Category Archives: Questioning
Tailor for Resonance
For the past two weeks, I’ve been writing about the characteristics of the challenger sales rep—which research has shown to be the most effective type of sales person. The research confirms that the sales rep needs to have valuable insight … Continue reading
Asking the Right Questions
“If I could save you $100 over the next 3 months on your phone bill, would you be interested?” Few of us would want to say no to saving $100 but many people will respond “No” to this question, just because they don’t want to deal with a sales person. We’ve all encountered sales people who ask these “set up” questions and in many sales training classes, this technique is still taught. How unfortunate! Continue reading
Being Influenced By Others
How easily are we swayed by others? In sales, we try to influence or persuade our customers to use our products. Yet we often encounter misperceptions and misunderstandings, either about our products or our competition in the mind of our … Continue reading
Interesting Openings
It’s been said that you create a person’s interest in—or resistance to—what you have to say in the first 20 seconds of your conversation. I’m not sure that time can be measured so precisely but I do believe that very early on you either stimulate interest or provoke resistance. So, if this is true, what can you do to make those 20 seconds work for you? The key is to say something pretty interesting.
I’ve learned that you can create interesting openings basically in three ways. First, you can use relevant facts Continue reading
How to Close Effectively
Is anything more important to a sales call than the close? Has any sales topic been written about more? Closing, after all, is the one skill most sales managers feel their sales people need to work on to be more effective. And most sales people will admit asking closing questions tends to make them feel uncomfortable. Why? Probably because most closing questions they have been taught to ask are inconsistent with how they see themselves as human beings. If you do not see yourself as an aggressive or pushy person, you are not going to feel comfortable asking for a close that’s inappropriate. But you do need to ask for the business. Continue reading
The Best Interview Question
Recently, I was giving a presentation about the importance of asking questions when I blurted out that I knew the best question to ask in an interview. It seemed that I had everyone’s attention. My point was to prepare your questions ahead of time, so that they are worded in such a way that the person wants to respond. You ask questions to learn what you need to know about your clients—their needs, their wants, their challenges, their passions, etc. But it seemed that my reference to that best interview question was the pearl of my discussion Continue reading
