Bored in my apartment, I decided to put on an animated movie. Shrek, (don’t judge) what the heck, why not! As I rolled through it I heard a line that made me immediately think of sales.
“No donkey, layers. Onions have layers.”
How crazy that this line sparked a whole train of thought and made me think….
Just like onions have layers, so should our questions to our prospects.
As a sales trainer, I find one common trend. The most difficult part of developing a salesperson’s skills is getting them to ask ‘meaningful’ questions during the buying process. In fact, data reveals that they’re not asking enough tough, insightful, thought-provoking questions.
What seems to be the problem is one specific to all salespeople. When salespeople have a sales process, they are more focused on that and the next step then they are focused on their prospect’s behavior. This creates issues because this prospect is now no longer unique. This prospect is just another call on the long list of calls we will take.
When the salesperson on process or the next step, they ask questions with no purpose. They do things out of repetition and it no longer sounds meaningful, creating a lack of trust and empathy. The salesperson is now a robot with one thing in mind: the close.
So what can we do to instill good behaviors in ourselves? How do we get through the process without sounding like EVERY other salesperson?
It is simple: Ask questions with a PURPOSE. In my mind, a question with a purpose is what some may call a ‘layered question.’ Before moving to the next step ask yourself: “Do I really understand everything that’s going on here with this buyer?” Can I fulfill their needs based off of what I asked? If we find ourselves saying no, ask more until we are confident and can move forward.
By asking these questions with PURPOSE it earns the salesperson the right to ask the tougher and challenging questions that get to the real issue. Without doing so we will NEVER truly realize what they need.
Sales teams get complacent. Ask the questions they are told to and move on! This is all their job and sales process requires for them to ask, right? And that is the unfortunate part because it’s all the layers after that matter the most. It’s the next layers that differentiate the average salesperson from the Michael Jordan of sales.
Asking these LAYERED questions will do wonders for our process and prove so in our numbers. So the next time you wonder, why your numbers may not be so great, or why you didn’t close a call, look at your questions. Did you dig in as much as you could, or did you just settle for the bare minimum?
Ask the question, to get to another question. Peel the onion till it’s NOT peelable. Be the sales guy no one else is THE BEST.
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