Gathering information

In sales, the goal is often to get the customer to want to buy, rather than trying to sell the product or service to them. The way in which a sales person does this is based on the way they ask questions.

Most questions will be related to soft facts, because these will allow you to build a rapport with the client, and use a relationship to make the sale. However, when it comes to getting the hard facts there are a number of different methods of questioning.

1 – Umbrella questions. “Tell me about x” or “describe y”

2 – Open/Probing questions. “What is your biggest concern regarding....?”

When asking open questions, there are many words you can use – namely, ‘What, why, who, when, where, which, and how’. However, generally speaking a sales person will avoid ‘why’ as it seems confrontational. So instead of using ‘why did you...’ they will use ‘what made you...’.

3 – Closed questions. “Are you...?”, “do you...?”, “will you...?”

Closed questions are often used simply to regain control of the conversation if the customer begins to digress or talk too long about one topic.

These questions will often follow a pattern designed to get the customer to really think about what their situation is and lead themselves to making a change. The pattern is as follows.

1- Establish a fact – “What is the current situation?”

2- Get an opinion – “How do you feel about that?”

3- Work out the implication – “What effect will this have on your family?”

4- Think about Change – “Is there any reason you wouldn’t want to look at that further?”