If you are having a hard time selling managed services, you should make a study of sales and commit to mastering the fundamentals. No matter what you do in the future, your career will benefit from better sales skills.
As I mentioned in my previous post, the ability to get a prospect talking by asking good questions is one of the most critical sales skills one can develop.
The majority of time in your conversations with prospects should consist of you asking them good questions that:
1. Allow you to control the flow of the conversation
2. Uncover their needs
3. Uncover their goals
4. Establish you as an authority
5. Qualify the prospect
6. Move the sales process forward
Unfortunately, most salespeople still tend to do the “show up and throw up” model of selling, not giving their prospects enough air time to let the salesperson know their needs and wants. This wastes time, annoys the prospect, and results in fewer sales.
Instead, a salesperson should “dumb up”!
By this, I mean they should use questions to get the prospect to do more talking instead of blabbing on like an “expert” and never letting the prospect talk.
There are techniques to asking good questions, we’ll cover a few in the next few posts. They aren’t rocket science, but they do take some practice to do well.
Technique #1 for Question Based Selling: Ask open-ended questions
Salespeople that know how to masterfully use open-ended conversations can keep a prospecting talking the entire meeting with even realizing they are doing it.
There is a simple formula to make sure you are asking open-ended questions, which is to try your best to start each question with one of the following words:
· Who
· What
· When
· Where
· Why
· How
Go ahead and try to ask a Yes or No question using this formula – it’s very difficult! Get into the habit of starting all of your questions with these words, and you’ll find that your conversations with prospects will suddenly become a lot easier.
NOTE: be careful with Why questions. Ask them carefully and softly so that you don’t come across as confrontational or questioning someone’s judgment!
Role Play!
It’s way too easy to read this lesson and think that it’s common sense and get the false impression that you don’t need to practice asking good questions.
Don’t fall into this trap!
I’m telling you with 100% certainty: if you haven’t practiced asking good questions over and over in role playing exercises, you aren’t very good at it! Practice, practice, practice – and you will be able to use questions to control your sales conversations.
MRC
