Discovery: Questioning for Results - Ch 6 of How You Make the Sale at Catch a Gideon

February 2nd, 2007 by digerati

This is Chapter 6 of the How You Make The Sale Series at Catch a Gideon. This chapter is about the discovery phase of the sales process. In this phase you (the salesman) attempt to needs of your customer.

The theme for this phase is “How can I be helpful for you today?” Use open questions to get the customer to tell you about their problem. Open questions are ones that require a narrative response, not a yes or no. Responses can give a lot of useful information. Here’s some examples:

Tell me about…
Explain…
What happened when…
Why…
How…
How do you feel about…

Open questions take alot of time. It might be a problem if your customer likes to talk. It’s really only a problem if you are selling a simple product. If you sell sponges for instance, you don’t need much information to make a good decision. If you’re building a content management system for a large organization…talk is exactly what you need.

You can use closed questions (yes or no responses) once you know the customer. This allows faster information gathering once you know the general area of your solution.

There are three methods of questioning. The types of questions you ask are important, but the order can be just as important:
From general to specific: start with open questions, then narrow down to closed to determine the final solutions.
Tepee: start with closed questions and go towards open as the topic becomes focused.
Hourglass: start with general, narrow the focus with closed, then return to open to find an ideal solution.

There are some areas to focus on during the Discovery portion of the sales process. One is the core problem to be solved. You can discuss things like, if this purcahse solves your problem, how will things be different? You might ask how this purchase will make things better (for your business or how much time it will save, etc).

If the customer uses an existing product, you can discuss the most frustrating aspects of that product. Also emphasis how much they are currently spending on maintenance.

It is also important to find out who else will be involved in the sales process, what criteria will determine the product decision, etc. Details on these are included in the book.

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How You Make the Sale is an excellent book about improving sales through better relationships with your customers and better understand of how a successful sale process works.