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Learn the best ways on how to increase, improve and boost your sales process performance with more effective tips, techniques strategies and ideas including top closing lines and assumptive questions.
Want a quick tip for closing more sales over the phone—or even face to face? Learn to ask better questions!
Surprisingly, when I listen to closing calls (or even prospecting and cold calls), I hear sales reps ask the wrong types of questions over and over again. Here’s an example:
“Do you have any questions for me?”
Quick: What’s wrong with this kind of question? If you answered that it’s a “closed-ended” question, you’re right. This question forces your prospect to answer either “yes” or “no.” Either way, the conversation stops.
The better sales reps close more sales and open more sales conversations by taking the time to change all their closed-ended questions into either open-ended questions or even assumptive questions. To do this with the above question, you’d change it to:
“What questions do you have for me?”
Granted your prospect can still tell you no, but this way you’re at least leading them to answering the question, rather than making it easy for them to just say no and end the conversation.
Below you’ll find better questions to help you prospect and cold call more effectively, and to help you close more sales by asking more effective questions :
Change: “Would you like to get more business?”
To: “How much more business would you like to get?”
Change: “Do you think you would get more traffic (or leads) from using this?”
To: “How much more traffic (or leads) do you think you would get using this?”
Change: “Do you think your other (departments/locations/etc.) could benefit from this?”
To: “How many other (departments/locations/etc.) would benefit from this?”
Change: “Do you have a budget for this?”
Related: 3 Ways to Get Better at Cold Prospecting
To: “What kind of budget do you have for this?”
Change: “Do you think your partner/manager/corporate would agree with this?”
To: “Why do you think your partner/manager/corporate would agree with this?”
Change: “Does this make sense to you?”
To: “Tell me, what part of this makes the most sense to you?”
Change: “Is this something you would like to go ahead and try?”
To: “Let’s go ahead and get you started…”
Change: “What do you think your manager will say?”
To: “How do we get your manager to say yes to this?”
Change: “Are you the ultimate decision maker on this?”
To: “And besides yourself, who else would be making the final decision on this?”
Change: “Is your (current solution) providing all the leads you need?”
To: “What would you like to most improve with your (current solution)?
Related: The Proper Way to Follow Up on a Lead
As you can see, many open-ended questions can be turned into an assumptive ones. And do you see how much more suggestive and powerful they are? Go through your qualifying script, your closing script, and your objection scripts and look for opportunities to transform your closed-ended questions into powerful and effective assumptive ones.
Then watch as you gain more control over selling situations and begin eliminating the objections and stalls that you may be creating—by asking the wrong kinds of questions—right now.
If you’d like two more scripts to help you close more sales and give better sales presentations, then click here for my new book: Power Phone Scripts.
As you’ll see, the more prepared you are for your sales presentations and closes you are, the more confident and successful you’ll be.