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How to Use High-Influence Sales Questions

Guest post by: Linda Schneider

Article Overview: The Best Questions are High-Influence. While there are many kinds of questions you can ask when selling, the kind that's most powerful is the least used -- and also the least understood.

How to Use High-Influence Sales Questions

The Best Questions are High-Influence

While there are many kinds of questions you can ask when selling, the kind that's most powerful is the least used -- and also the least understood.

It's something called Openhanded Questions.

Openhanded Questions are not the same as open-ended questions. Openhanded Questions are structurally open-ended, but they are purposefully worded to affect a person's thinking, not just to get information out of them for the salesperson's benefit.

Their purpose is to influence the direction of the sales conversation - and they are very powerful.

What Is an Openhanded Question?

One example of an Openhanded Question is the "situation" question. This question helps prospects sort out their current situation from their own perspective.

It's quite simple: "What's your situation...?"

Not: "What problems are you facing?"

These are both open-ended, but both are not Openhanded.

Asking "What's your situation with regards to production?" is Openhanded because it causes them to talk about things that are most important to them, without any obvious direction from you.

By contrast, asking "What problems are you facing with production?" is subtly different. Why? Because when you ask people to describe problems, they often feel you're setting them up to sell them something, so they may tend to hide information or not be fully forthcoming. Or perhaps they don't feel they have any problems, so you've shot yourself in the foot from the start.

The situation question, used at the beginning of a sales conversation, or any time your prospect seems to be going in a new direction, opens the conversation up. It says to your prospect "I'm listening." And we all know that careful listening is critical to selling.

After opening the conversation up using situation questions, you'll have other opportunities to draw them out about specific needs, using other high-influence sales questions.

What Happens When People Answer Openhanded Questions?

Learning the difference between Openhanded Questions and other kinds gives you great control of the sales conversation.

That's because people tend to answer openhanded questions with more complete information than you could ever get by asking specific questions about their needs.

Have you ever felt like you're playing a game of "20 Questions" with a prospect? You ask about their problems, they give you little information, so you have to ask another question to get a little more information, and so on.

Next time you start a sales conversation with anyone, start with the situation question and see what happens.

The power of using high influence questions is immense, yet relatively easy. In fact, there are only a handful of question patterns to learn.

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Article Tags: best sales questions, consultative selling, great sales questions, how to sell, how to sell a service, openhanded selling, sales questions, selling tips, soft sell, soft selling



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