One of the top challenges sales leaders share is their Sellers' hesitancy to engage in early, prospecting conversations with customers. It is common for us to hear sales leaders lament that their "Sellers are great once the product discussion starts, but they will not engage in open-ended conversations where they don’t know the answers. They assume they must always play the role of the expert.”
We understand the challenges of shifting from a product-centric selling approach, but organizations that build strong questioning skills in their sales force create solid understanding of their customer’s business and identify opportunities to partner with their customer to solve business needs that matter. These Sellers learn to:
WHAT DEFINES A GREAT QUESTION? | |
Weak questions | Stronger questions |
What keeps you up at night? | I read about [disruptive technology/emerging competitor]. What does this challenge mean for your business? |
Is increasing operational efficiency important to you? | What have you tried to increase operational efficiency? What has worked? What has not? |
Our solution could save you $XXX in staff costs. Would that be interesting? | If we could save you YY% of your staff’s time, how could you redeploy your team? How would that benefit your business? |
Do your customers push back on price? | Where have Sellers been successful at resisting discounting? What happened? |
Savvy Sellers are always working to improve their position with their customer’s business—to not only improve their business results today, but also to build an early perspective on how to partner to create new market opportunities that will make both the customer and supplier more profitable. This is the key to creating, retaining and growing profitable accounts.
Holden Advisors is a team of experts in pricing and sales performance development.
We help our clients take control of their differential value and use it to transform their business.
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