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Questions - Questions - Questions

Written by: Colly Graham

Article Overview: Questions Open Control Confirm

Questions - Questions - Questions

Good questioning allows you to identify clearly and to qualify early in the selling process. It can help you understand the current situation. It helps build rapport and opens up channels of communication. It helps you understand the decision-making process. Questioning enables you to find significant difference between your capabilities and those of your competition. Good questioning can uncover your competitors’ weaknesses and highlight your won strengths.


Questions

Open Control Confirm


Open questions cannot be answered yes or no or with a number. They usually begin who, what, where, when or how. They allow the customer to express himself freely:

“Tell me, what is causing this problem?”


“What is it going to take for you to solve this problem?

Write two examples of open questions you might ask?

Control questions allow the sales person to keep control of the subject matter being discussed. They might be closed questions where the only answer is ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ Control questions help the sales person to control the customer’s answer. First establish a friendly environment by asking open questions.

“What if there was a way to reduce the time in …………………………………………, how valuable would that be?”


“How important is it for you to control your costs ?”

Write two examples of control questions you might ask:-

Confirm Questions summarise the sales person’s understands of the customer’s situation. It lets the customer know that you understand the situation.

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Article Tags: capabilities, channels of communication, closed questions, control questions, current situation, decision making process, sales person, subject matter



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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