Questions that Sell
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ADVANCE PRAISE FOR
Questions that Sell
“Questions that Sell will give you the know-how to tackle your most difficult sales challenges. Reading it will take your sales conversations with customers and prospects to a whole new level of engagement. Study and devour these concepts so you gain the competitive edge over your competition. Most important, you’ll solidify your existing sales relationships and win over prospects. You just have to ask the right questions. Questions that Sell is your tool to do so.”
—RICK FARRELL, PRESIDENT, Tangent Knowledge
“Questions that Sell is inspirational and results-driven. It’s a phenomenal resource that you can put into action immediately. Best of all, these solutions work so we can motivate our customers to take action. What really impresses me is how these questions shift us from selling products to delivering value. And that’s what customers really care about. The bottom line is that QTS has helped us to grow our sales dramatically.”
—ANDREW FIRTH, GENERAL MANAGER, ArrowQuip
“Questions that Sell will make us even more successful than we are today. We’ll differentiate ourselves, better understand our customers, quantify the opportunities, and document the value we deliver. As a result, the sky is the limit.”
—MARK BARTHEL, PRESIDENT, Springfield Electric
“I found Questions that Sell to be a watershed moment, revealing deep-seated personal habits that blocked my true potential. Asking the right questions allows me to put aside my agenda to be viewed as an expert and desire to be liked. The QTS model proves that a talking prospect is a comfortable prospect. And comfortable prospects open up to share true motivations, needs, and pains. If your challenge is compulsive talking, storytelling, and a need to prove your value, then I wholeheartedly recommend Questions that Sell. After 15 years of professional selling, countless training sessions, and endless coaching, I’ve discovered what I was missing—Questions that Sell.”
—ADAM DUFFY, SALES EXECUTIVE, Avantik
“Listening is a skill and an art fundamental to business success. Good questions, however, are needed to shape and guide conversations. The insights Paul shares in this book improve your ability to ask more powerful, enlightening questions. Read this book. More important, apply the ideas and techniques that Paul provides.”
—BILL SHULBY, GROWTH STRATEGIST AND CHANGE AGENT
“Paul Cherry’s Questions that Sell has been a tremendous boon to me in my career. By focusing on customer needs and honing in on what motivates them, I learned to lead a conversation to a fruitful outcome through the use of targeted questions. If you find yourself doing most of the talking during a sales call, you aren’t maximizing your impact and potential with the customer. Paul’s techniques and formulas will show you how to get customers talking about what matters to them. With this knowledge, you can lead the conversation to the outcome you desire. Whether you are new to sales or a seasoned veteran at the top of your game, Questions that Sell will help you to reach the next level and continue to grow. I guarantee it.”
—MAT LUCK, SALES LEADER
“It’s been an amazing experience to work with Paul. Questions that Sell delivers great insight into our sales process and will make a huge impact moving forward.”
—DARYL TODD, GENERAL MANAGER, Front Line Machinery
“As a millennial seller, Questions that Sell provided me with a methodology for navigating the complete sales cycle—from better prospect engagement to overcoming objections, and, most important, closing more business. It provides the framework for all sellers to incorporate the ideas into their sales style. Questions that Sell is a must-read—whether you’re starting your career in sales or you’re a senior salesperson with more than enough closed business in your pocket. QTS finds a way to build authentic client/customer relationships, while still continuing to grow a profitable book of business.”
—JOHNATHON JONES, AUTHOR, Embracing Adversity
“Questions that Sell surprised me. I thought I was pretty good at asking questions and listening. After reading this book, I have a whole new view of the role of questions. The idea that questions are a great way to lead was one I had heard often, yet this book makes that concept real. The types of questions Paul Cherry describes—with examples and stories—build collaborative relationships, and both the questioner and the person questioned learn and benefit. Questions that Sell is a great reminder to me that when I think I know what’s going on with another person is when it is often most important to ask. It gives me ways of doing that in a neutral fashion that bypasses my assumptions and actually gets results.
—SHEELLA MIERSON, PH.D., PRINCIPAL, Creative Learning Solutions
Questions That Sell
The Powerful Process for Discovering
What Your Customer Really Wants
Second Edition
Paul Cherry
Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface to the Second Edition
Introduction
Chapter 1
A Few Questions About . . . Questions
Chapter 2
Deadly Questions: Are Your Questions Costing You Business, Leaving Money on the Table, and Putting Prospects to Sleep?
