Questions

Customer Care is an essential part of every business, but arguably it is one of the most under appreciated. People are dealing with external and internal (fellow employees) clients daily. If you can’t handle them, your position with a company will be short lived.

Hamish Knox, Sandler trainer from Calgary and two-time author, shares and audio blog about how to share your vision for the future of your team through questions. He talks about the attitudes, behaviors, and techniques needed to be more successful in sales management. 

Listen Time: 5 Minutes

THE STORY:
Nick was having a real string of successful closes. The experienced salespeople were jealous. But then Nick started having a problem.

The last three sales were canceled within days of being made. In one instance, the color was all wrong. In another, the customer said that she couldn’t wait two weeks. Finally, although the quality of the product was first rate, the customer decided she couldn’t afford it. In every instance, none of the folks wanted to have any further discussion – the orders were canceled. Period.

Nick decided that he really needed to attend the company sales training program.

Later that same day, a young couple came in and chose the highest- quality and most expensive product in the store.

“This is the one we want. We’ll order it now.”

As Nick was writing up he order, he stopped and stared at the couple. He could not believe the words coming out of his mouth.

“I hope you don’t change your mind, but let me ask you something. When you first came in, you were looking for a moderately priced item, and you’ve selected the most expensive item in the store. Are you sure you really want to do this?”

“You’re right,” replied the woman, “I’d probably think that tomorrow, but looking at it now, I know the price is worth it. Yes. We want it. No doubts.”

THE RESULT:
Tim ignored three chances handed to him by the prospect that would have led to the prospect believing that what he said matter. The prospect was in pain, Tim ignored the pain, and now the prospect is going to ignore Tim.

DISCUSSION:
Despite what customers and prospects say, they buy from you to get rid of some pain that either is present or will be present without your product/services. They do not buy the product/service because you are a wonderful person. Of course, this does not mean that you should be anything less than wonderful. The point is that your customers and prospects can buy when you are selling from any number of other vendors at any time. So why do they buy from you?

When you first meet with a new prospect, how do you position your product or service? How do you characterize its various feature, functions, and advantages? Which elements do you emphasize as having the strongest potential appeal to the prospect?

It’s difficult to determine which aspect of your product or service will hold the most meaning for the prospect until you understand the prospect’s motivation for the potential purchase. Once you’ve discovered that, you’ll be able to position your product or service as a best-fit from the prospect’s perspective.

So, what motivates people to buy? There’s been a lot written on the topic. The prevalent theory is that people buy to either gain pleasure…or avoid pain. Broadly speaking, that’s absolutely correct. In fact, psychologists suggest that those are the two reasons that drive people to take any action.

Jack lost a huge deal because of a sudden, ill-conceived emotional response.

After spending weeks preparing a presentation for Ryan, his biggest prospect, Jack was dumbfounded to hear Ryan say, five minutes into the talk, “The assumptions are all too simplistic here. This slide deck looks like something a five-year-old could have put together.”

Jack’s response to this strange remark was instant – and ill-considered. Intent on proving himself right, and his potential client wrong, he said, “That’s an odd thing to say, Ryan, considering that you and I have met four different times about this project…and there’s not one single syllable in this presentation that you didn’t personally sign off on last week when we went out to lunch to discuss it. Actually, there’s a lot of very hard work here from both sides.”

Jane was having problems uncovering accurate information during her discussions with prospects. Her conversations during sales calls tended to be unfocused, and she spent a lot of time pursuing options that her prospects ended up rejecting. Her manager suggested she try something called Negative Reversing.

Negative Reversing is a “reverse psychology” selling technique. It helps you steer a conversation in a particular direction to explore another avenue or test a prospect’s reaction to a particular aspect of your product or service.

If the prospect responds favorably, you continue to explore the topic. If the prospect is cool to the topic or reacts unfavorably, you move to another topic.

Mario was well ahead of his monthly quota, so he was surprised when Jane, his sales manager, asked him to set a higher sales target for the quarter.

During their meeting, Mario smiled and said, “I thought I’d get a gold medal after the good month I just had – not a higher target!”

“You know what they say about ‘good’ being the enemy of ‘great,’” Jane answered, smiling back. “And what I’m proposing is well within your reach. In fact, if it makes sense to you, I think you’ll find it a lot easier than hitting the monthly target you just hit.”

Have you ever wondered, “What am I doing wrong?” or, “How can I take my practice to the next level?” If you have, you’re not alone, and you’re in luck. Our newest book release, Asking Questions The Sandler Way, answers both of those quandaries and reveals so much more. In the book, Sandler trainer and author, Antonio Garrido, outlines how he revitalized his practice by changing his approach. Below we have identified a few key takeaways from the book.  

Antonio Garrido, Sandler trainer, and new author of Asking Questions the Sandler Way joins us to talk about the best sales questions. You will learn his favorite questions, the right attitude for asking questions, and why you should be asking more and better questions in the first place.

June is Effective Communications Month. With that fact in mind, consider the following cautionary tale for salespeople.

Will, a new salesperson, had just begun a face-to-face meeting with Maria, The CEO of a big company that Will’s manager would have dearly loved Will to close. Right after the two sat down in Maria’s conference room, Maria asked:

My Mom was a funny lady and during my youth, she was constantly throwing riddles at me. Some of herriddles came in pairs and the pairs typically had a point. One such pair of riddles has been a huge lesson forme as I have gone through life. Here they are. Riddle 1: What did Tarzan say when he saw the elephantscoming down the road? "Here come the elephants." Riddle 2: What did the elephants say when theysaw Tarzan coming down the road? Nothing, elephants don't talk