Archive for the ‘Questioning Skills’ Category

How Would Peter Drucker Sell?

January 7, 2012 by Scott Olsen

When I review a sales team’s questioning guide, I typically find thoughtful questions. However, the questions are often in no coherent order. Or at least no natural order that would help the customer feel comfortable and confident to open up and engage in a truly productive and insightful conversation.

My main goal with any customer conversation is to add value to the customer’s thinking and decision making while uncovering and satisfying their critical success factors. When we ask good questions, we have a much better chance of getting good answers (no guarantee, it’s still sales). Furthermore, when we ask good questions in an optimal flow, we have an even better chance of getting really good answers.

The SPIN® Selling model provides one way of organizing your questions. Personally, I prefer an approach that helps me uncover BINGO information. Uncovering BINGO Information offers a slight, but important twist to the SPIN® Selling model. Here’s a brief overview:

  • Background
  • Issues/Impact
  • Need/Benefit
  • GO for the close

I was once told that Peter Drucker (1909-2005) said every business should be asking themselves two questions. The first is “what are we doing?” and the second is “what should we be doing?” Background questions are similar to “what are we doing?” Background questions deal with the general facts, goals, vision and what is working in your customer’s world. Furthermore, background questions help you warm up the conversation and are always safe, neutral or positive in nature. Issue questions are similar to Drucker’s second question, “what should we be doing?” Issue questions are far more interesting as they help uncover the difference (or gap) between what the customer is doing today verses what the customer could be doing. However, issues alone are rarely, if ever enough to propel a customer to take action. This is why we need to follow issue questions with powerful impact question. The purpose of the impact question is to help quantify the cost of not resolving the issue.

For example, the fact that a customer uses a paper process when they could be using an automated process is an issue. The impact is the quantification of what this issue is or might be costing the customer. How much extra time does it take? How much does this extra time cost? What else could they be doing with that extra time? It’s a domino effect and top sales professionals are skilled and helping the customer realize or visualize these impacts.

Once you’ve confirmed the issue is worth resolving, by asking impact questions, it is time to make the need explicit and ask the customer how they would benefit from the capabilities your solutions provide. Continuing with our example above, you might say something like, “It sounds like you need a streamlined process. How would it help if you and your colleagues could capture all of your requirements in one place and receive real time alerts to any update to your projects?” With a good benefit question, the customer herself creates the value statement. With the customer’s positive response, it’s time to go for the close or the logical next step in your sales process.

When you ask questions in the optimal flow, you ask questions in a way that naturally flows in the same way your customers make decisions. Ultimately, you put yourself in a position to close by providing the customer with the exact solution they’ve confirmed they need and desire.

→ No Comments
Categories: Creating Ideal Customers, Engaging Your Customers, Questioning Skills, Sales Management, Sales Skills, Selling Process, Tactical Selling Skills, Trust and Credibility, Uncategorized

Uncovering Critical Success Factors

January 27, 2011 by Scott Olsen

What are your favorite questions to ask prospects and customers? If you really want to help satisfy your customer’s critical success factors, what questions do you need to ask?

Tom O’Keefe, Chief Revenue Officer at ShopIgniter, and a good friend of mine likes to ask, “What does your business plan demand that you accomplish, that you didn’t accomplish last year?” Michael Gear, VP Sales for GoodData, loves to simply ask, “How our you being measured?”

I’d love to hear the questions that help you uncover your customer’s critical success factors!

→ No Comments
Categories: Differentiating You, Engaging Your Customers, Executive Selling, Questioning Skills, selling

Don’t Give Up!

March 18, 2009 by gviggiano

You have a solid sales process that used to produce lots of money per sales rep, but now is producing next to nothing. What went wrong?
The answer is that the clients started answering your questions with vague answers.  When the person asked for clarification, the client would stall the sales rep with things like we have a few things to check, budget, time lines, etc. The truth: they just were too scared to be honest with us!
Salespeople are numb to the fact that people are not buying.  When you make your follow up calls, they tell you that it’s tied up in budget…but to check back again.  So you wait to follow up, with answers to their questions, but you get stalled again. It’s not until you dig further that you are made aware of the true problem: they aren’t buying and have no idea when that will change.  So as any good salesperson, you dive into your list and start the process again. But the changes are apparent at all companies…there just not telling you!

So we present our sales leaders with some difficult choices. What do we do? Do we just give up? Offer them free terms?

You just need to ask tougher questions. Instead of asking questions about budget, ask questions about their intent to buy. Do you intend to buy this? What will cause this situation to change? Why are they looking to make a change? Where else are they looking? If they have to decide today, will we win or lose? Why? Is anything going on in the company that we need to know about? If you get the answers to these questions, at least you’ll know the status of the deals and now your pipeline becomes real.

Just try it today and let me know if it works.

→ 4 Comments
Categories: Executive Selling, Major Account Selling, Questioning Skills, Sales Skills, Sales Stories, Tactical Selling Skills

Sales Calls That Make an IMPACT!

July 29, 2008 by Scott Olsen

Your ability to help your customers identify their issues and define the IMPACT that unresolved issues have or will have on their business and in their lives has a direct correlation to your success in sales.

The one element I see sales people overlook, ignore and/or avoid during sales calls is the activity of asking questions that uncover impacts. I’ve heard reasons for avoiding asking impact questions like…”Isn’t the impact obvious to the customer,” “It’s like putting salt on the wound” and “It’s uncomfortable to ask impact questions.” A generic example of an impact question could be, “If the issue that you are describing goes unresolved, how will this impact your business or your life?”

One critical observation I’ve made when listening to my client’s sales calls is that when a customer begins to share the impacts that unresolved issues in their business may bring… the tone of the conversation changes. The conversation goes to a different level, it’s becomes more authentic as the customer becomes more vulnerable. If the customer is willing to share impacts it is also a sign that you have done a good job establishing trust and credibility.

How do you make sales calls that make an IMPACT?

→ 3 Comments
Categories: Listening Skills, Questioning Skills, Sales Skills, sell, selling

The Olsen Group Blog

Archives

Categories