Chapter 3
Are You a Partner or a Product Peddler? The Educational Question
Chapter 4
Lock-On Questions and Impact Questions: How to Uncover What Your Buyer Won’t—or Can’t—Tell You
Chapter 5
Opening the Floodgates: The Power of Expansion Questions
Chapter 6
Comparison Questions: Getting Customers to Think Sideways
Chapter 7
Vision Questions: Understanding Your Buyer’s Hopes, Dreams, and Desires
Chapter 8
Putting It All Together: From Prospect to Close
Chapter 9
Try It Yourself: A Sales Scenario to Sharpen Your Questioning Skills
Chapter 10
Qualifying Questions: Get Prospects to Tell You Why You Should Do Business with Them
Chapter 11
Alien Encounters: Questions for the First Meeting That Get Buyers to Open Up
Chapter 12
More Problems = More Sales: Questions That Enlarge the Need
Chapter 13
Questions About BANT: Budget, Authority, Need, and Timing
Chapter 14
For Future Sales, Ask About the Past
Chapter 15
Getting to Yes Without All the Stress: Anxiety-Free Closing Questions
Chapter 16
Upselling and Cross-Selling Questions: Stop Leaving Money on the Table and Get Your Full Share of the Customers’ Business
Chapter 17
Relationship-Building Questions: Creating Intimacy and Trust
Chapter 18
Accountability Questions: Hold Buyers’ Feet to the Fire—and Have Them Love You for It
Chapter 19
Cold Calling Questions That Get Prospects Talking
Chapter 20
Shots in the Dark: Voice Mail and Email Questions
Chapter 21
Your Very Best Prospects: Using Referral Questions to Build Your Own Pipeline
Chapter 22
&nbs
p; Social Selling: Adapting Tried-and-True Questions for a New Medium
Chapter 23
The Keys to the Castle: Questions for Gatekeepers
Chapter 24
C-Suite Questions: How to Connect with Top-Level Executives
Chapter 25
Presentation Questions: How to Keep Buyers Awake, Engaged, and Wanting to Hear More
Index
About the Author
Sample chapter from Sell with a Story by Paul Smith
About AMACOM Books
Acknowledgments
THIS BOOK IS dedicated to my wife, Claire, who inspires and motivates me every day. To my daughters, Brooke and McKenzie, who have humbled me to balance life and work. To my mom, who has the gift to engage any stranger she meets. To my dear friend, Patrick Connor, who has been a wonderful teacher and has raised the bar for me to be my best. To David Byers, who has been an invaluable asset to growing my business. And to Michael Boyette, who has done an awesome job crafting and polishing my ideas and has played a key role in helping me write this book. A big thanks to all of you.
Preface to the Second Edition
THE ORIGINAL EDITION of Questions That Sell was published in 2006. In that edition, I argued that while salespeople are always facing new challenges, the fundamentals of selling are timeless.
I stand by that statement. The pace of change in business continues to accelerate. Industries have been transformed. Some have virtually disappeared. New ones have arisen. New sales roles have emerged. And yet even in the new economy, companies still need salespeople to sell their products and services.
That being said, the environment in which those skills are applied continues to evolve. The most profound change was already well under way when I wrote the first edition, and by now it defines selling in the twenty-first century: Everybody knows everything about everybody. Salespeople have access to much more information about buyers—and buyers have more information about salespeople and the products and services they sell. As a result, the role of the salesperson as a provider of information—as a walking, talking brochure—is obsolete. Your true competitive advantage is to be a collector of information. The only way to succeed is to know your buyer better—not just what’s posted on their company website or their LinkedIn page, but their hopes, their vision, their fears—the things they reveal only to those they trust. And the only way to get that deep knowledge is by asking the right questions in the right way.
Based on the feedback I received over the years, I’ve completely reorganized the book and added new content. People told me that they wanted more examples of how to use questions in the field. So this edition not only shows you the key types of sales questions, how to construct them, and how to deploy them, but you’ll also learn how to apply these questioning techniques in a variety of common sales situations. I’ve included many new examples and templates that you can adapt to your own particular sales challenges.
I hope that this approach will make Questions That Sell even more useful—both for individual salespeople and as a training tool that sales managers can use with their teams.
Introduction
DOES THIS SOUND FAMILIAR?
The world is running at a faster pace than ever before and we as salespeople must constantly adapt to new situations. In the present climate customers do not want to spend a lot of time building relationships with salespeople. They want quick and easy solutions at the cheapest price. Technological advances have forever changed our world; now that customers can do business with companies all over the globe they do not need expert salespeople. Instead, customers can get instant access to information on the Internet or from the hordes of salespeople that call them each day. Instead of trying to be the customer’s friend, you as a salesperson need to cut to the chase and offer the best deal or you will lose out every time!
