202: Virtual Selling - We Need A New Questioning Approach (Part One)

<p>Salespeople’s bad habits just migrate right across to the online world.  If you were just pitching your product before, hoping to snag a deal, you will be doing the same thing when staring at the client on screen.  It didn't work well then and it doesn’t improve in the new environment.  For the more professional salespeople, who actually understand sales and the key role that questioning skills play, the game has changed.  We have to change the way we do things too.</p> <p>One of the biggest problems associated with asking questions is getting the answer.  In the meeting room location, we have perfect audio quality.  Okay, we will get clients who are hard to follow, because their own communication skills are so poor, but at least we can hear them.   All of these modern virtual meeting platforms have poor audio, so just catching the answer can be a struggle.  This is particularly so, if you are dealing in foreign languages.  When they speak English or when I speak Japanese, we have to both expect that there is another level of complexity associated with actually hearing what is being said.</p> <p>The virtual world is nirvana for multi-taskers.  Don’t become one of them when speaking with the client.  Watch the buyer like a hawk, wear a head set, remove all distractions, shift forward in your seat, lean in toward the client on screen. </p> <p>It is tough to discern it on screen, but check their body language for incongruent messages.  This is when they are saying one thing, but doing another thing that negates what they are saying.  Tatemae statements or superficial truths are a classic example of this incongruency.</p> <p>The other tricky part with the audio is if two people speak at the same time, no one can hear clearly what is being said.  Salespeople are rabid interrupters and jumper-inners. They talk over the top of the client when something the buyer said, sparks a thought in their minds. The Japanese language has the verb at the end, so we have to wait until the speaker tells us whether this is present,