Are your sales team members really asking enough questions? Join me as I share how too many sales reps today continue to follow a “Ready – Fire – Aim” philosophy of selling asking too few questions of their buyers and just going right to their presentation? Think your reps could be asking more qualifying and discovery questions from their buyers…so they can sell even more?
Hi, Jim Pancero, helping you become a stronger leader of your sales team. Have you noticed sales reps today seem to have forgotten about asking questions? It's been amazing to me. We've recently done a number of new purchases for our house. And each of those cases, going and talking to sales reps. It was amazing how the sales reps really didn't listen or ask us anything about what we wanted. All they did as soon as they knew what we were looking for was start presenting what they had.
We recently changed health clubs, and wanted to join a new health club. Walked in there and said, "We're interested in joining your health club." They said, "Great. Let me give you a tour." And they showed us all of the equipment, the racquetball courts, the Jazzercise, the cycling rooms, weightlifting rooms, all these different areas, but they never asked us what we wanted out of a club. What we want is a swimming pool. My wife and I use that for exercise and that's about it. So we go and swim laps. So I'm going into this health club, really only interested in their pool for the membership and why we would consider joining them versus somebody else. But they had to show us the whole thing. They never asked us, "Why do you want to join the health club?"
We've been buying some appliances. We've been upgrading our house. And each of those cases, we go in and say, "We're interested in looking at a new refrigerator." Nobody has said why. And if they would have heard a story as to why we are looking for what or why we were buying one now, it could very well have improved their presentation by making it more focused on what we want.
How many of your sales reps are guilty of this, of this ready fire aim philosophy? That as soon as they hear what a customer really wants, they just start presenting to it without asking any qualifying questions or finding out what the uniqueness of this need is for the customer so they can better address it in their presentation. Just not asking enough questions today. Is this something you might be able to improve with your team?