Excerpt from Closing More Sales
"A consultant makes his living by providing advice, knowledge and wisdom for which he is paid. If he gives too much of his advice away, there's no reason for a customer to hire him. Once you start asking questions you have become a consultant.
You're no longer trying to sell something. You're trying to determine and identify the depth, width, breadth and scope of the customer's problem. Once that's been defined, than possible solutions can be discussed. If the customer is interested in the solutions, then you can discuss pricing.
You use questions to learn as much as possible about your customer and his situation, without telling him anything about what it is you do and how you do it. You want to identify — and clarify — the problem, without prematurely offer solutions and discuss pricing. This approach does five things for you:
1. Saves you time because you're gathering valuable information instead of talking about yourself and giving away valuable information.
2. Makes the other person think, which is something they don't do very often. By asking questions you're trying to get them to
focus on a problem, situation, or issue. You're not discussing solutions.
3. Shows your customer that you are very knowledgeable about your product and your business; and are familiar with his business needs because of the quality of the questions you ask.
4. Keeps you from
giving away your family jewels, i.e. your knowledge, experience, training and wisdom. If the customer chooses not to do business with you, you haven't given them enough information that they could solve the problem themselves.
If they were to speak with another vendor or supplier they would have to start over again because you haven't given them a step-by-step blueprint for how to solve their problem.
5. Enables you to determine
whether or not you've got a
prospect, which
is the crucial why you must learn how to ask great questions.
If you don't have a prospect, you close your file and move on. You haven't invested a great deal of time."
