Become the Doctor of Sales

As a salesperson, you need to know the correct questions to ask your potential client. The right questions can help diagnose your prospects needs. They say sales people must think like doctors-they ask relevant questions to diagnose the situation and problem before presenting a solution. Knowing what your prospects needs and problems are allows you as a salesperson to know what you can offer to help make their business operations a success! The following questions are from the SPIN questioning system:

Situational Questions: These are data-gathering questions that uncover facts and background information about the buyers business. Many of these questions can be answered from the prospecting process. It’s important to only ask essential situation questions since they may quickly bore the prospect. Examples are:

-Do you purchase or lease?

-Who is involved in the purchasing decision?

-Who are your current suppliers?

Problem Questions: These are questions designed to identify a customer’s problem and needs explicitly.  They better further identify specific difficulties, developing problems, and areas of dissatisfaction.

-How critical is this component for your production?

-What are disadvantages of the way you’re doing it now?

-How difficult is it to process orders with your present system?

Implication Questions: These questions follow and relate to the problem questions. They help the buyer in thinking of the potential consequences of the problem and understanding the urgency to resolve them.

-Does your overtime expense increase when your equipment goes down?

-What happens when your supplier is late with the shipment?

-How does this affect profitability?

Need-Payoff Questions: These help to build up the value of your proposed solution in the customer’s -mind. They are to propose a solution and develop commitment from the buyer.

-Would more frequent deliveries allow you to increase productivity?

-Would you be interested in increasing productivity by 15%?

-If we could provide you with increased reliability, would you be interested?