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I'm about to go on a bit of a rant so buckle up!
A few days I stumbled across a website designed to help small business owners improve their results. The owner of the website had written a blog post on selling skills and I was disappointed by the advice he dispensed.
He suggested that small business owners use probing questions throughout their presentation. While I agree that this is important the examples he presented were not reflective of this style of question. Here are the three questions he listed as being "probing":
"How do you feel about the program explained so far?"
"Which option do you prefer?"
"Can you see the value in the additional features we can provide at an extra cost?"
Really?
The last time I checked these were not probing questions!
They are self-serving, seller-centric questions that do nothing to uncover a prospect's potential problem. Do you seriously think asking lame questions like these are going to separate you from your competition and give people a compelling reason to do business with you?
He also went on to suggest that you need to "convince" people that they "need" your product or service.
If you have to "convince" someone to do business with you, I suggest that you have done a poor job positioning the value of your offering which likely means you haven't asked the right probing question to determine the extent of their current problem.
Don't get me wrong...
I'm sure the blog author had good intentions with his advice. However, in my opinion, his advice was off-target. It was evident he had little, if any, experience in sales, and as someone who has dedicated the last sixteen years to helping sales people improve their results, I take tremendous offense when someone with few qualifications dispenses poor or misleading sales advice.