This Lucep.com blog regularly features sales experts providing their expert views about relevant subjects such as response to sales leads, enablement tools, prospecting tips, conversion rate optimization and more. As an offline extension of this process, Lucep is now organizing sales events in our local as well as foreign markets. The idea is to bring sales experts and successful business leaders together on a panel to discuss the actual challenges faced by sales professionals, and provide solutions that work.
One of these events – “Sales for Startups,” was recently held at the BHIVE Workspace in Bangalore. The video clip below is from the Q&A part of the event, with our panel of sales experts answering an audience question about asking the right questions to get relevant information from sales leads before you even lean into your pitch
Here’s the video and the transcript. You’ll find some highly useful sales tips in this video that will help you talk to your leads and connect with them, get all the information you need to understand your client’s real needs, and help move them forward through your sales funnel.
Audience Question: How do you get the right information from your potential client, right? And if you are in those shoes, would you give… what are the 5 key pointers… how to ask the right questions in order to seek some information before you start to really sell?
Sumukha Rao, Ta3s: Don’t, don’t ask questions. Don’t ask questions to your customers, that’s what is my learning. Listen, they have questions and answers for themselves. Many of the customers have responded with answers by themself. You should have the very keenness to listen first. 1) Understand in between the lines. 2) Please make sure that you are not hitting the right spot, I mean the wrong spots, sometimes they get irked. So the nature of questioning should not be aggressive, it should be inquisitive. Understand from that and try to appreciate his pain. Then he will come out with more information that, you know, you appreciate his pain and he comes out with more information.
Zal Dastur, Lucep: I think one of the interesting thing is if you come from a point of view of trying to help, as opposed to trying to sell. And I think that a lot of salespeople get very caught up in the rush of the deal and the desire to close. But if you come from where, let me help you, right, let me see what is it that I can do for you, right. I might not be able to do anything for you, right. There are lot of times we have told customers, hey look, I don’t think our product is right for your company, right, you are not going to get the value from it, so maybe you wanna use something else. But I think if you come from the point of helping as opposed to… yes this is the perfect thing for you. It doesn’t matter what your problem is, you will find that there would be a bit of a difference.
Mangal Karnad, Fablesquare: I would believe that as far as we understand the business of the person, the prospect we are sitting with, if we understand the space well, then we will also understand their pain points. Yeah, the business owner knows the business best. As a sales person we we can never teach him a thing or two. That’s my belief. So first is the understanding of the space which will help. Second is also, like already said, to listen to the unsaid, or the unmet needs of the client. If you are…over a period of time, I think we will develop the skill to do that. That’s what I would like to say.
Sumukha Rao, Ta3s: Just to add to that, If you don’t know your customer well before the meeting, if you are not well prepared, be rest assured he is not going to open up to you. You should know what he is doing, what business is he into, what are his potential likes and dislikes, what might be the issue. So today, Internet is a trove of treasure from a problem perspective. If I go and say, you know, “SAP procurement management,” it shows… shows everything on the internet and I…I can look at that, you know. Not talking from one product perspective, you can search for n number of products like that. And if I am visiting a particular customer who is dealing with particular transaction within an account, you can know about the potential issues he is facing much before you go. Account mapping and understanding the account is very, very important before you go in for a meeting because otherwise he will think that is…you know, you are trying to sell to a person to understand his business rather than knowing what his business is.
These is indeed a treasure trove of information on the web, and that includes this post too. Just to summarize:
Tips to Get Relevant Information From Sales Leads
1. Listen to your leads, and understand what’s left unsaid in between the lines.
2. Try to help your leads solve what you think is their problem, instead of selling to them and trying to close the transaction. That’s how you get them to open up about the real problems they are facing.
3. Understand the client’s business before you meet them. That’s how you get to know about their unmet challenges.
4. Account mapping and understanding the account is very important before you go in for a meeting.
Related posts:
How to Get Prospects to Reveal Budgets Up Front
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