the sales process.

The most efficient way to uncover a potential customer’s needs is to ask questions. Not just any questions; high-impact, open-ended, fact-finding and qualifying questions. Proff who attempt to sell without asking questions, sell by making assumptions. Making assumptions about your customer’s needs is a lose-lose situation. Questions enable you to diagnose problems prior to prescribing solutions.

Asking questions is a skill that is practiced to be mastered. Doctors, detectives, police, interrogators and members of the military study this skill. They know that the right questions at the right time get them the answers they need.

I don’t teach people to go out and ask a bunch of meaningless questions; I teach them to ask the right questions at the right time. Asking questions in a completely random fashion is unproductive and ineffective, especially in this competitive business environment. Instead, I teach them how questions can be used to pique the customer’s interest and establish credibility within the sales process. They learn to use questions to identify greater needs and uncover more accurate information from potential customers.

Your job is to ask open-ended, customer-focused questions that uncover your customer’s needs. Asking strategic questions earns you the right to probe further and gain a complete understanding of your customer’s needs. Once you have earned that right, you can escalate the impact of your questions to increase your value. How you phrase, position and line up your questions has a major impact on your customer’s responsiveness.

The right questions at the right time create the right opportunities. The way to tell if your questions are having an impact is to check your bottom line and your sales results.  If not, you need to change your questions so you can change your results.