If you don’t ask, you won’t find out

The average client is changing and, as a result, so is the sales business. It is a „buyers‘ market“ because whatever you say as a salesman can be verified with a click of a mouse. Moreover, the customers are well-educated and well-aware of their advantage so by agreeing to a meeting with you, they have their own goals to attain.

A customer is a partner that you need to respect, though with a degree of vigilance. To make sure you are not the “leverage” in the competition, knowing how to reveal the clients true motives and engage the client before you even present your offer and its key components, such as the price, is crucial in the process.

Think of questions as a basic sales tool

Not so long ago, salesmen were taught to just present the offer. Nowadays, if you want to reach your sales targets, you need to learn how to ask strategic questions. When you learn how to sell, you find out that there are open questions and closed ones. The former are superior to the latter, as they enable you to start a conversation. Sometimes that is all there is and all your focus goes to convincing the client. That is a mistake, because when you are bending over backwards, the client is listening and carefully analyzing your offer, thanks to which they get exactly what they set out to get. What usually follows is the client trying to delay the decision process and try to get you hooked so that you keep on trying. That’s what happens when you don’t pay attention to asking the right kind of questions.

During my workshops I try to teach the salesmen that there are questions that engage the client, determine their purchasing capacity, shed some light on the offer, overcome any objections and ultimately – close the deal. Sales talks are basicaly a Q&A session with bargaining. Moreover, it is alwas a dynamic one, as you cannot anticipate how the client will react to your argument – it might be well-suited for the conversation and it might as well not. Asking questions however, is always in your control: you can ask various questions at different points of the conversation and juggle them freely in order to achieve your goal. In addition to that, it saves you from falling into the three sales traps.

Trap #1 – Your own enthusiasm

Let’s say you are going to meet your recently-contacted client. You don’t know their purchasing capacity, their budget or the plans they may have for your product. The first conversation was pleasant and dynamic, so you get your hopes up about the order to come. You are getting too worked up without even assessing the client’s potential.