I interacted with dozens of salespeople this week at a trade show, and it provides a great example of how to increase sales. Every salesperson I spoke with made the exact same mistake. In this video and blog, I will show you how to fix that mistake, and that same fix can be applied to all sales scenarios and provide clear direction for how to improve sales results.
The Most Common Sales Mistake
The trade show I went to was a food expo with booths for all different types of food products. I was there to support a good friend of mine who is starting a food exporting business, and as we went to each booth, I noticed that every salesperson used the same outline for what they said and their sales pitch:
Hello.
We sell rice, coffee, fruit, etc.
Would you like to try a sample?
Here is our brochure.
Do you have a business card?
While that might seem like a fair approach for someone working a booth at a trade show, the problem is that none of these salespeople asked any questions to learn about us. Watch what happens when we simply insert a few questions into this existing flow:
Hello.
How are you?
We sell rice, coffee, fruit, etc.
What brings you to the food expo?
What type of business are you in?
Is there anything you are looking for in particular?Would you like to try a sample?
What are your thoughts?
Are you looking for suppliers for this type of product?Here is our brochure.
Do you have a business card?
By adding six questions, we transform this interaction by focusing more on the prospect and gathering extremely valuable information. The information uncovered will not only help tailor the immediate discussion to what the prospect needs or wants, but it will also help the salesperson qualify and manage the lead from the event and beyond.
This is Product-Focused Selling
The outline these salespeople used falls into what I call a product-focused sales approach. In this approach, the salesperson talks primarily about their product and company and skips asking questions to learn about the prospect. This approach is flawed for many reasons, but two main factors are that it is an “all about me” way of communicating and that it flags you as a salesperson trying to sell something.
Those two issues matter less at an expo because buyers come to trade shows to talk to sellers and salespeople. But even then, this approach isn’t great because it skips the step of learning about the prospect.
How to Increase Sales With Prospect-Focused Selling
We fix that flawed sales approach by flipping it upside down: instead of focusing on the product, we focus more on the prospect. And to do that, all you have to do is ask more questions.
I demonstrated how easy this fix is by taking the outline of talking points that we observed and simply inserting a few questions. You can see how this small change completely transforms that interaction and makes it more about the prospect.
Not only does that example show how this approach brings the prospect more into the interaction, but it also helps the salesperson learn valuable information that can help find opportunities, qualify leads, and figure out where to go next.
How to Implement this Sales Approach
The six questions I inserted into the trade show example will not provide complete clarity for what you need to do to make the switch to a more prospect-focused sales approach. So to help with that, I am going to provide a few categories of questions you can add to your mix.
I will fill these in with demonstration questions that continue with the same example of selling food at a trade show. Hopefully these categories and questions give you ideas for questions you can ask for your product or service.
Intro Questions
The first category of questions is intro questions, and these are designed to welcome the prospect and just get a general understanding of where the prospect is coming from.
How are you?
What brings you to the food expo?
What type of business are you in?
What is your role? (What do you do?)
Is there anything you are looking for?
Current State Questions
These are questions that help you to get the lay of the land on the prospect’s side for where your product or service fits.
What are you currently buying?
Where are you purchasing from?
How is that going?
How is the quality?
What are you paying?
How much are you purchasing?
Desired State Questions
These are questions that help you to get an idea of what your prospect is looking for or where the prospect wants to go.
What are you looking for in a supplier?
What are you hoping to improve?
Pain Questions
These are questions that help you to identify if the prospect has the pain points, challenges, or concerns your product or service can help make go away.
How important is product quality to you?
How do you feel about the quality you are getting?
How happy are you with the consistency?
Now, of course, those questions would be different for your product or service. But hopefully you can see how creating a list of questions like this and incorporating that into your interactions with prospects can help answer the question of how to increase sales.
