The TeleSmart 10 Series Calendar

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TeleSmart 10- Questioning

After training thousands of inside sales professionals and managers, we’ve come up with the TeleSmart 10- Sales Booster Series for generating revenue by phone and email. Our sales methodology has 10 essential skills for telephone effectiveness that actually work. This month we’ll be delving into Questioning, the critical probing and qualifying skill that moves your sale forward.

This is one of the most important months of the year as it’s the last month of Q2 and a great month to “get real” with your pipeline and your forecasting efforts. There’s no doubt that your questioning efforts will determine your success.

Our very popular Questioning Criteria provides you with a road-map of the 8 categories of questions you must ask on each call to better qualify your leads and opportunities. Ask them in the following order:

Current Environment: Technical environment; what do they have installed?
Business Needs: What issues or events are driving their interest?
Decision-making process: Who’s involved and what is the level of influence?
Decision-making criteria: What criteria have they established for evaluation?
Competition: Who else are they talking with or have installed?
Timeframe: From initial research to implementation, what’s the timeline?
Budget: How much do they have allocated for the project?
Next Steps: Who else should you talk with or what additional information to send?

So let’s put this Qualification Criteria to work and address some of the typical questions that come up from salespeople:

“I’m always eager to qualify the call and tend to jump in with questions prematurely such as asking budget and timeframe. Then it’s too late and I feel like I’ve lost the call and the prospect shuts down.”	Timing matters. It’s important to plan the questions and to time them well, complimenting client answers. While on the call, choose and formulate your questions wisely. Asking sensitive questions too early can distance your prospect. Instead, start by asking questions about their Current Environment to get them to talk and establish rapport since this is a non-threatening questioning category.
“I asked if they were the decision-maker and they said “yes” so now what do I do?”	The matter in which you formulate your question will have a direct impact on your answers. If we start our calls with too many closed-ended questions, we’ll get a short response- either yes or no. Sample of too many closed-ended questions early in the call: “Are you the person who makes decisions on…?” “Is this a good time to talk…?” “Are you familiar with our company…?”
“I get so excited when someone expresses interest in my product/service that I move into pitching mode too quickly, then I feel like I’ve lost them.”	Remember the 70/30 rule which means to ask questions and listen 70% of the time and only present 30% of the time. That also ties in with the saying of “selling versus telling” which means that you only want to “sell” when you have a good understanding of their needs – which you’ve uncovered after asking questions. Don’t launch into pitch mode too soon, just double check your qualification criteria and make sure you’ve asked all the relevant questions.
“My questioning style tends to volunteer the answer and it’s too understanding of what they want, how can I get out of that habit?”	One of the toughest things for salespeople to do is to stop and listen after they ask a question and yet the longest recorded “pause” in telephone sales history was about 40 seconds as it followed a strong question. So hold on, invest time in formulating strong questions and listen to what you uncover.
“I’m not that creative with my questions, can you give me some samples?”	All you had to do was ask, sure we’ll send you samples of these questions, just email us at getsmart@tele-smart.com and include Qualification Criteria Sample Questions in your subject heading and we’ll send them your way.

Does your inside sales training consist of “smile and dial” techniques that fail to generate consistent revenues? Has your team participated in field sales training only to find that it didn’t translate into a 7 second phone call or email which must carry impact?

TeleSmart provides one complete solution for inbound and outbound call centers at both the manager and team level. Whether you are calling on installed base, enterprise or transactional business, our TeleSmart 10 methodology applies for all. Contact TeleSmart Communications at 415-759-6537, or send an email at getsmart@tele-smart.com