The best salesperson is the one who asks the best, and in this sales training webinar, we outline how to improve your ability to get your salespeople to ask the right questions.
It Can be Tough Getting Salespeople to Ask the Right Sales Questions
This can be a difficult thing to do because not only is every salesperson unique, but every sales interaction is also unique. It can be challenging to give clear directions to salespeople that tell them what to do in all situations they may encounter.
And it does not stop with sales training and new sales hire onboarding. In terms of difficulty, try to get salespeople to ask the right questions. A sales manager can’t be there next to a salesperson on every call and meeting, making sure they are asking the right questions.
The Most Common Sales Training Gap
Before you look at what you need to improve, let’s stop to look at what many sales organizations do incorrectly. They do not do a good enough job of teaching sales resources what sales questions to ask.
You may think that is not the case because most businesses will have some sales new hire onboarding program. But if you dissect the content in those sales training programs, you will find many company, product, and process training materials. There will more often than not be a gap in teaching salespeople what questions they should ask when talking with sales prospects.
Identify Your Pre-Qualifying Questions
If you read all of that and think that there is room for improvement with how you train your salespeople and want to take some positive steps forward, begin by identifying your pre-qualifying questions for the product or services that you sell. These are probing questions to determine if the prospect needs what you offer or what they are currently doing in the area where you have something to offer.
If you don’t know where to begin with figuring out your pre-qualifying questions, start by looking at the pain points you help resolve. This is a really good way to produce a quality list of sales questions because you could and should ask questions to identify if the prospect currently has some of the pain points and concerns that you help with.
Teach Hard Qualifying Questions
We just touched on pre-qualifying questions. These could be different for the different products you sell and for the different people you sell to. But the hard qualifying questions will be the same for all sales situations.
These questions assess how qualified the prospect is and can examine areas like the true need to purchase, ability to purchase, authority to purchase, and intent to purchase. These are sales training programs that you can teach your sales resources to ask sales questions in your new sales hire onboarding or recurring sales training.