Questioning in Sales | It’s a hard truth, but your approach to questioning is probably not influencing your client to buy from you.
Yes, you ask lots of questions. Yes, you find out lots of information.
But why? Have you ever stopped to think why you are asking questions in the first place?
To answer this, it’s time to get out of your own head, and start thinking about things from your client’s perspective.
In order to make a buying decision, your client will follow a 3-step process:
So, if you want your client to take the first step in the buying process, the goal of your questioning must be to get them sold on why they need to change.
A client will only decide to change when they are certain of two things:
Let’s look at an example to see why.
A client who is frustrated they are not hitting their targets (personal challenge) will only change their computer software if they believe the fault lies in their software system (current situation).
Similarly, a client who experiences issues with their software system (current situation) will only change it if they are missing their targets or it is impacting their productivity (personal challenge). If it is not impacting them enough, they will just put up with it and continue with the status quo.
We can establish a reason for change by questioning the client around two key areas:
STEP 1: Their personal challenges.
Ask your client questions around their personal challenges. Make sure these are challenges that you already know you can solve. Open-up the conversation and help them see why overcoming these challenges should be their top priority.
For example, ask:
STEP 2. How their current approach is causing the challenge.
Then drive a conversation around their current approach and what impact it has.
For example, ask:
By concentrating your questioning around these two areas your customer will leave the meeting saying, “Yes, I need to change something… NOW!”.
In summary, to achieve the right result from questioning, you need to ask questions for the right reasons. Only then will you get the right answers that will lead to a sale.
Find out more about our questioning workshop and all our 16 sales sales training courses that are proven to increase your ROI. Follow us on LinkedIn for more updates.
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