By Mike Yates

In Part 1 we identified that one of the key areas to help you become outstanding in sales is the ability to ask outstanding questions.  To be more specific:  how you develop your meetings with prospective clients.  Do you rehearse your meetings in advance? Do you practice to deliver really powerful questions at the right moment?

Powerful questions can stop a prospect dead in their tracks during a meeting and really make them think about how your business may benefit their business.  No matter what the prospect was thinking, you will suddenly realise that they are now totally focused on you.  Powerful questions have a dynamic effect on prospects – the right one at the right moment can instantly flip a sale into your hands.
You may ask: “ok, so what’s a powerful question then?” (Great question!)  Well, what works for one person may not work for another.  What works for one business may not work for another.  One of the keys here is to measure the results you are getting.  Write out some questions and simply try them out, then try them out again – in different situations.  Only by doing this will you find out what works and what doesn’t in your industry.  That’s how you will identify powerful questions for your business.  As an example, if somebody said to you, “I’m really quite happy with my current provider” or “I’m not interested” (which are common objections that you’ve probably heard a few times) you can react in one of two ways: You could respond:
1) “Er…Ok then” and lose the call, but make yourself feel better by asking “Is it ok if I call you in a couple of months” to which of course they will say yes to get you off the phone (or cut short a meeting) – not recommended !

Or

2) You could respond with “may I ask you a question, just one question before I go?” to which you will get a 99 % positive response (because you’ve asked permission).  You will then ask a question designed to get this person’s full attention – they will then be totally focused on the answer to the question.

When you are designing powerful questions all you need to remember are that there are only two primary motivators – people either want to ‘move away from’ or ‘towards’ something in their lives.  The next thing to remember is that the ‘away from’ motivation is normally far more powerful than ‘towards’ motivation.  So, as an example, say I am meeting with a business owner who is working 90 hours per week and is stressed, I could ask ‘How long do you want to carry on running the business like this?’ or ‘What are you going to do differently that will give you a different result?’

As another example, say you are selling life insurance, and you have identified that someone is under insured you may wish to ask ‘Ok with the level of insurance you have at present, just how long are you planning to stay dead for?’ This is certainly to the point – and is very likely to gain attention.  It’s a powerful question designed to make the person sit up and seriously consider what will happen with their family should they die – it’s also a great ‘away from‘ motivator.

The main message today is that a powerful question will take a prospect that may not even be considering your product (and, quite frankly, have more pressing things on their mind) suddenly have your full attention.  So, to be an outstanding salesperson, designing outstanding questions is one of the key areas of your profession.

Time for you to try something:

Beginning your question with: What, Where, Which, How or When

What are the top 10  powerful questions you can ask your prospects in your business?

Happy Questioning

This article is contributed by Mike Yates, Business Growth Specialist, www.121business.co.uk

By Mike Yates

As you may be aware, one of the keys to success in sales is to build trust with your prospects and clients. The best way of building trust is by listening to people talk about their problems and their needs. The only sure fire way to do this is by listening and then asking questions. One of the first lessons I learnt when I started out in my sales career was ‘you have two ears and one mouth – now use them proportionally!’

The very best salespeople have one thing in common – they are excellent at asking questions. The questions you ask are your ticket to sales success.  Additionally you may wish to consider reading their ‘buying signals’ and concentrate on asking the right questions at the right time.

This is where the fun comes in however as, for various reasons, most salespeople are nervous when they are in a ‘sales situation’ with customers and prospective clients.  By the way – if you are thinking that you must ‘overcome this’ or that the ‘nervous bit is wrong’, then I can assure you that it is good to have that feeling when in front of prospects – as this keeps the adrenaline flowing and keeps you sharp.  Sometimes we just need to tap into this in the right way to maximise our performance. 
So why do we feel nervous? There are many reasons but the common ones are:

1. Fear of failure
2. Fear of Rejection (they might say ‘no!’.  Now how scary would that be?)
3. Fear of looking stupid or not being able to close the sale

The list is endless.

However, when we are nervous we tend to do lose our normal or ‘natural’ flow.  We tend to either speed up our speech or we become much quieter and say very little.  Another result of nervousness can also be no longer being ‘present’ with our prospect i.e. worrying about the outcome of the meeting, or what we are going to say next.  The end result of this behaviour can generally be for us to miss crucial ‘buying signals’ and then to wonder what happened and why we didn’t close the sale.  The danger here also is that we then go on a downward ‘results / reinforcing negative beliefs cycle’.  End result? We tell ourselves: ‘I’m no good at sales’

So the important thing to remember first is ‘questions’.  So you may be thinking to yourself – so what questions should I ask?  Firstly, consider this: Do the top salespeople just have ‘the gift of the gab’ and ‘wing it’ with general questions when in a sales situation?  The answer is a resounding ‘no!’.  Why though?

Because they prepare their questions in advance. They prepare their whole meeting in terms of questions.

On the flipside I am sure we have all been sold to by what I call the traditional salesperson (door to door double glazing perhaps?).  They think the best way to get the order is to talk you into submisison.  Not only do they talk, and talk, and talk, and talk but they also tell you how wonderful THEY are and THEIR PRODUCT is.

