THE ART OF 3 YES IN SALES

For a salesperson to sell, salesman’s pitches have to be a conversation. A good salesperson has to engage their clients. Salespeople have to understand what the challenges facing a client are. Dialogue can only do this.

Ask questions, and you will control the direction and the flow of the conversation. The person asking questions controls the conversation. Ask questions to qualify, ask questions to find the answers, ask questions to gather information for your presentation.

Conversely, if you launch into your solution presentation without asking questions, you have immediately lost control, and I assure you that your potential client will not be listening. Ask questions, and you will build trust and rapport. Building this trust and rapport is a prerequisite, a significant step that needs to occur before someone buys from you.

Asking questions effectively takes a lot of skill and is honed over time and practice, it also requires discipline, knowledge, and confidence. In sales, you do not want to come across as a prosecutor in a court of law that will guarantee your sale will flee.

Though the traditional ‘tell and sell’ style of securing an order still goes on in many industries, the truth is today’s customers, and clients demand a different approach; one based around engagement and trust. The best solution is to stick with a proven methodology to ensure you’re saying the right things to your customers at the right time.

One sales conversation technique that is proficiently used by salespeople at many large companies is called the SPIN approach. It was developed by Neil Rackham and has been proven around the world to drive better sales. Rackham recommends asking four different types of questions to ace the investigation stage and turns more prospects into customers. The “SPIN” in SPIN Selling is an acronym for the four types of sales questions to ask for the best results. These questions are:

· SITUATION questions

· PROBLEM questions

· IMPLICATION questions

· NEED-PAYOFF questions

SPIN is all about asking the right questions, in the correct order, so that you genuinely understand what your customer wants and needs and so that you can position your service or product as the apparent solution.

Here’s how it works:

Situation Questions

Kick off the investigation stage with a few situation questions. These are the questions you ask to find out the background information you need to make sense of the prospect’s situation and how you can help them. It enables you to gain clarity so you can better understand your client’s position.

Here are some examples of right situation questions:

· How do you currently manage your customer’s contact details?

· What type of software do you run here?

· How do you maintain an overview of how your individual sales reps are performing?

Problem Questions

After prospects fill you in on the situation, their problems might seem obvious to you. You might be tempted to launch into the benefits of what you’re selling. But resist the urge! Asking questions to discover what’s causing your prospect pain and also get prospects to acknowledge the problem on their own instead of bringing it up directly will lead to getting a yes from your prospect and far more sales. Also, problem questions are highly effective at encouraging a prospect to identify an issue that’s been overlooked.

Here are some examples of right problem questions:

· Do you find its expensive adding new users to your CRM?

· What’s the biggest problem you’re facing so far when managing your sales pipeline?

· Are you satisfied with your current software?

Implication Questions

Implication questions are probably the most critical part of the process. You’ve found out more about the prospect’s situation and got them to identify their problem areas. Now’s the time to make the prospect feel the pain of those problems in a way that motivates them to act.

Implication questions get prospects to understand the full extent of not fixing their problem. The goal here is to make the customer identify the effects, consequences, and long-term impact of letting the problem continue unchecked. In short, to encourage a prospect to consider your solution in any seriousness, they need to have a firm grasp on how severe the problem is.

Here are some examples of implication questions:

· What’s the average cost of getting a new customer when a lead doesn’t make it to the end of your sales pipeline?

· If training on your CRM is costly and time-consuming, what does that mean for new reps when they start?

· What are the time and financial effects on your operation when your software crashes?

Need-Payoff Questions

The final stage of SPIN Selling is to encourage a prospect to consider how valuable a solution to the problem they’ve identified, would be. Need-payoff questions push them over the edge by getting them to see the benefits of your answer. The secret to getting results with need-payoff questions is to ensure the buyer specifies the benefits themselves.

It’s much more persuasive that way. Need-payoff questions get prospects’ imaginations racing about how different their lives could be if their problem were solved. The more benefits you can draw out, the higher the perceived value of your solution and the better the chance of closing the sale with a YES.

Here are some examples of need-payoff questions:

· Do you see the value if your sales team could keep up with peak demand?

· If you could cut the amount of time spent training new staff on your CRM, what impact would that have?

· Why is it important to tighten up your sales pipeline?

By structuring your sales conversations in this order, you won’t have to worry about following a script. And yet the conversation will flow naturally so that you’ll be able to help your client see how you can genuinely help them and you can always get a Yes from your customers.

CONCLUSION

The key to establishing rapport and trust with a prospect is to ask them questions in the right way. But instead, SPIN Selling teaches you how to ask questions to build rapport and position your service as to the solution. The questioning sequence in the SPIN model taps directly into the psychology of the buying process of today’s savvy buyers.

Overall, the SPIN methodology is one of the best sales processes available today to change the way you do business with your clients. Companies like Motorola, Xerox, IBM, and others all use this process and have reported a massive difference in how well their sales teams perform.

To always close a sale and get a YES, the salesman must control the conversation. Questions make customers think and respond. Asking the right questions will give you the responses you need to provide customers with the proper guidance. Spin your marketing and boost your sales!