Want to get better at asking questions

and speed up the selling process?

In the last five years of training hundreds of salespeople, the one skill that everyone struggles with the most is – asking better questions.

Better questions give you better information and allows you to better help your customer.  And, by better, I mean faster and more effective.

What do better questions do for us when selling?

• They help you get back in front of a prospect for a 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th, 10^th or 100^th
• They help you come back with real solutions that your customer needs.
• They help you get deeper into the customer relationship versus being just another vendor.

If you get to the end of a sales call and have no real reason to return, it’s most likely because you didn’t ask enough good questions.  Why did this happen to you?  Here’s my educated guess.  By educated, I mean that I made these same mistakes too many times until discovering better questions.  First problem, you didn’t pre-call plan.  If you did a pre-call plan, it maybe involved gathering some brochures and product information together.  Maybe you even packed some accounting paperwork for them to sign.  Then, you got on farm and began by “Checking in”.  However, nothing has changed since the last time you “Checked in”.

They are still happy with their current supplier.  How did you find that out?  You asked, “Are you still happy with your current supplier?” To which, they immediately replied, “Yes”, whether they were or weren’t.  Customers figure out quickly that answering “No”, will unleash an onslaught of sales pressure.  So, they are smart enough to shut that down with a quick, “Yep, we are still happy with them.” 

With nothing else to discuss and not knowing where to go from there, you made one of two choices.  First choice was to keep the conversation going with a social discussion.  By that, I mean politics, weather, local interest stories.  The second choice that salespeople make in this situation is to proceed with presenting on their products anyway.  Maybe they go over the latest promotion or sale item.  Your customer responds, “I’ll take a look at it and think about it.  Thanks for stopping out”.  You thank them for their time and tell them to call you if interested or they change their mind.  And, they never called.

Why are we not as good as we think we are at asking good questions?

• We don’t plan. As a matter of fact, we avoid pre-call planning like the plague.  We use excuses like, “I’m too busy to spend time in my office. Besides, I know how to ask questions”
• We never really spend time thinking about the buying process and how our customer makes decisions. We don’t put ourselves in their shoes.  We think like us, like a salesperson or like our marketing department.  We think from our understanding of the business versus understanding the way each of our customer’s thinks.
• We got away with “Winging it” in the past.  We were busy. We didn’t do our pre-call planning, but went on the sales call anyway.  We survived and the world didn’t end.  So, we think to ourselves, “This is great.  I’m too busy to do the planning it takes.  So, I can skip it and do just fine.”

What can we do to improve on this very important selling skill?

#1: Script your questions

That’s right.  I want you to write them out.  No, you won’t be reading them off on a sales call, but it will help you structure better questions.

There’s an old saying, “Good stories aren’t written, they are rewritten”.  If you don’t believe me, watch the Netflix special by Jerry Seinfeld.  Same goes with high value questions in a selling situation.

Start with your customer’s buying process and write out questions to gain a better understanding of it.  How do your customer’s make decisions?  Next, focus in on your strengths and the differentiating elements of your brand.  Here’s an easy acronym in case you get stuck: CHOP

• C-Change & H-History:     Start by asking about the history of your customer’s business.  How it all started, the major milestones over the years.  This leads into changes.  Again, start with past history of changes.  You can ask about the big picture of the business or farm and then into the details of your product line.  For example, producers love to tell the story of their farm:  number of generations, ties to the community, development and progress over the years etc.  Great, now ask about the history of using their suppliers.

• O-Opportunities & P-Problems:      In every industry and business, there are opportunities and problems that show up every day.  The struggle for the business owner is to decide how to act or react to them.  That’s what I want you to ask about.  With trade wars, pandemic, lack of parts, lack of qualified employees, immigration issues, and fertilizer prices, how do you put all that into a farming operation and make it profitable?  With precision ag, better genetics, internet shopping, low interest rates, aging population of landowners, new government programs, specialty meat or grain markets, how do you decide which direction to go with your farm or agribusiness?

Just a little fyi on the questions above.  Only pick one of those areas per question.  I just used the laundry list to shorten the article.  So, for example, if a producer is stuck on trade wars and grain prices, I might ask, “With all the volatility this can cause to your income, what changes have you considered to guard your business?”  That type of question can apply to almost anything a customer complains about.

 #2:  Rehearse

Now that you have your questions written out, I want you to rehearse them.  Again, we go back to stage performers and speakers for help.  Top comedians never try out their brand-new material on the big stage or the Tonight Show.  They go to every comedy club they can and practice it.  They record themselves and watch.  They listen for what works and what doesn’t.  FYI, every smart phone has an audio record.  If not, record on video and listen.

You will be amazed at how your thoughts don’t match the way your words come out.  You will be stunned when you listen to your words on a recording versus listening to yourself as you speak.  Both are critical for improving your question skills and for getting better answers from those questions.

The easiest way to accomplish this is to turn the radio off and practice as you drive down the road to your sales call.  By doing so, it will commit those questions to memory.  Secondly, you will make small modifications that will get you better answers.

Lastly, you will come across as much more professional to your customer.  The good part is that you will be more professional by taking the time to improve one of the most important selling skills.

In workshops, I like to ask salespeople to share the best question they ask of their customers.  Frequently it’s, “What does your current supplier not provide you with?” or “What keeps you awake at night?”  If those are working for you, great.  If not, I hope this helps you on your journey.  If, so, please feel free to hit share and send to someone you know. 

If you feel your team could use some help in getting better at asking questions, reach out and let’s have a discussion about it.

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