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What "Better Questioning and Listening Skills" Do Sales Reps Really Need?

Guest post by: Linda Schneider

Article Overview: I was having a chat with a business partner the other day about how sales managers often complain that their sales reps don’t LISTEN and ASK QUESTIONS very well. They present, handle objections, and close, but fail to engage and motivate. So in the end, they lose the sale.

What "Better Questioning and Listening Skills" Do Sales Reps Really Need?

I was having a chat with a business partner the other day about how sales managers often complain that their sales reps don’t LISTEN and ASK QUESTIONS very well. They present, handle objections, and close, but fail to engage and motivate. So in the end, they lose the sale.

I work with a lot of coaches, helping them learn to sell their services. I was struck by the irony that my coaching clients know how to listen and ask questions VERY well. But in the end, they lose the sale because they don’t know how to present, handle objections, and close.

Coaches often see selling as distasteful and separate from coaching. While sales reps see all that listening and questioning as too touchy-feely and incongruent with sales.

Let’s get together!

Coaches…by adding the sales part onto the end of a consultation, your job is made harder than it has to be. It is possible to blend your coaching consultation with a sales conversation and not have two separate things that are stuck together. By making your consultation itself into a sales tool, you’ll find converting clients to be much easier.

Sales reps...by mingling sincere and warm communication with your sales calls, you can make your sales call more of a coaching conversation and draw your customers to a decision naturally.

How To Meld Coaching with Selling



If the idea of having a "natural" conversation that results in more sales appeals to you, then all you need is the right kind of sales approach.

Many of my clients comment that my sales conversation with them seems like a coaching conversation. What it really is, in fact, is a consulting conversation in which I use coaching skills to draw the person out and explore their situation.

Sales calls by sales reps are not typically coaching conversations…you don’t want to delve too deeply into the interpersonal workings of the customer. However, you do need to connect at a deeper level than most sales reps are comfortable with, and so coaching-type questions can serve this purpose.

The right type of question is Openhanded and provides “intelligent influence.” Whether you’re a coach or a sales rep (you’re both if you’re a coach selling your own services), your sales questions need to be just deep enough to guide the customer to a decision, not to solve their problems.

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Article Tags: consult to sell, consultative selling, how to sell, how to sell a service, how to sell coaching, sales questions, soft sell, using coaching skills in sales



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