Now another lesson in sales is to understand that the prospect doesn’t care too much about YOU or your PRODUCTS (sorry to dispel that belief!).  They do care big time though on what your product may do for them in terms of saving them something or making their life easier in some way.  There is no skill in talking – anyone can do that.  There is a high level of skill, however, in structuring your presentation and guiding your prospect into understanding how your product will help them.

Here’s another point.  I’m highly into ethical selling.  What do I mean by that? Ok, imagine I am in front of a business and offering our services to help their business.  If I can’t identify a need and the business owner doesn’t fit our criteria for being a great client, then I will not pursue the sale.  We won’t sell our services unless our prospect has a strong need and they will benefit in some way.  Now why would we do that?  Easy, because this business wants great clients who will refer other clients to us – we don’t want businesses who don’t have the right attributes to be a great client and who may feel they have been miss-sold a product.  They just aren’t good long term clients.  And it’s not good for them.
Think about that for a moment in your own business – who are your best (and worst) clients? What are their attributes? Which ones would you really not wish to sell to again?  What was different about them?

Some food for thought for your business this week…look out for part 2 where we will home in further on what type of questions you might like to ask in a sales situation…

This article is contributed by Mike Yates, Business Growth Specialist, www.121business.co.uk

By Mike Yates

I was reading an article recently about Tiger Woods who many people consider to be at the top of his game.  A remarkable fact about him, however, is that he has a coach (he has always had one).  He is taking constructive feedback from a golfer and coach that he could undoubtedly beat hands down.  So, the question you may be asking at this point is: ‘why’?  Well, I would hazard a guess that he has a coach for the reasons that all high performing individuals have one, namely:

1) Sometimes we’re just too close to the ‘coal face’ – namely we can’t see the ‘wood from the trees’ in our own businesses, and

2) If we are not getting better then we must be getting worse…

Consider this in your own business.  Are you ‘standing still’ in your business?  Or are you continuously striving to be your personal best through innovation and utilising the best technology has to offer? How effective is your customer service?

It has been said that in five years time 80% of the things we use in our day to day activities will be defunct and replaced with new technology (consider the last five years: how cars, household products, computer systems, mobile phones, the Internet and other technology have rapidly advanced, it really is quite incredible).

What steps are you taking within your business to continuously improve and develop your products and services?  Have you considered that you need improve at what you are doing or are you doing the same that you were doing this time last year?

Anticipation is one of the keys to running a successful business – staying one step ahead of your game.  One of the reasons businesses fail is down to the fact that they don’t go with change – they simply stay as they are or change slowly whilst everything in their field is changing at a much faster rate.  One day they suddenly realise the parameters in their industry have changed, the market has changed and they’re out of business.

Food for thought for you:

What is changing in your industry? What do you anticipate will happen in the next 12 months? The next five years? Thinking outside the box – how can you diversify your business for maximum growth that will keep you in the game?

What assumptions do you draw from this ‘top tip’ about your own business? Challenge any assumptions you make continuously.  What are you assuming that you consider is true that may not be true at all?  What could you change?

If you have trouble with creativity, then why not brainstorm ridiculous ideas on ways to diversify and improve your business?  Write down 50 ‘out of the box‘ ideas as fast as you can.  What happens if you get some really diverse ideas?  Would it surprise you to learn that these types of ideas have resulted in incredible breakthroughs.  I have a few favourite quotes where people have made assumptions in business based on their beliefs at the time.  These are all the more amazing when you see how the market has developed since.

Try this one for size: “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” — Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

What assumptions have you made about your current market? From the earlier exercise: How many new ideas do you think you could work further with to improve your business?

This article is contributed by Mike Yates, Business Growth Specialist, www.121business.co.uk

By Mike Yates

Embrace the objections of your prospects and customers
Right now and over the next few weeks, consider the regular objections you get from prospects as a positive step as well as an inevitable way to generate increased business.  Objections confirm a certain level of desire for your product or service and actually help you to better assess the next steps that you should take in a sales process. For the prospect, it’s how you respond to these objections that help them determine whether or not to buy.  As I firmly educate business owners in training workshops “Objections are not to be feared, they are to be welcomed as they can be regarded as buying signals”

Hence the responses to your top objections (those you and your team hear most often) just can’t be ‘winged’ on the spur of the moment.  They should be noted, planned, prepared and rehearsed with a professional’s level of attention.

What makes the best response to an objection?
First of all, show an appreciation for the objection to validate your prospect’s concerns and then address the issue very directly. At this stage if you are defensive, evasive, manipulative or sarcastic then you just end up further away from your goal.  Leave the cheesy responses to your competition.

Role play the delivery of each response with your team members, as well as other individuals outside your business. Ensure you get genuine feedback, make appropriate changes, and then practice the delivery of each response until you have them locked in your memory and learnt by heart.

Consider yourself as your prospects problem solver.  Selling is about helping your prospects and customers solve a problem by identifying a need and then providing a product to satisfy that need.  Aim to be yourself, listen intently and want to help and give your clients an outstanding service.  When you need to be – be direct.

This article is contributed by Mike Yates, Business Growth Specialist, www.121business.co.uk