In my opinion, the best salesperson is the one who asks the best questions. A lot of salespeople probably spend time thinking about how to describe their product in the most attractive way. That is important, but what is more helpful is to spend time thinking about what questions to ask.

 

Don’t “Wing It”

I learned that the hard way with many calls and meetings that did not go well by not asking good questions. For example, I was working at Kronos, selling workforce management software. I scheduled an appointment with one of my top accounts, a retail electronics chain that had been a long-time user of our software. They were on an old “green-screen” version, so there were tremendous upgrade and cross-sell opportunities.

They were such a good and established customer that I thought I could just show up and talk about the latest versions and products, and that would likely lead to a productive conversation. Basically, I showed up without being prepared, and the plan was to improvise based on the product knowledge in my head. Long story short, that did not work out too well.

After some pleasantries and general questions of how everything was going with the existing products they were using, my mind went blank, and I did not know what to say, ask to drive towards upgrading and expanding. You see, you would think upgrading from a green-screen would be a no-brainer, and the customer would ask for it, but it is a significant change and something that needs to be sold.

The appointment would have been much better if I were prepared with good questions to ask that aligned with the reasons to upgrade from the green-screen to the latest version. Not only a missed opportunity, but I probably did not look like a very good salesperson in that moment.

To avoid situations like this, it is very simple and that is just to always have a list of good questions to ask. Not only does this help you avoid the mistakes I made, but there are many powerful benefits from asking questions:

  • Get the prospect talking more
  • Create more balanced interactions
  • Make the conversation more about the prospect
  • Learn more about the prospect
  • Improve our ability to uncover needs and generate leads
  • Always gives you something to say

You can even have your list of questions in front of you and look at them when meeting with prospects. While you don’t want to read from a cold call script, it can actually look good when you refer to a list of questions because you will look prepared, organized, and more like a pro/consultant.

You might agree with that 100% but still not know what questions to ask. Do not worry, because in this video, we are going to show you how to create an optimized set of questions to ask for your product or service.