What questions should I ask in a sales call?

STAGE 1: PREPARATION

STEP #1: Plan your questioning beforehand. Always take a few minutes prior to a sales call to plan out the types of questions that you’re going to ask. Review your relationship with the customer and identify gaps in your understanding of the customer’s computing infrastructure, purchasing patterns and overall business direction. Then decide the general questioning areas that you’re going to pursue.

STEP #2. Target your questions appropriately. There are six “lines of inquiry” that can help you understand exactly where the customer may have needs. They are:

1. What is the current state of the customer’s business?
2. What is the desired state of the customer’s business?
3. What challenges prevent the customers business moving from 1 to 2 above?
4. Which business and personal motivators that influence the final decision?
5. What are the resources, authority and budget that can be committed to moving from 1 to 2?
6. What in the past has been tried (but failed) to move from 1 to 2?

Please note that these are NOT the questions you’re supposed to be asking. They’re the general “areas” that you’ll want to find out about.

STEP #3: Don’t rehearse your questions. While you should have a clear idea of the type of questions that you’re going to ask, you don’t want them sound canned and rehearsed. Rather than writing out entire questions, prior to the meeting, write on your notepad some keywords that will remind you of the general line of inquiry that you want to pursue.

STAGE 2: EXECUTION

STEP #4: Have a conversation, not an inquisition. It’s a mistake to try to extract too much information too fast. Instead, get answers to your lines of inquiry over the course of a series of meetings. For new accounts, you should strive to find out as much as the customer will tell you. But for existing accounts, pick one or two lines of inquiry and set a goal to get good answers for at least one of them.

STEP #5: Really listen to the customer. Sales reps are goal oriented and thus prefer conversations that move quickly. However, it’s a big mistake to spend valuable “face-time” watching the customer’s mouth move while you formulate what you’re going to say next. Instead, really listen to the customer, pause to think about what the customer said, and then decide where you want to conversation to go.

STEP #6: Ask enticing questions, not leading ones. Rather than asking leading questions (e.g. “Have you ever thought of installing a CRM system to increase sales?”) couch questions in neutral and abstract terms that entice the customer into give you the information that you need. (e.g. “In a perfect world, what would a vendor be providing to help you increase sales?”)

BTW: The above is based on a conversation with Wayne Turmel, formerly a big deal sales trainer, but now chiefly known as the Cranky Middle Manager.