I have been involved in sales for the last 30 years and the last 20 of those years specifically selling legal technology solutions to corporate counsel and law firms globally. Throughout my experience, I've noticed that regardless of industry or sales methodology, many reps often overlook certain fundamental principles. Even with the abundance of sales technology available, getting these basic principles wrong can undermine any technological advantages. In this series, I will break down 10 principles that, when followed, will help you stand out from the majority of reps who assume their prospects automatically care about what they have to say.
If you missed part one you can find it HERE.
In part 2 of this series, we'll be delving into Questioning (in person and virtually). Albert Einstein said, “Only the one who does not question is safe from making a mistake.” Playing it safe, assuming, not questioning, and not being curious will get you absolutely nowhere in a sales conversation. Even in our rapport building we are showing genuine interest in our prospect, helping them to trust us more and open up about what is going on!
Set an Agenda
Once we have landed our appointment we need to start by setting the scene for the client and that involves the first step in questioning, the all important often forgotten agenda. Why bother? What does this even have to do with questioning? Lets unpick that. An agenda is a powerful tool to allow us to suggest an outline of our meeting, sent in advance, giving the client a chance to comment or suggest other items. It also ensures that they invite the right people. You may have booked your appointment with a champion who is not the actual decision maker, and if you include an agenda item, for example, about departmental priorities which your champion may not know, they may take the initiative to include their department head in the meeting.
The agenda also gives you permission to talk to your potential client about their business and it shows that you are taking things seriously. Do this one thing consistently and it will make a huge difference.
Uncovering Key Business Issues
Alright, so you finished the rapport stage, they are warming up, conversation is flowing, they know you care. Now you state the agenda, which was previously agreed, and ask one more time if they want to add anything. The first thing we want to uncover is the Business Issue and we will accomplish this by using the three main forms of questioning.
- Open ended
- Probing
- Confirming
Open Ended. These types of questions normally can’t be answered ‘yes’ or ‘no’. They are broad questions designed to draw out high level information. For example, “tell me about some of the challenges your department is facing right now?” “If you had a magic wand what is the one thing you would change right now?” “How is your company/firm approaching Large Language Models” This opens the door to the next phase of questioning.
Probing. If you are a parent with a young child you will hear this often… WHY WHY WHY. Or the psychiatrist asking that classic question, “tell me more about that”. As the word probing demands, we want to know more and to do that we need to probe. So here is an example:
Q (open): How is your company/firm approaching Large Language Models
A: We have been speaking to various vendors about ways of harnessing our data.
Q: (probing) What type of data are you looking to harness?
A: Our clause library
Q: (probing) By harnessing your clause library, what is the overall goal.
You get the picture right?
Confirming Questions are the third and final element in our questioning toolit. “Let me make sure I got that right, we are moving on to confirming questions” - see, you are a pro now! So why use confirming questions? They have two purposes.
- Showing your prospect that you are actively listening
- Giving them the opportunity to clarify or add information if you (or they) missed something
You can find thousands of examples of these three vital questioning techniques and they are part of most sales methodologies, however many sales people throw out the line and at the first bite they set the hook and then try and close…
Guess what? By rushing, you probably missed out on a much bigger fish!
Next time, we’ll talk about what we do when we uncover a business issue!
I value your feedback. How has questioning worked for you?
