Improve Your Win Rate and Shorten Your Sales Cycle by Doing This

In September I wrote this article on the difference between asking good, tough and great questions.

I included examples all three types of question in the article.

There is also a proper sequence:  Good question.  Tough Question.  Great question.

You will get immediate feedback on how effective your questions are:  Your prospects will say, “Good question” when you ask one.  They will say, “Great question” when you ask one.  And they will stop and struggle before answering one of your tough questions.

Many salespeople make the mistake of preparing questions in advance. Salespeople who do that might be able to stumble onto one good question.  But great questions and tough questions must be spontaneous and in response to something your prospect already said when they answered prior questions.

I’ll share a role-play from a training program that wonderfully demonstrates what I’m talking about as well as the kind of listening skills required in order to ask good, tough and great questions. 

The role-play sheds much needed light on what salespeople tend to do on their calls, even when they have been trained to use a consultative approach to selling.  Instead of listening, they skip ahead, and rush to the close.  Ironically, the proper approach is counter intuitive. You will shorten your sales cycle, improve your win rate and gain traction by slowing down, while speeding up leads to longer sales cycles and lower win rates.

The role-play runs for about 26-minutes but please don’t let that discourage you from listening.  You’ll learn so much about listening and asking questions, you’ll learn just how impactful role-plays can be, and you’ll better understand the the most useful approach to training salespeople; powerful,interactive role-plays.

Watch and listen to the role-play: The actual role-play begins at around 50 seconds in. 

Early on I reference developing SOB Quality.  You can learn more about what SOB Quality means by watching this 3-minute video.

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