Soar to Success October 2016

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Areyouasking therightquestions
during a sales appointment?
Unsure what those questions
are? No worries – I am going to
tell you in this article.
When we enter a sales
appointment we are focused on
the product or service we are
selling. And most of the time,
when we ask questions we only
ask about the situation that our
offering deals with.
And that, my friends, is where
we go wrong. There are 3 critical
questions we should be asking,
and getting the answers to.
The first one is this – What is
your decisionmaking process?
We need to know this so we can
be sure we are talking to the
right person or people. We don’t
want to ask the person if they
are the decision maker because
that will make them defensive.
So, if we just ask them what
their decision making process is
they are more likely to answer
it. This lets us know what we
can expect from them as we go
through the sales process. And
if we discover there are places
in their process that could be
dangerous for us, we can try to
work around them.
An example would be if the
person says that they gather
information, give it to their boss,
and their boss decides which
vendor to use. We could offer
to be involved in the meeting
when our contact shares the
information with the boss.
That way we can answer any
questions the boss has and our
contact won’t be in the difficult
position of having to try to
explain our product or service.
The second question is – Do you
have a budget for this?
Notice I did not ask – what is
your budget? That’s intentional.
Most people aren’t comfortable
sharing their budget. They think
the vendor will charge more
if they know they have room.
Asking them if they have a
budget gives you some insight
into how much thought they’ve
given to this issue and how
prepared they are to move
forward. If they have a budget
you can ask them if they would
feel comfortable telling you
what it is.
They are more forthcoming
with information the more you
can learn about them, their
When Being An Expert is Dangerous
By Diane Helbig
SOAR TO SUCCESS / October 2016 / Business Acceleration Strategies