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How Awkward is it for You to Ask Questions?

Written by: Cheryl A. Clausen

Article Overview: Maybe you aren't asking the right questions in the right order for the right reasons? Asking the right questions is definitely a skill and the best sales people are very adept at it.

How Awkward is it for You to Ask Questions?

Maybe you aren't asking the right questions in the right order for the right reasons? Asking the right questions is definitely a skill and the best sales people are very adept at it. Most sales people ask the easy questions that don’t promote their sales success.

Are you asking questions that you could easily already know the answer to? If you are that’s a big annoying mistake. Contrary to popular belief not all people just love talking about themselves, and business owners and upper executives have no patience for educating you.

Are you asking irrelevant questions? These are questions that have no bearing on the actual sales conversation. While you may think these questions are helping you establish rapport they may just be annoying the other person because they aren’t giving you an appointment so you can waste their time.

How much time do you spend on background questions rather than questions that help both you and the prospect gain clarity about their problem? If you aren’t one of the top sales people you probably ask mostly background questions when you really should be asking more questions about problems. You’re probably a little afraid the prospect won’t want to share the answer to those questions with you, but you’re wrong.

The reason a sale happens is because the buyer has a perceived problem, and they believe your product or service is a solution to that problem. This is just as true for high end seemingly unnecessary services as it is for commodities. A buyer will purchase a commodity with little if any thought, but they will not purchase an expensive product or service as easily.

That means both you and the prospect must have clarity about the prospect’s perceived problem. The prospect may have agreed to meet with you because they’re just in the beginning stages of gathering information to determine if they really want to make this purchase. Your job is to help them find out exactly why they want to make that purchase, and why they want to make that purchase now.

Then your questions need to take the prospect beyond the problem mind set and expand on how your solution would benefit them in ways they may not have thought about. As you do that their motivation to complete the sale increases because your questions help them become emotionally invested in the purchase while also providing the logical reason for taking action now. But you have one more step you have to take in your questioning process.

Finally, you have to help them determine how your solution is really more valuable to them than the money you’re asking them for in exchange. As you expanded on how your solution benefits the prospect in ways they hadn’t thought about you began uncovering this on at least a qualitative level. Now through your questioning help them to quantitatively determine the value of your solution. As soon as they realize the value of your solution is less than the money you’re asking, you have a sale.

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Article Tags: appointment, asking the right questions, background questions, bearing, business owners, commodities, commodity, contrary to popular belief, gain clarity, gathering information, irrelevant questions, job, mistake, patience, sales success, unnecessary services



Related Forum Posts
Re: Marketing ideas? - Questions will set you free... And make you Rich [quote="KH_Global":349pds7c]Just ask ask ask. That is it.[/quote:349pds7c]
Re: Contact Information - Another idea would be to have an email form in place to accept "ticketed" inquires (if people are afraid of spammers seeing their email address). However, I hate how some sites try to persuade you out of sending an email by bombarding you with lists of "Frequently Asked Questions & Answers" as I find they're rarely helpful.
Synergy and Other Creative Insights - Truth is that there is [u:2iwgooi1]C[/u:2iwgooi1]ollaboration - on a formal basis and [u:2iwgooi1]c[/u:2iwgooi1]ollaboration which is informal. Let's say that you have a great new product. Before it launches you get loads of buddies in the same business as you to tear it apart and let you refine it. Creative people will get others in as well. people from outside the business - or those who are in the business who might not have anything to do with it and seek their input - listening hard. These aren't focus groups, they are way beyond this - they are real outsiders and thus have very open minds, asking the dumb, the stupid questions, which are often the most valuable. Questions like these help me be a good coach too! I once worked in a business where the backshop (the store room) was always untidy. They held a team meeting and had the cook in as well (you know the one who ran the employee facility). She knew nothing about the storeroom and its processes, but boy did she ask some tricky questions of them. Sometimes, little 'c' collaboration is real good at the mocro level, without which the big 'C' collaboration would be worthless.
Re: link exchange strategy - [quote="RussellWebb":2xvcpjwz]Questions that pop into mind... Does PR ranking effect 'who' you would exchange links with? Do you really need thousands of links to rank higher in the SE's? Are one-way links better than reciprocal links?[/quote:2xvcpjwz] Hi Russell, While I know you posed these SEO questions for Samin, I thought I'd help you get the conversation started by putting in my 2 cents. 1.) I think it's all about getting "quality" and high ranking/trusted sites (that are related to the content of your site and industry) to link back to you. 2.) While it's somewhat true that the more links you have the better, I'd suggest focusing on "quality" links rather than quantity. Poor sites and ones that aren't related to your field can actually hurt your rankings. 3.) Absolutely, it's much better if someone only links to you. However, reciprocal links are still good for those who have just launched a new site and are getting started. If I'm wrong about any of these comments, please feel free to correct me.
How to protect my trade mark? - Affirmative commercial action might be, for example, to increase spending on advertising, in order to make better known his use of the mark, or it might be to attend a national trade show associated with his business for the same purpose. Maybe he's just been lazy and hasn't had any serious lack of means. None of the questions was rhetorical. But I readily can imagine that you found the questions irrelevant to the legal discussion. I do not think that they are. Questions about the fairness of outcomes seem to me to be always relevant to legal discussions, with this reservation: that usually nothing can be done about clusters of unfair outcomes from within a particular legal system (ours, or canon Law, the Sharia, continental statute law, etc.) at a particular time. They need to get addressed politically first. In this connection, a lobby-related forum might be useful. Many patent and trademark related issues get very heavily lobbied. It's not that I found your points irrelevant to the legal discussion, it's just that most of your points missed the mark. I represent the "little guy" almost exclusively, and my clients have been very able to protect their marks against infringers large and small. You should educate yourself on the way things actually work, not how you think they might work, and then come back for a real discussion. I'd gladly discuss policy issues with you.


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