Sales Coaching to Help You to Become a Skilled Questioner

Maybe you aren\'t asking the right questions in the right order for the right reason? 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 and 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 to 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 to 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 that the prospect won\'t want to share the answer to these 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 prospects perceived problem. The prospect may have agreed to meet with you because they are just in the beginning stages of gathering information to determine if they really want to make this purchase. Your job is to help them to find out exactly why they want to make that purchase, and why they want to make that purchase now.

Use additional questions to help the prospect to see beyond the problem and expand on how your solution would benefit them in ways they may not have thought about. There are two benefits to these questions. First, they stimulate the prospects motivation to complete the sale because this sales technique helps them to become emotionally invested in the purchase. And second, it helps them to uncover the logical reason for making the purchase now. But you aren\'t done yet there is one more step to take in your questioning process.

Now you have to help them to determine how your solution is more valuable than the money you\'re asking them for in exchange. You began uncovering this as you expanded on how your solution benefits the prospect in ways they hadn\'t thought about. Help them to quantitatively determine the value of your solution in terms of dollars or emotions. When they can articulate how the value of your solution is less than the money you\'re asking for, you have a sale.

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About the author: Cheryl Clausen can help you get where you want to be. Enhance your Sales Techniques, get her free ecourse. Increase your sales today through Sales Coaching, look here. Click here to get your own unique version of this article.

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