These statements are misguided. The idea that our world is fundamentally different from the world of 1980 or 1950, or even 1900, is ludicrous. Dale Carnegie wrote his book How to Win Friends and Influence People in 1938 and it is still a staple in bookstores today. We might have different technologies now than we did twenty years ago, but the people we do business with have not changed. If you do not remember anything else you read in this book, remember that. People are still people no matter what year it is.
If we look back in history we will see that every generation has believed that theirs was the one that revolutionized the world. When cars were invented, everyone assumed that life and the relationships that make it up would be changed forever. (The same is true for electricity, television, airplanes, and computers.) People believed that automobiles would cause personal relationships to disintegrate as people were free to travel hundreds of miles away from family and friends. In the end, though, the importance of real relationships has not diminished, and I contend that it never will.
How can I make such a bold statement? I have learned through years of sales and consulting that there are two types of relationships: superficial and substantive. Superficial relationships are characterized by chitchat about the weather, golf, and other neutral topics; these relationships are built on casual exchanges and they lack any real depth. An example of a superficial relationship is when you meet a client who went to the same college you did. There are a few minutes of shared memories and bonding over this coincidence, but this does not change the way you two do business. The second type of relationship is the substantive relationship, which is characterized by mutual benefit.
I ask salespeople in my seminars to describe the word relationship. The usual responses include descriptors such as trust, rapport, honesty, and understanding. Although these are admirable qualities to pursue with prospective clients, they are not what most clients are looking for. When customers are asked to define relationship in a business situation, they discuss things such as how a salesperson can bring value to their companies. The Gallup Organization conducted a major study of 250,000 sales professionals, the results of which were published in the book Discover Your Sales Strengths: How the World’s Greatest Salespeople Develop Winning Careers by Benson Smith and Tony Rutigliano (Business Plus, 2003). They found that there was little if any correlation between having good people skills and achieving success in selling. I’m not claiming people skills are not important in selling—they are. But developing meaningful relationships takes more than being friendly. A true business relationship requires you to ascertain a customer’s visions, desires, fears, and motivations. That means asking good questions—questions that engage your customers—and channeling that engagement into action.
In this kind of relationship, you as the salesperson are not solely concerned about making money or closing the deal; rather, you want to help the customer in three key ways:
1.Minimizing the customer’s risk. This is done by eliminating a customer’s fears (about spending too much money or buying a product that will malfunction) and by making certain that the customer can hold his head up high after purchasing your product for his company. If your customer can sleep well at night because of his dealings with you, he will definitely want to do business with you in the future.
2.Enhancing the customer’s competitive standing. Customers, like all businesspeople, want ultimately to move ahead. If your product can make them look good in front of their colleagues and serve as a step up the corporate ladder, you will definitely earn a place at the bargaining table.
3.Achieving the customer’s goals. A salesperson who can provide a solution that will increase profit or decrease cost is irreplaceable. If you can help a customer achieve her dream of taking her company to the next level, you will not only be a salesperson, you will be a true partner.
What do all of the above have in common? In every instance you, as the salesperson, are earning your place and achieving results in order to establish a relationship. Substantive relationships do not appear out of the blue; they are cultivated by hardworking salespeople who understand that the key to achieving success is e
stablishing real value in the eyes of the customer.
For too many years so-called sales experts have been preaching the values of relationships without defining them. Most have argued that salespeople need only to “build rapport, honesty, and trust” in order to further their business ends. These are the characteristics of a friendship, though, and they do not necessarily build a successful sales relationship. Customers do not want to make friends; they want to see results, and substantive relationships provide those.
Do These Questions Really Work?
As a consultant, I deal mostly with salespeople who sell products and services in the business-to-business market. This means two things: The lessons I am teaching you have been tested and used by thousands of topearning salespeople in the country. These techniques work, but they take time and effort to learn. If you are looking to create and sustain lasting business relationships with your customers in a way that sets you apart from everyone else in your industry, then you will no doubt benefit greatly from the advice I have to offer.
An excellent salesperson not only must be an expert in her field but also must be willing to embrace the role of “business shrink.” What do I mean by “business shrink”? This is someone who can discover the workplace frustrations of a prospective customer. By allowing the prospective client to express his aggravations, a salesperson creates an opportunity in which the client realizes the need for change and seeks out the salesperson to provide a solution. For example, prospective clients often experience difficulties with long hours, an unusually demanding boss, or a vendor that is continually late with deliveries. A salesperson acting as a business shrink can unearth these problems by asking good questions and by listening to the answers. Once a salesperson has established her trustworthiness and willingness to listen, prospective clients will feel more at ease revealing their troubles and asking for help.