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Do you know the information you need to extract from your customers?
The Real Selling Sales Training Sales Training Blog
Welcome to the real selling sales training blog, every month we will bring you a range of sales training articles, sales training tips and advice and way to improve your sales skills from our team of sales training experts
Do you know the information you need to extract from your customers?
This week I want to take a look at the information we need to obtain from our
clients during our conversations, every single piece of relevant information that will help us to secure a sale is stored within the heads of our customers, we need to unlock this and bring it into the conversation.
During my last sales cast I talked about the importance of asking the right questions when speaking to customers and how asking questions provides you with the vital information and knowledge you need to build up your understanding of your client or prospect, but one of the biggest challenges that stops sales people from asking the right questions is simply not understanding what information they need to actually get from the customer.
What information should we be gathering?
Over the years I have witnessed what I can only describe as the good, the bad and the ridiculous when it comes to gathering information, the key to information gathering is to have an idea of what you want to uncover but also to keep the process flexible as conversations rarely go the way we expect them to.
We need to uncover the critical information from our clients asked through intelligent open questions, such as their needs, any challenges they face, and if possible the budget and time frame they are operating within, this then needs to be backed up with some specific well thought out questions that are relevant to both the client and us.
Knowing how to avoid bad or ridiculous questions is quite a simple process in reality, if you are in any doubt about whether your questions are worth asking, ask yourself the following questions
Why would you be asking this?
What are you trying to achieve by asking this question?
Would you answer this question your self?
Identifying the information you need
To get to the heart of the information we need, preparation is key! Take a piece of A4 paper (maybe even two pieces) and take the time to sit down and plan, list all the information you need to get from every customer, this will be a work in progress, keep adding to it after every conversation you have and in time you will have a clear outline of the information you need to gather and more importantly it will show you if you need to develop some new questions to uncover all the information you need.
Written by Paul Routley FinstSMM
Paul Routley is an award winning trainer and one of the country’s leading authorities on modern sales techniques.
With over twenty years’ experience in sales and sales management, starting out in sales at the age of 17 and working his way up from trainee sales person to sales director, working for some of the world’s largest and most well-known companies along the way.
Paul has held a number of sales manager and sales director roles throughout his career and has a proven track record in creating and developing extremely successful and effective sales teams in every industry he has worked within.
As a trainer he brings a tremendous amount of experience and invaluable knowledge to all aspects of sales and selling within a variety of industries with a particular flair for telephone selling and a grown up approach to cold calling.
Paul’s training courses are always memorable and renowned for not just being educational and enlightening but also inspirational, motivational and entertaining.
During his career Paul has lived and worked in more than twelve European countries including: Germany, France, Sweden, Estonia, Italy, Switzerland, Holland, Belgium and Ireland
Paul is one of the UK’s leading sales trainers and also a fellow of the Institute of Sales and Marketing Management
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