Episode #273: The Sales Questioning Model

Do you have a sales questioning model? Is there a journey you want the buyer to complete? Do you have questions organised which will lead them along that path? Or are you all over the place, following your “muse” instead? Surprisingly, a lot of salespeople have very little structure in their sales meetings with buyers. Why would that be the case? They may be untrained in sales. They may be constantly winging it. Or they may have a partial system, because they won’t be shackled by any system and want to be a free bird, to fly in whatever direction the sales conversation goes.

This is ridiculous. We don’t have unlimited time with the buyer and we have tons of competitors offering similar solutions. We have to get to a quick understanding of the buyer’s needs and then come up with a solution that perfectly matches what they need. Having a plan around asking the required questions is the most efficient and effective methodology and we should all be doing that as close to “genius” levels as possible.

The questions we need to ask have a cadence, a logical order, a flow. Usually, the process never gets completed in the order we are setting out here today, simply because buyers will pull the conversation in different directions. That is fine. We cannot predict what the buyer will say or will ask or what segues they will pursue. That is why having a questioning model is vital. We need to keep the conversation on track, that is to say, the track of our choosing and get to a purchase result. There are four questions in this model, none of which are complex or difficult.

As-Is Questions.

These are aimed at establishing the base line. What has the client been doing so far and how have the results been? What is the situation within the organisation at the moment? What are they doing that works and what hasn’t been working well enough? Sometimes, the client will start telling us where they want to be. That is fine, but we need to find out where they are so we can gauge the distance between these two points.

Should Be Questions.

Clients have goals and aims. They might be focused on strategic or financial outcomes depending on who we are talking to, but they will have them. They may be published in the annual report or they may be secret. Nevertheless we need to know what they are, so we can measure against them as to whether we can help them achieve their goals or not.

At this point, we also need to ask some Implication Questions. The point of an implication question is to cast doubt in the buyer’s mind about whether they can get to their goal by themselves or get there fast enough or get there cost effectively enough. It is key to always include time factors with implication questions. They may get to where they want to be, if it takes 100 years. They usually don’t have a hundred years, so we need to draw out the downside of taking too long to get their solution working for them.

In the last episode, we looked at the buyer’s gap – the difference between where they are now and where they want to be. If the buyer feels that gap is so close they can get there under their own resources, then we are not needed. Some implication questions could be , “if things stay the way they are, will you be able to reach your goals and targets fast enough?”, “What happens if you don’t meet your goals in the time frame needed?”, “How big is the downside of being beaten by the competition or not being able to contend with a shift in the market?”.

The Change Questions.

The client knows where they are now and where they need to be. The obvious question is to ask why they are not where they need to be? This is such a critical question. In their answer may be our rationale for being able to help them. Maybe we have the thing they cannot do by themselves or which they cannot do fast enough.

The Implication Question here is whether the inability to make the necessary changes will ultimately damage the business? They know what they need to do and just delaying it is not improving the situation, because the market waits around for no one. Taking no action is not cost free. There are always opportunity costs of no action and we need to highlight these, because we want them to use us to fix their issues.

Payout Questions.

What is in it for this buyer personally, if the project goes well? The company expects them to get results and they need to produce outcomes. We need to know what those internal pressures are on the buyer. Once we know what is at stake, we can get to work to help them achieve their goals and we can frame what we are going to achieve for them in those terms.

We can also ask the Implication Question of what happens if they are not able to produce the results the company expects? This requires high communication skills and must be done very diplomatically. We might ask, “In the worse case scenario, what would be the personal impact for you, if this issue cannot be fixed fast enough?”. The point is to get them thinking we are here to help them to be successful and that we want to help them achieve their desired outcomes.

We need intelligent questions to find out if we can hep the buyer and if we can, then how should we help them. We need their private company information to do that and questions are the tool to access that key data. Without it, we are operating in the dark and have no idea what they need and what we need to do for them. The result will be “no sale” and can’t have that can we!