John E Flannery of Flannery Sales Systems sits down with long-time friend and Olympic gold medalist Kerri Pottharst. Since retiring from professional volleyball in 2005, Kerri now works with businesses executives, managers and staff to help them overcome fears and reach their goals. John and Kerri discuss these topics as they relate to sales professionals.
John E Flannery, President of Flannery Sales Systems, has been invited to present at a San Diego event sponsored by the Association for Manufacturing Excellence (AME).
AME is the premier organization for the exchange of knowledge in enterprise excellence. Members come together to explore Lean thinking and other enterprise improvement methods, network and exchange best practices.
During this event, John will be presenting ideas for building a lean, customer-focused sales process and discussing how sales and operations can work together to support business planning.
Topics include:
The event will take place from 8am – noon on October 21. For more information or to register, visit the event page.
Earlier this week, we introduced you to the idea that thoroughly understanding your customers’ key business objectives and the challenges inhibiting their fulfillment is the most important element to the sales process, and that traditionally salespeople do a poor job in this phase. If you haven’t read the first part of this series, “Why It Matters,” you can check it out here.
So, the question becomes – how can we help sales reps be more successful? First and foremost, we can arm them with a series of questions designed to get their prospects talking about their challenges in their own words. People are most convinced by ideas they themselves originate, so getting your prospects to define their own objectives and challenges is critical to getting their buy in throughout the sales process.
The following are three types of questions designed to get your prospects talking about their challenges.
Open Questions. Your prospect has discussed his primary business objective – now how to get him talking about why he’s not able to accomplish that objective. These questions are designed to do just that. They uncover the tip of the iceberg, and are the first step in the discovery process.
When you ask questions like this, look for the prospect to make statements like:
Cause Questions. Now that you have the problem defined, the next step is to look for the reasons for the challenge. What’s causing the disparity? Typically there are several causes. Pay close attention as these are the issues you will ultimately try to resolve for the prospect. This information leads you to your presentation.
It’s vital for you to understand – even better than the prospect – what’s causing their challenges. You’ll hear things like:
Keep Them Talking. Learn to direct the conversation and keep your prospects talking. When they are talking, they are giving you valuable information. When you’re monopolizing the conversation, you’re losing an opportunity to discover what will motivate them to take action. Add these types of questions to your repertoire and you’ll gain a deeper understanding of the issues.
With these three types of questions, your sales reps should be able to encourage prospects to fully define their key challenges, which is a critical first step in the qualifying process.
But, there is more. Next sales reps need to get prospects to quantify the impact these challenges have on their business. What is the cost of doing nothing? Here’s where they will be able to establish the value and ROI of your offering. To learn more about quantifying your prospects challenges, stay tuned next week for the third and final installment of our series.