Most salespeople do not wish to be seen simply as product salesmen. Most salespeople sincerely want to help their prospective customers by improving their business, saving them money, and expanding their share of the market. The problem is that many prospects are cynical. They either were burned by an unscrupulous salesperson in the past or know someone who was, with the result that they become extremely wary of salespeople.

Thus to get over this hurdle, salespeople need to position themselves as experts or advisers who use their expertise to improve the lives of their prospective customers.

This is where the use of educational questions is invaluable and gives prospects the opportunity to voice their opinions and allows the salesperson to see how they feel about various business issues.

Thus the ability to appear knowledgeable is portrayed in the use of intelligent, educational questions and lets the prospect know that the salesperson is aware of what is going on in the marketplace.

Also, when doing this the salesperson is able to engage the prospect customer in talk about controversial issues and present himself/herself as someone with fresh information as opposed to just selling a product.

This is relatively easy to achieve because it requires only that the person keeps up with latest news in the industry as well as other trends or issues affecting a prospect’s industry.

The goal here is to engage prospective customers by sharing information that is relevant to their problems, with the key being to make the prospective client feel understood and, most of all, understood by the salesman.

It must be noted that these questions are not meant to be used maniputively; rather they are intended to stimulate a prospect’s thinking and encourage exploration of options; once the prospect has started thinking about different possibilities and new ways of doing business the product will inevitably be seen as a solution.

It may be argued that it is important to have a plan in place to transition the meeting from the pertinent question to the concerns of the individual with whom the salesperson is meeting.

This will not always lead into directly into a discussion of the product service but should lay the groundwork for an exchange of ideas and provoke a response from a prospective customer.

The information to support all the aforementioned process does not necessarily need to come from a printed source; daily interaction with people is an invaluable source for this information also.

Basically, an intelligent question, strategically placed in a meeting can enable a salesman to probe the prospective customer’s feelings and stimulate conversation.

This begs the question of when to introduce this process; they can be used as a teaser on a voice mail message or as an icebreaker at the beginning of a meeting or as a way to stimulate conversation during a lull in a meeting.

Summarising, these are probably things that we do unconsciously anyway if we think about it, however it is a valuable reminder of the techniques available, and the times to use them as it is always good from time to time to gain a refresher.

Happy selling!

Harry