People buy from people. You may only meet someone briefly, but your customer will still need to feel wanted and appreciated. Questions can help us to:
- Establish a rapport with the customer
- Determine the customer’s psychological needs
- Build a trusting relationship
To Seek Other Opportunities
All of us miss potential sales opportunities from time-to-time. Simply asking one or two additional questions of each customer provides us with more leads and qualified prospects. A word of mouth recommendation is the best type of advertising you’re ever likely to get.
Open and Closed Questions
Question types are traditionally separated into open, or ‘non-directive’ probes, and closed, or ‘directive’ probes. Open questions often begin with who, what, when, how and why, whereas closed questions often begin with “do you ...”, “does it ...”, and so on.
As one might expect, research has shown that successful salespeople use more open and closed questions than unsuccessful salespeople. As one might not expect, however, a more detailed study has demonstrated that the mix of open and closed questions used by salespeople is not directly related to sales success. In other words, there is no evidence to suggest that open questions should, for example, be used more frequently than closed questions.
- Prosell offers a program that combines sales training and sales coaching. It is based on recognised research, which tells us that training alone has limited impact and that when supported by skilful coaching, has 74% more chance of being implemented.
- Prosell has resources to deliver these programs across Australia, covering Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide and Canberra.