Sales Tip #1 – ask one more question

If I was asked to give a sales rep a simple tip on how to improve sales I would have to go for “ask one more question”.  I view this as a state of mind rather than just a pure injunction.  To be great at sales you need to be curious, and curious people ask questions.

My time as an instructor at the IBM Business School, and the coaching I have done since then, has led me to observe that many poorly performing sales reps view the questioning phase in sales as just the preamble to their espousing a profound knowledge of their product or service, and how it can benefit the customer.  They are like a parachutist waiting for the light to turn from red to green so that they can leap out and do their thing.  So just the act of asking one more question slows the sales rep down, and may just present them with some information that they can use in making the sale.

Unfortunately these poorly performing sales reps are generally stuck in the delusion that their knowledge of the service or product is their ticket to success.  They would probably argue that they have a cast iron case as to why the customer should buy.  Perhaps they never heard the saying “everyone loves to buy, but no one likes to be sold to”.

Peter Drucker, recognised as the guru of modern management, was famous with CEOs for his insightful questions that would have the leadership team thinking for days and weeks about the answer.  I guess he could have come up with some great suggestions based on his vast experience, and no doubt he sometimes did when the time was right.  However, he knew that early on his suggestions would not have impact, neither would they deliver the value that came from allowing the leaders of the organisation to struggle through to their own potential answers.  He also knew that it was unlikely that he had all the facts, and therefore his suggestions would be vulnerable to some new information being revealed.

So while my simple tip is to ask one more question, what I would add is to make it as profound as possible, oh and listen very carefully to the answer.

Of course that begs the question, “how do I ask a profound question”.  I will leave that to another post, but if you are a sales rep just give this tip a try.  If you are a sales manager try asking your sales reps what questions are they asking, and if appropriate encourage them to “just ask one more”.