273: The Sales Questioning Model

<p>Do you have a sales questioning model?  Is there a journey you want the buyer to complete? Do you have questions organised which will lead them along that path? Or are you all over the place, following your “muse” instead?  Surprisingly, a lot of salespeople have very little structure in their sales meetings with buyers.  Why would that be the case?  They may be untrained in sales.  They may be constantly winging it. Or they may have a partial system, because they won’t be shackled by any system and want to be a free bird, to fly in whatever direction the sales conversation goes.</p> <p> </p> <p>This is ridiculous.  We don’t have unlimited time with the buyer and we have tons of competitors offering similar solutions.  We have to get to a quick understanding of the buyer’s needs and then come up with a solution that perfectly matches what they need. Having a plan around asking the required questions is the most efficient and effective methodology and we should all be doing that as close to “genius” levels as possible.</p> <p> </p> <p>The questions we need to ask have a cadence, a logical order, a flow. Usually, the process never gets completed in the order we are setting out here today, simply because buyers will pull the conversation in different directions.  That is fine.  We cannot predict what the buyer will say or will ask or what segues they will pursue. That is why having a questioning model is vital. We need to keep the conversation on track, that is to say, the track of our choosing and get to a purchase result.  There are four questions in this model, none of which are complex or difficult.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>As-Is Questions</strong>. </p> <p> </p> <p>These are aimed at establishing the base line.  What has the client been doing so far and how have the results been?  What is the situation within the organisation at the moment?  What are they doing that works and what hasn’t been working well enough?  Sometimes, the client will start telling us where they want to be.  That is fine, but we need to