You can peg a Top Producer from an average producer in the first few minutes of a sales conversation.  You don’t need any inside knowledge about the Top Producer or what they’re selling.  You can tell by the questions they ask at the beginning of the sales conversation, and the amount of time they spend asking them.

People who are still struggling to get to the top ask way too many background or situation questions.  This can be down right maddening for the prospect.  Especially when the sales person could have done just a little homework and answered these questions for themselves.

Many sales people have the misguided notion that because people like to talk about themselves that they should spend valuable sales conversation time asking these types of questions.  You should only ask questions that you can’t readily answer yourself.  Or questions that expand on or clarify readily available information.  When you ask questions that seem obvious to the prospect it’s highly annoying.   They feel like you’re wasting their time, and that you aren’t a professional.

Another reason you don’t want to invest too much of your time with these types of questions is because you aren’t getting to the questions that will get you a sale.  Yes, you do need to understand what the prospect is interested in or concerned about now.  However, you also need to know what they want that they don’t have now.  Plus you never want the prospect to feel like they’re being interrogated.

Get the upfront facts and then quickly move on to other parts of the buying process.  Far too many sales people spend the bulk of their time getting the facts, and then rushing to a solution.  Then they’re shocked when the prospect stalls and objects.

A buyer will not buy until they have a highly motivating reason to do so.  You’ll help them to discover their motivation by helping them to mentally experience what they want, helping them to determine the value of getting it, and helping them to choose the best option for them.  When you spend too much time gathering background information then rush to a solution the buyer feels like they’re being sold something they don’t want.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 3rd, 2008 at 6:00 am and is filed under coaching. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.