During a typical sales call, there is a “tug of war” going on. A tug of war to see who can get the most information.
Your job, as a sales professional, is to get as much information as possible when you are qualifying an opportunity. Yet your prospective client feels
his
job is to do the same when he is exploring his alternatives, all the while taking care not to expose any weakness that might put him at a disadvantage. (See Core Competency #25.) The salesperson
must
have superior questioning skills.
The person who is asking the questions is in control of the direction of the conversation.
That should be you. On a typical sales call, your prospect has a number of questions to ask you to determine if he might want to do business with you. As you have undoubtedly experienced, prospects are quite skillful at turning salespeople into “unpaid consultants.” In order to achieve your objective of being a great investigator and obtaining lots of information, try a tactic called
rewarding and refocusing
.
It enables you to maintain control of the conversation by answering the prospect’s question (or respond to a statement) with a question of your own. A “
reward”
functions as a transition from the prospect’s question to yours, such as, “That’s a good question” or “I’m glad you asked me that.” The reward is then followed by a question
(refocus)
that relates to the prospect’s question. The intent is to keep the prospect talking until you can obtain enough information to deal with the issue effectively. It might sound like this:
Prospect:
“How would you solve a problem like this?”
Salesperson:
“That’s a good question. What have you tried so far?”
Prospect:
“Well, we’ve …” A word of clarification is necessary here.
This tactic is not designed to be deceptive or manipulative.
In fact, sometimes a
short answer
followed by a question is quite appropriate. “We’ve found that _____works quite well. What have you tried?”
Tip: You can’t put your foot in your mouth if it’s closed. Keep your prospect talking at least 70% of the time.
Self-Study Assignment:
Make up a short list of rewards (“I see”… “Okay”… “That’s interesting”…etc.) that you would be comfortable using. Practice rewarding & refocusing in non-threatening situations until you are comfortable with the concept. A word of caution – don’t over use this tactic. It’s not a game, just a conversation.