Asking Compelling Questions

Learning to ask compelling questions is better than learning to say great things. This statement can be true in a lot of circumstances. The foundation of effective communication is impeccable listening and questioning skills. Never is this truer than in business development.

Initially the prospect should be doing 70% of the talking. How else will you get to know about them, their business, or if they have problems you can help with? In Sandler we often talk about only selling solutions for issues we know they have. How do we accomplish this? By asking the right questions and finding out their core problems before discussing features and benefits. The best tool in our toolbox for this is crafting and asking compelling questions.

Unfortunately in a more “traditional” sales process this is not how the meeting plays out. Some feel the mark of a dynamic salesperson is their ability to thoroughly answer a prospect’s questions, demonstrate knowledge and expertise, and provide detailed information about their product or service. In this situation where you’re unloading everything you have but you’re not getting qualified information from the prospect, who is really in control? After they have all your information, what happens next? Any chance they’ll take your information and shop it around, or use it to keep their current supplier ‘honest?’

Here are three reasons why crafting and asking compelling questions is vital to your success in sales and the quality of solutions you can provide to your potential client:

1. Great questions focus on the buyer’s concerns, not on you and your product’s. It truly puts the focus on them, and helps remove the defensiveness a prospect may initially feel, wanting to protect themselves from being “sold.” We focus on their needs, not our motivation to make a sale at any cost.

2. Questions help uncover the prospect’s PAIN and how critical it is to them personally. Typically it’s easy to get at the surface issues. When we ask compelling questions, we find out more – the business and personal reasons for taking action and finding a solution to their problems. The more “pain” we find with a prospect, the deeper we dig into the problem, the more equipped we are to offer a solution that fits their specific needs.

3. The highest form of respect is listening. When you ask a question and they respond, ask another question to show you not only listened, but that you are truly engaged in the conversation. At the end of the day – that’s what the sale is. Not an interrogation, not a “show up and throw up” of features and benefits, but a conversation about issues and the urgency to fix them.

The more time you spend talking, the greater risk of doing a lot of ‘unpaid consulting’. You’re not in business to be an ‘unpaid consultant and you can’t help solve prospect problems with features and benefits that don’t fit.

Don’t get it backward. Remind yourself: “Am I crafting and asking compelling questions?”