Power Questions to Win the Sale

Overcoming Nine Critical Sales Challenges

Andrew Sobel

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781118651100
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Use the power of questions to accelerate your sales process and gain client commitment.

Skillfully build rapport. Establish your credibility. Uncover a client's issues. Determine if your prospect is really ready to buy. Get commitment to a next step. Power Questions to Win the Sale provides specific strategies and techniques to help you successfully manage the most common challenges in sales. For each step in the sales process, it gives you a series of thoughtful questions that will help you rapidly turn a contact into a client.

Drawing on the author's bestselling Power Questions, this short e-book shows you how to:

• Sequence your agenda and use questions at the right moments in the sales process
• Establish yourself as an expert through credibility-building questions rather than slide presentations
• Draw out the client's agenda of essential priorities and goals
• Position your proposal to win by meeting eight key preconditions before you submit it
• Unblock a sale that is stalled

Power Questions to Win the Sale is a practical roadmap for balancing advocacy and inquiry during the sales process and winning new business more consistently and confidently.

Chapter 1

The Right Question Really Can Win the Sale

David is an extraordinary rainmaker. On this particular day, he is calling on a senior executive at a large telecommunications company. It is the height of the re-engineering boom of the early 1990s, and every corporation, large and small, has adopted the new gospel of process optimization. With such strong demand, re-engineering is an easy sale. But it will be a short-lived boom, and David, my colleague, knows it.

The client explains to David that the company has already hired several other consulting firms. “There's not that much to talk about, really,” the executive says somewhat dismissively. “We're very focused on re-engineering right now, and we've got plenty of help to do that. But thanks for dropping by.”

David ignores the client's dismissal. He waits, allowing a significant pause. Then he waits some more.

“We used to do re-engineering,” David says quietly.

“What? What do you mean?”

“We used to do re-engineering,” David repeats.

“But…what do you mean? I don't see…” The client is almost sputtering. He is put off, yet intrigued. How insolent—we “used” to do re-engineering! It is the very thing he thinks will rescue his company.

“Today,” David adds, “we help our clients do something that has more impact. We combine process redesign with improvements in people skills, technology, and also leadership. I can give you a few examples. Have you considered this type of cross-functional approach?”

“Hmm.…”

Then he asks, “What changes do you think you'll have to make in those four areas to support your new network globalization strategy?”

David is off to the races.

Six months later, my former firm—with David leading the sales process—sells a $40 million project to the client. For that time, it is one of the largest management consulting contracts in the world. And it starts with what I call a credibility-building question. It is a question—several, really—that simultaneously demonstrates David's knowledge and evokes the client's curiosity.

Fast-forward 20 years. A client calls me up. “Andrew, I want to tell you about an experience in using one of your questions.” Uh-oh, I'm thinking. Maybe I have led him astray. He has just read my book Power Questions, which I co-authored with Jerry Panas.

“One of our biggest clients called me up to say they are not renewing our contract. It's been a very difficult relationship. Most of the problems were outside our control, and the client did not invest much in making the relationship work from their side.”

He goes on: “At our meeting last week, we tried to make our case. But the client had decided to award the new contract to another provider. I tried to explain how we had really done our best, and that they hadn't completely fulfilled their responsibilities in the relationship, but nothing seemed get through.

“We left, disappointed and frustrated. It was a lost cause.”

“I'm sorry it didn't work out,” I tell him. I feel bad—I guess my power questions had not helped my client very much in this situation.

“But there's more to the story,” my client continues. “That night, I drafted a brief e-mail, summarizing our arguments and our sincere desire to make things right. After a great deal of thought, I ended the e-mail with a question from your book: ‘Can we start over?’

“I hesitated to write that, but then decided—what the heck, I have nothing to lose. I hit ‘Send,’ and went to bed.”

“And then what?” I ask. I'm leaning into my desk now, holding the phone tightly. I don't want it to show, but I'm dying to hear what happened!

“The next morning, sure enough, I had a reply in my inbox.”

“And?”

“‘We agree,’ my client wrote, ‘let's start over.’ We met a few days later, and they re-awarded us a three-year contract—an even larger one than the first. There's no question in my mind about it,” he tells me. “That unorthodox question—Can we start over?—sealed the deal.”

Good questions really can win the sale. But as these examples illustrate, you must ask the right questions at the right moment—you can't read from a list. So use the questions in this book judiciously. Pick the ones that are appropriate for your particular conversation, and if possible, tailor them.

To be effective at using power questions, you must be thoughtful, sensitive, and a bit courageous. You also have to relax and be prepared to go places you had not anticipated.

Chapter 2

Clients Have Changed—Are You Keeping Up?

You already know that it's important to ask a lot of questions during the sales process. It doesn't matter whether you're talking to a new prospect or an existing client—questions are a key tool to uncover their issues and sharpen your understanding of them.

But there are two problems. First, clients are much more sophisticated and demanding than they used to be. Your questions need to be correspondingly sharper, more thoughtful, and more incisive. Second, a lot of the advice that's been written about asking questions is outdated or just plain wrong. Today's clients won't put up with simplistic questions like “What keeps you up at night?” They won't tolerate manipulative questions such as “If I could show you a way to save 20 percent, would you give us an order?”

Clients also insist on receiving value during the sales process—they want value for time. They don't want to spend an hour with someone who is going to lead them through a series of plodding questions about their business. Your questions need to contribute to value for time.

What's the solution? Ask thoughtful, authentic, informed questions that help you add value in the sales process and move you toward a deeper understanding of your clients and their issues. Then, add insightful perspectives and points of view about how your client's business needs to change and improve.

In short, you succeed with today's clients with a powerful blend of advocacy and inquiry.

In Power Questions: Build Relationships, Win New Business, and Influence Others, Jerry Panas and I set out a manifesto for how to use questions to transform your relationships at work and at home. The reaction from readers has been overwhelmingly positive, and many have asked us for even more questions that are specific to challenging relationship-building situations.

In response I've written two companion ebooks to help you acquire new clients and then develop those relationships for life. In this one, Power Questions to Win the Sale, I focus on how to use questions specifically during the sales and business development process. I also give you the essential strategies you need to successfully o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Chapter 1: The Right Question Really Can Win the Sale
• Chapter 2: Clients Have Changed—Are You Keeping Up?
• Chapter 3: Challenge One: Plan a Great Meeting
• Chapter 4: Challenge Two: Sequence Your Questions
• Chapter 5: Challenge Three: Build Rapport
• Chapter 6: Challenge Four: Establish Your Credibility
• Chapter 7: Challenge Five: Understand Their Issues
• Chapter 8: Challenge Six: Develop a Need
• Chapter 9: Challenge Seven: Create a Next Step
• Chapter 10: Challenge Eight: Position Your Proposal to Win
• Chapter 11: Challenge Nine: Unblock a Sale That Is Stalled
• Chapter 12: Conclusion
• Excerpt from Power Questions
• About the Author
• Other Wiley Books by Andrew Sobel