Sales Commandment #7: The Art & Science of Asking Questions
Thou shalt always remember to ask questions and listen. This commandment is critical if you truly want to be a great salesperson. This video is a part of our new series with Mark Trinkle: The 10 Commandments of Sales Success. Watch Commandment #7 now!
Transcript:
Hello everyone. This is Mark Trinkle, Chief Growth Officer for Anthony Cole Training Group, and today we have worked our way to number seven in our 10 part series that we’ve called The 10 Commandments for Sales Success. Commandment number seven is Thou shalt always remember to ask questions and listen. In fact, I want you to get really good at asking questions and listening. And here’s why. One of the key marks of difference between average salespeople and great salespeople is that great salespeople have figured this commandment out, and they understand that for them to be great, then they need to be great at asking questions and listening. Now, by listening, I mean listening with the intention to understand, as opposed to listening with the intent to interrupt the Art and Science of Asking Questions is critical. You might say, “Well, Mark, that’s kind of obvious, isn’t it?”
Well, I don’t know how obvious it is. Sometimes the concerning thing about obvious things is at the end of the day, they’re not that obvious. But we do know that we ask questions to get information. We know that open-ended questions are the type of questions we want to ask, because those open-ended questions foster and promote dialogue. And while it’s okay to open a conversation with easy questions, you make your money by asking the harder questions, the difficult questions, the questions that might be inconvenient, the questions that might be uncomfortable for you, and quite frankly, some questions that you maybe don’t want to hear the answer to, but you absolutely need to hear the answer to those questions. Let me leave you with this. The light bulb really went off for me when I heard one of our clients say that great salespeople have this lasting impact or this lingering effect on their prospects.
What he meant by that was that they’re so good in the meeting that the prospect can’t stop thinking about that conversation, that discussion, even after that salesperson has left. How good are you at getting your prospects to the point where they can’t stop thinking about the conversation they had with you? Here’s what we know. People, prospects, they can ignore you. They might not reply to your voicemail. They might not respond to your email. They can ignore you, but they cannot ignore, they cannot escape their own thoughts. Do what you can to make sure that they keep thinking about that conversation even days after you’ve left them. Have a great day.
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