The Two Most Important Skills You Need in Sales

by Amanda Abella  - September 6, 2022

There are two critical skills that you need in sales. Number one is listening. And number two is knowing how to ask the right questions.

Unfortunately, part of the reason why so many of you get tripped up in sales is that you’re not asking the right questions.

And even if you are asking some of the right questions, you’re not going deep enough with a prospect to be able to present an offer to them and close them.

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What questions do you need to ask? These are part of phase II and phase III of the sales process.

So let’s jump in with the two-part sales process to land more sales on those leads.

Two Parts of the Sales Discovery Process

There are two parts to the sales process. In phase II, when you’re pre-qualifying people, and in phase III, once you’re on a closing call.

In phase two, you’re trying to find out if someone’s a good fit to work with you. And in phase three, you’re trying to find exactly what they need. You could present an offer and close them. However, a big problem that people have, aside from not listening, is they aren’t asking the right questions, and they’re not digging deep enough into the potential client’s pain points.

So often see people go in for a close way too soon. They didn’t ask enough questions to present the right offer. They go in with the wrong offer because they didn’t ask enough questions.

I see them fumbling with presentations because they did not know how to fit the presentation to what the client needed. Next, they shouldn’t sell because they didn’t ask enough questions. Lastly, some salespeople don’t close because they are lost in the process.

What I want you to understand is that when you ask your prospect questions, it’s not that you’re grilling them, right? The purpose of asking questions is to clarify what’s going on in their business. Frequently prospective buyers don’t even know what they need. And that’s why they are coming to you – the expert.

You’re the one who’s gonna help them figure it out. And to do that, you have to ask them questions to find out what is happening. So let’s get into how that works. 

Questions You Need to Ask When You Want to Close a Sale

So, first of all, there are always a few questions that you want to ask. These are the questions that everybody should be asking. First, ask them, ‘Why did you decide to talk to me?’ Secondly, ‘Why is now a good time to have this conversation?’ The first one will let you know why somebody is talking to you.

And when I ask that question, some people will tell me that they heard me on my podcast and they loved that I cursed! It makes me feel like I could be myself. Sometimes you’ll hear random reasons. However, every reason is helpful because you start to see why somebody chose to talk to you versus your competition.

The second question you want to ask is, why now? Why is now a good time to be having this conversation? You need to know the urgency, along with their problems. You need to know what they want and what’s gonna make them move to buy.

If you don’t know those things, you’re going to have a very difficult time when you’re presenting an offer and trying to close. So those are two questions that you always wanna start with. No matter what, once you have someone on an actual sales call.

How to Ask Quality Questions on Your Discovery Call

When you’re asking questions, you must dig deep enough to find out what’s happening. If you’re still getting a surface-level answer from the prospect, and you need to go deeper to find out if you can help them.

What is going on? What is the situation? What is the assessment? You’ll want to ask deeper questions because, on the surface, they are telling you what they want, but when you start digging, you’ll find out what they need from you. When you ask the right questions, you can find out what they need to get ahead.

In addition, you’ll also need to find out why they wanna fix this problem. What will happen in their lives if they get this problem solved? If you close the sale, you’ll want them to verbalize it out loud. And sometimes you’ve got to massage it out of them because people are not accustomed to somebody asking them deep dive questions on a sales call.

How is this gonna solve a problem for you? How is this gonna improve your life? What are you gonna be able to do when we fix this problem for you? Notice how I said when we fix this problem for you, not if we fix it when we fix it, and then let them talk it out, massage it out.

And then again, you can use that in the closing. Repeat back to them in their own words, so they understand that you sound like a great fit for them. So you can do what it is that they want to do. Boom!

At this point, you can pitch the right product and close the sale. 

There you go – you probably just increased your chances of closing by a million percent or something! 

And with that love, you guys appreciate you! Remember to go out there and make money, your honey!

Resources that are mentioned or add value to this episode:

How to Remove the Needy Vibe and Fill Your Sales Pipeline

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