Sales Pitch: Questionable Behavior

David Ramos

Who was it that had that saying about life being about just showing up? Oh yeah, Woody Allen.  Well, I want to put a qualifier on good old Woody’s saying. He wasn’t referring to sales calls and sales executives who show up without a plan on what questions to ask a prospect or customer and without the ability to pay attention and listen.

I understand that it’s easy for prospective clients to get so caught up in life’s day-to-day obligations that they miss the big picture, pushing aside major ongoing problems for the moment.  But moments become hours, hours become days, days become years…and the customer’s problems remain unsolved, buried in the quicksand of daily minutiae, smothering their business.

Good questions highlight your prospect or customers problems, creating a sense of urgency that hauls them out of that quicksand, forcing them to step back and take a long, hard look at that big picture. Do you understand their needs?  Most likely the answer is yes, and you might be right…to a point. You ask questions and listen to answers in order to understand what your customers are trying to achieve.  But as the expression goes, “there is understanding and then there is understanding.”  Questioning and listening open the way to understanding. 

Unfortunately for most traditional salespeople they think of themselves in the role of the answer man, therefore, it is easy for them to fall into a mode of telling, not questioning and listening.  Salespeople are also action-oriented and listening can seem too time-consuming and passive.  Additionally, there is a concern among salespeople that if they ask questions they could lose control of the dialogue or find themselves in areas they are not prepared to discuss or don’t want to pursue. Below is a generic, consultative sales question outline to get you started building your own great list of questions.

• Objective questions – background questions – usually find these answers through research.
• Current situation questions – understand current state of affairs.
• Challenge questions – what is affecting their business today, identify problem areas.
• Complication questions – determine the root cause of the problem.
• Seriousness questions – reveal the consequences of the problems. Business? Political?
• ·         Solution questions – what if we could…? Speculate as to the value of a solution.

Best Sales Questions to Ask On a Sales Call

People can be reluctant to step out of their comfort zones; their fear of the unknown trumps their frustration with their problems. They’re even more reluctant to change if a provider jumps on them with a solution the minute the problem’s mentioned, more interested in the sale than the customer, again attempting to be the answer man. That’s why it pays to engage clients emotionally. Give your client time to vent about their company’s problems and how it affects them. As they do so, walk them through their problems, asking them to relive it and calculate how that issue affects their company and them.

You can’t hurry trust, but listening to your customer helps you ask the right probing sales questions at the right time. This helps you build a genuine rapport and channel your customer’s emotions onto the right path for her and for you. Seriousness questions often start with coaching a client into calculating how much they will lose by sticking with their current provider, product, or service.

Sample seriousness questions:

• “How does this problem affect sales? Profitability? Scheduling? On-time deliveries? Quality? Production?”
• “What do you think these problems are costing you?”
• “How is this problem impacting the bottom line?”
• “Let’s assume you decide not to address this problem immediately. What will that cost you this year?”
• “If you don’t fix this problem, what is the potential impact on your business? Can you afford to take that risk?

Good seriousness questions engage clients personally, not telling them but rather, helping them to recognize their business problems, pulling them out of that quicksand they’re stuck in and setting them on the road to a brighter future for them and for you. After you’ve taken your customer through the seriousness questions and they recognize the need for change, be sure to present them with a positive picture of the future with your “what if” solution questions, that will not only lift their spirits, but position you as the person who can help solve their problems.

About the author: David Ramos is sales operations consultant for Strategy Development, an industry management consulting and advance sales training firm providing sales, service & MPS information, including workshops for the BTA as well as a MPS Sales eLearning program with InfoTrends. You can reach him at www.strategydevelopment.com or ramos@strategydevelopment.com.