Earning the Right to Ask Questions – Webinar

Salespeople don’t become successful by selling things to people, they become successful by solving problems.

Selling isn’t a matter of trying to convince someone to buy something, but rather a matter of identifying a person’s needs and showing them how a product can help. In order to do that, a salesperson needs to be able to qualify his/her leads. And sales qualification is all about asking the right questions. Unless you ask the right questions, you won’t uncover the right needs. Unless you ask the right questions, you won’t understand the right problems to solve.

Asking the right to ask questions while making a sale is an art, however, it all begins with earning the right to ask questions.

And that’s why in this week’s Freshsales webinar we had Richard Harris talk to us about earning the right to ask questions in a sales conversation. Richard brings over 20 years of technology and SaaS experience in sales training, operations and sales leadership into his role as a Sales Consultant. He has built, led and consulted with a wide range of organizations including start-ups, mid-size companies, and global organizations. Richard is the founder of The Harris Consulting Group and also the current Director of Sales Consulting and Training for Sales Hacker. He is a regular speaker at the various Sales Hacker events, workshops, and conferences.

In this webinar, Richard covered everything from understanding how your prospects think, to how to start a sales conversation and gradually take control, and the art of turning down a prospect without feeling the associated guilt.

Webinar Overview:

Transactional Analysis – An introduction to ego states. 

Eric Berne, the pioneer of transactional analysis, made complex interpersonal transactions understandable when he recognized that the human personality is made up of three “ego states”. Each ego state is an entire system of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors from which we interact with one another. Parent, Adult and Child ego states and an interaction between them form the foundation of transactional analysis theory.

Richard defines how a buyer fits into each of these stages during the buyer’s lifecycle.

 

What the conversations look like 

We’ve all experienced communication breakdowns. One minute you’re having a perfectly normal conversation, the next minute all hell breaks loose. The conversation has failed to achieve its goal, whether it’s being heard, solving a problem, feeling connected, making a decision, etc.

In this section, Richard shows us how to use Transactional Analysis to have better, more constructive sales conversations.

 

Understanding the journeys

In this section of the webinar, Richard tells us about what the various stages in the buyer’s journey and seller’s journey are and how to break away from these traditional models and embrace conversational selling.

Conversational selling takes the essentials of selling to create a natural, conversational approach to customer interactions right from initial contact to successful completion.

 

Respect Contract

We might not realize it, but many everyday situations involve contracts. A contract is created the moment two people agree to do something for each other. These people, who are called “contracting parties”, can be individuals, a group of people or representatives of a business.

In general, it is not necessary to sign a document for a contract to be created.  A simple verbal agreement can be enough.

In principle, a contract must always be respected. In this segment of the webinar, Richard dives into the following elements of contracts and respecting contracts:

  • Elements of a Contract 
  • The Wind Up 
  • The Pitch 
  • The Release 
  • The Follow Through 
  • The First Call 

 

Open-ended questions vs. Closed-ended questions 

In the last segment of this webinar, Richard dives into what closed and open-ended are, when, where, and how you should you use these questions to move on to the next phase of the sale. Richard also talks about how to deal with, and tide over some of the most common objections and also how to say ‘no’ to a prospect and not feeling bad about it.  

 

Key Links:

Never_Split_The_Difference_Book

 

Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It by Chris Voss

Webinar Transcript: 

Click here to download the webinar transcript.

Still have questions? Ask away in the comments section below.

This webinar was brought to you by Freshsales. Freshsales is a sales CRM built to help you stop juggling multiple tools. It’s ideal for small businesses and refreshing for enterprises.