The Focus of Questions: The Power Tool in the Sales Toolkit

Questions – The Power Tool in the Sales Toolkit 

You can never underestimate the power of the properly used question.  When we talk about the relationship sales process, we focus on understanding the client’s business, its growth, and its challenges.  To understand what that means from the client’s perspective, sales must ask questions.  Questions are everything – the power tool in your sales toolkit.  Questions move the focus to the client.  What we know about the client, at the most tangible level, and how we can differentiate and position our product/solution, depend on the information the sales group discovers.  The only way to do that is with the best and most efficient questioning process - the client diagnostic.  It is not solely about the question, but the question starts the information process and then keeps that information process going.

Here are the key skills that are required during the questioning process: 

• Asking questions
• Listening to the answers
• Engaging in the two-way conversation
• Keeping focused and using mental agility to process all presented information

Caution: This Is Not Easy

The following information outlines the basic information about the questioning process:

1. Questions show you how to turn an ordinary conversational skill – the art of asking questions – into a formidable business tool.
2. Questions demonstrate not only your intelligence but also the depth of your attention and concern.  When you know how to ask the right questions, you can positively control the situation to an optimal outcome.
   
   

To better understand the power that questions have during the relationship sales process, I invite you to learn more about our Sales & Business Development program as part of the Phoenix Strategic Performance Institute. This program helps you to strategically align your sales process to accelerate the relationship sales process, creating corporate growth and building strategic value.