Post by guest blogger Carl Saxon, Business Development Associate, PointClear.

A great way to thwart a lead or an opportunity is to stop asking questions and get into your informational session as to why your product or service is the best thing since sliced bread. What should be a common practice is to listen to the prospect’s words closely and then ask the next best question.

At PointClear, we practice active listening skills and use these skills as a major component to provide successful handoffs to our clients. Active listening helps you to clearly identify the SITUATION and the PROBLEM so you can then ask the next best appropriate cause questions that lead to the overall IMPACT and NEED questions. When practiced properly this leads to a smooth handoff to your client.

A bad example would be as follows:

You call a prospect and they immediately give you a couple of “surface” pain points. As I mentioned in a previous blog, some associates (and yes I am guilty also sometimes) want to pounce like a cat on a ball of yarn. We are set to close and we then immediately put the sales (features and benefits) hat on. After a minute of overwhelming the prospect with facts we say, “Well, what I would like to do is put you in contact with one our product specialists.” Low and behold, the prospect has questions.

A couple of things wrong here. One—who cares what we would like to do, it is about them not us. Two—we failed to ask the next best question either to clarify the situation or problem and to ask implication questions to determine need or desire.

Why not ask “Can you tell me a little more about the problem?”, “What pains does this problem cause?”, “How is that problem affecting you and the organization?”, or “If you resolved that problem how would it create a healthier environment?”

This gives you as the seller more control of the conversation and helps prevent or limit objections from being tossed at you because they are too busy now overwhelming you with facts.

Now instead of saying, ”Well, what I would like to do…”, you can say, “Based on what you have said…” in a more authoritative role versus a timid appointment setting role.

Remember—relevant questions are key to success. Controlling the conversation makes for an easier handoff and allows the prospect to verbalize their needs. If the seller says it, it is not necessarily true. If the prospect says it, then it must be true. In a sales lead transaction, he who makes the most statements loses control. “There is a sale made on every call you make.” (Yes. I stole it from the movie Boiler Room.)