Over the almost four decades that we've been doing complex sales training, coaching, and consulting, we've trained thousands of salespeople early in their career; perhaps they're even brand new to sales.
And one of the most interesting things we do is to help them understand an incredibly important concept: the one who's running the conversation is not the one doing the talking.
The one who's running the conversation is the one who's making the other person talk, and listening to their answers.
We want salespeople to understand that when you're listening, you're actually learning a lot (which is critical to qualifying and winning the sale). When you're talking, you're not learning a thing.
The purpose of a conversation with a prospect is to learn:
whether or not you can help them;
if you could help them, when they'd like to have that help in effect;
how the problem may be affecting them, what it's costing them, what they plan to spend to fix it;
how they're going to decide with whom they do business;
what they're going to do if you come back with a solution and answer their questions.
Those are the things you want to learn in your sales conversations, so that you can close more opportunities in less time at higher margins.
So as you plan your conversations, you'll have a handful of good questions to ask your prospects, and you'll listen carefully to their answers. Usually, their answers will have some ambiguity.
Here's an example: "Please help us understand, as you're thinking about selecting someone to help you with this problem, what things will be most important to you in the selection of a solution provider?"
They'll say, "Well, we're looking for the best value."
"Mm-hmm. What else?"
"Well, we're also looking for something that will be compatible with other things that this has to interact with."
"Okay. Anything else?"
"No."
"I noticed you didn't mention..." And then you can interject anything you want them to value, like time to market, or total cost of ownership over time, or the fit... it could be any number of things.
It may sound like this, "I noticed you didn't mention these things. What should we assume about time market or total cost over time or the fit of this thing over its useful life? What should we assume about that?"
If they are playing fair, they'll give you answers to those questions. You'll have learned what you need to learn in order to win at high value, and you will have injected your unique value into their decision-making process (which was until then focused on price).
Listening helps you to qualify much better than talking does. And qualification keeps you from wasting time with prospects who may be intellectually curious about what you do, but they're not economically serious about it.
Of course, the sooner you know that, the faster you can go do something more useful with your time.
Overall, there are really only about a dozen questions you've got to ask to qualify a prospect. Prospects are not that creative with their answers. They tend to use a few stock answers to all the questions. As soon as you get that cadence down, you can listen, think ahead, and be very involved in the conversation.
And, of course, you're the one running it.
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At Slattery Sales Group, we empower great sellers and companies to win complex sales.
Our clients tell us we help them raise revenues, bolster margins, shorten sales cycles, and compete more effectively in the marketplace. We'd love to help you do that, too.
To expedite your progress:
🔷 Grab our new book HERE and get that important sale moving again.
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If you want to learn more about how we've helped over 2,400 enterprises enhance their sales processes, contact us through phone: 952-832-5436, or email: info@slatterysales.com. We'd love to connect.