Opportunities are won and lost on effective discovery. As a salesperson, you need solid questions if you want to effectively successfully map your value to your prospect’s business problems. When you are trying to drill down on a business issue with the largest impact, you need a great sales discovery process that demonstrates your perspective and positive business intent. Solid thought-provoking questions help you effectively map your value to a prospect’s business problems.
Best-in-class sellers execute discovery in a purposeful way. They aren’t just thinking about their next question, they’re constantly focused on the outcome they need from the conversation. In our Command of the Message® trainings, we illustrate this point by comparing sales to a game of pool.
When someone begins learning how to play pool, the initial focus is simply on learning the rules and then making good contact with the cue ball. The same thing was true when many of you started selling. Your focus was just getting through your pitch with the hopes of someone saying yes.
Once a pool player understands the rules of the game and figures out how to hit the cue ball, he/she then begins looking at the pool table and deciding which ball they are going to hit. At first, the focus is on the easy shots; the ones that are a straight shot into the pocket. Eventually, there’s more thought behind each shot. One begins to think about how to hit the harder shots, those that require angles, and speed control. With even more practice, the player is thinking about how to hit the ball they want to hit, while at the same time, setting up their next shot.
Professional pool players take this concept of “thinking ahead” to a whole other level.
If you’ve ever seen a professional pool game you’ll notice that the players are actually looking at the entire table, playing the game three shots ahead. While their immediate focus is on making the next ball, they never take their shot without first understanding how this shot will affect their next and their next.
And when they realize they’re not in the best position to make a shot, what do they do? They try to set their opponent up with a bad shot.
So how does this concept relate to sales?
Most sellers understand the fundamentals of asking questions. They know that they need to get critical information from their customers if they’re going to be able to make the sale.
The feedback we get from customers is that many sellers know what questions to ask. They just don’t organize them in a way that makes sense. They tend to fire question after question at the customer. While the seller may leave the conversation with information, the customer rarely feels that he or she is walking away with anything useful.
As a salesperson, you need to think like the professional pool player. Challenge yourself to look at the table. See the shots you have to make to win the game.
- Look at your sales process and determine what questions you need to ask to set yourself up to move the opportunity further.
- Ask your questions that lead your customer to the “aha” moment.
- Recognize that when you aren’t in the best position, you should be prepared to ask the trap-setting questions that set your competition up for the “bad shot.”
