One of the minor ironies of my profession is that, when I’m booked to speak at trade shows and conventions, one of the most popular topics requested is “How to Give a Great Sales Presentation,” or something of the like. It’s also one of the most requested articles. The problem is that I can’t teach people how to give a truly great presentation without teaching them how to be great questioners. The key to the great sales presentations is in the questions you ask beforehand.
That’s because great sales presentations make the customer feel like it’s their sales presentation and not yours. Customers buy from their presentations – not yours. And the only way you can do this is by asking great questions beforehand to build your presentation. So, consider this the supplement to so many of those speaking programs I give. Here are five ways to make your questioning (and therefore your presentations) much more effective:
1. Be direct. I’m always amazed at salespeople who will come up with five indirect questions to get (or, in many cases, attempt to derive) a piece of information when the customer would be more than happy to answer the direct question. Your customers understand that these questions are key not only to your success but to theirs; why not enlist them as a partner by asking them questions that get directly to the heart of the matter? One of my favorite questions is, “What will make this a successful purchase for you?” It’s hard to get more direct than that.
2. Be thorough. Along with the above piece of advice, being thorough is key to effective questioning. What I mean by being thorough is this: Don’t leave key questions unasked or important information unknown. From time to time, salespeople will describe a particular situation or response to me, and then say, “What do you suppose he meant by that?” Don’t ask me (or your boss or co-workers) – ask the customer. Your customer has all the information you want – or can get it.
3. Drill down. This follows from #2. Drilling down is one of the most important, yet least used, skills in questioning. Sometimes customers will give incomplete answers to questions – not because they’re trying to deceive but because it doesn’t occur to them to give a more complete answer. Now it’s on you – drill down. Drilling down is simple; “Can you tell me more about that?”; “Why is that?”; and the like will get you where you want to go.
4. Use set-up questions. “Set-up questions” can be very important, particularly when you have a specific feature or benefit that you want to accentuate in your presentation. Set-up questions work like this: Let’s say that you have a particular credential that your competitors don’t; perhaps all of your salespeople are degreed engineers and the competitor’s aren’t. You can aske a question like, “How important is it to you that your salesperson is also a qualified and degreed engineer in order to help you implement this program?” Notice I didn’t ask, “Is it important (a closed ended question)”, I asked “How important is it (an open ended question).” Set-up questions should be open ended whenever possible to allow your customer to degree and prioritize.
5. Lose the fear! This might be the most important. Salespeople who bypass good questions oftentimes do it out of fear. They’re afraid that they might ask “too direct” of a question and offend their customer. Stop it! There is no penalty for asking direct and probing questions, as long as they relate to the business situation at hand. The worst your customer will do is refuse to answer. That’s OK. It just means that you haven’t earned the trust that goes with that answer yet. You’ll get there in time.
Do you want to really give great presentations? Then be a great questioner. Great questioners beat great presenters all the time. And if you’re wondering if I say that during those presentation programs – yes, I do. And now you know some ways to be much more effective with your questioning.
