Episode #316: Are Your Buyer Questioning Skills Good Enough?

Many salespeople contemplating this title would be flummoxed. They don’t have really good questions for the client because they don’t ask any questions whatsoever. They are losers who go straight into the detail, the nitty gritty of their solution. How do they know this is the right solution? They don’t worry about that, because they are delving into the product catalogue or the flyers for the micro detail of the solution. I can call them losers because they irritate me. They pollute our profession because they never study about how to become better in sales. Also, I will never hurt their feelings because they will never access my content.

We know there is a sales cycle which is neither mysterious nor complicated. We establish some rapport, move into questioning the buyer, suggest our solution, deal with any objections and ask for the order. Simple right? Maybe not. The questioning part is absolutely key. If we get this wrong then our solution will be rejected. There are a couple of things we need to be doing to make this work. I was reminded of one of them the other day when I failed to get the deal.

Like many salespeople, I get into a rhythm with my sales calls and ask the questions needed. I hear the key points and my mind races toward the best solution for the buyer. I am confident, sure this is what they need but I have cut a corner. I have shaved off a piece of the process, because I am arrogant about my own abilities and are forgetting some of the basics. I thought I clearly understood what this client wanted and duly put together a proposal, but she rejected it. I was shocked because I thought I had correctly parsed what she needed for this training for her team. When I reviewed my activity, I realised that while had her on the Zoom call, I neglected one step which proved to be a deal breaker. I was too sure of myself, which is why I didn’t run the solution by her right then and there to check what I was proposing was the right thing for her team. I assumed too much.

There are some key things in the questioning process which we should all remember to ask especially the 5 whys. What I mean is we keep drilling down by asking why of the answer. For example, in my case, the client says we want leadership training, but that is a pretty broad church with many alcoves and vaults. I need to ask why (1)? They reply that there is a communication problem between the middle managers and their teams. Why is there a communication problem (2)? Because the leaders are not properly skilled at leading. Why aren’t they properly skilled (3)? Because we have never trained them. Why haven’t they been trained (4)? Because we never understood it was needed. Why? (5). We didn’t see the need, we thought they were capable enough. Do you see how this works?

Another brilliant question is “why now”? Whenever a client tells us they have a problem, we should always ask this timing question, because it will help us to understand what is driving the organisation to take action. They might say Covid revealed the leadership ability gap of their leaders, in the example I used. They might say there is a new President or HQ has issued a mandate about this and they are rolling out the solution country by country or the competitors are taking our market share , or we have surplus funds at the end of the year we don’t want to hand back, etc. Knowing this helps us to establish their sense of urgency and commitment to take some action to fix the problem. Having a problem and actually doing anything about it are worlds apart.

Another object on the sale call is to ask a question which they have not considered. We want to get them thinking one of two things: “we haven’t thought about that” or “we haven’t prepared for that”. This is not easy, but is the mark of the professional in sales. Anyone can ask about simple questions about their current situation and where they want to be and try and build a solution around that. Getting the client to project into the future and see trouble aplenty, is the ideal outcome. We now move from being the salesperson to becoming their trusted advisor, flagging key issues they haven’t considered.

In my example, I could ask, “if this communication problem between your staff and their managers continues, there is a strong chance the engagement levels of the staff will go down and they will be open to recruiters encouraging them to leave and go work for your competitors. Given the declining population and no major immigration on the horizon, there is going to be a continuing huge problem regarding recruiting new staff. There is also a major disruption to the business whenever people leave and new people have to be trained. Have you factored these occurrences into your calculations about achieving this year’s targets?

The client is thinking about a simple leadership problem but we are talking about a business disruption problem through lack of retention of key people. They haven’t considered this possibility and it ramps up the urgency of fixing this issue right now, before they start losing people. It make us look like a genius to be pointing out this brewing issue for them, so that they can take actions to prevent it occurring.

Questioning buyers is basic yet critical, but beyond that being able to ask brilliant questions which drive action and underline urgency are operating at a higher level of sales professionalism. Is that the level you are operating at right now?